HOUSE OVERSIGHT 028630 As I wrote in mid-July: "Microsoft had a bad fourth quarter, mostly because many people are not using PCs any more. In addition, the tech giant took a $900 million charge related to having to cut the price of its Surface RT tablet, which had — as you might imagine — an impact on results. Missed profit expectations, missed revenue, missed all over the ying-yang." With the prospect that the next quarter could be weaker still and with numerous reports of late that there has been slowing of adoption from its new flagship Windows 8 offering, Ballmer and the board finally aligned to move his departure date sooner. Most critical to that decision, source said, were increased board worries that recent pressure from activist investor ValueAct — which has a large stake in the company — had a good chance of succeeding in its efforts to obtain a seat on the board of Microsoft, especially if Ballmer stayed in place. And even if the software giant was able to thwart that from happening, said several sources, such a public fight is untenable for the company, since it was likely to attract even more scrutiny to Ballmer's performance and perhaps even more investor action ValueAct has until August 30 to notify Microsoft if it plans a proxy battle, and sources said it still wants more that Ballmer's retirement. In talks, said sources, it has asked for an aggressive stock buyback and also a dividend increase, which might assuage its efforts to garner a board seat. Ballmer denied any pressure from ValueAct specifically in his decision in an interview with the Seattle Times, though sources said that was simply bluster. And, even with mounting pressure on him, Ballmer definitely portrayed the change as his decision in an interview he gave to ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley last week, after his retirement announcement. "I would say for me, yeah, I've thought about it for a long time, but the timing became more clear to me over the course of the last few mont