It's shaping up as a tough week for Steve Ballmer & Co. as Microsoft prepares to release its quarterly earnings Thursday afternoon. Even if the company bucks the trend and posts decent results, investors will want to know how Microsoft will keep expenses down, and profit margins up, if the recession deepens in the coming months.

In other words, cutbacks are coming -- and we know the free sodas ain't on the list. These are tough decisions, particularly for people on the inside. Fortunately, we're here to help. With apologies to the teams involved, these are some of the products and projects we'd dump to cut costs.

Zune: Microsoft already plans to incorporate Zune features into Windows Mobile devices. We'd take that a step further and drop the Zune hardware altogether, returning to the company's traditional practice of providing the underlying software for devices from a variety of manufacturers. An ecosystem of music players, all running the Zune software and music service, would provide a consistent user experience while offering the broader industry a better chance of producing a viable iPod competitor.

Soapbox: Microsoft's YouTube competitor. Heard of it?

Search: Of course, this isn't going to happen. But contemplate this scenario: Microsoft partners with Yahoo, but rather than bringing Yahoo's search operations into the Microsoft fold, the Redmond company outsources search engineering to Yahoo (reviving its past practice) and redirects a sizable portion of the savings to improving Windows development and testing.

Issaquah: Not a product, but a big plot of land the company has held in reserve for years as a possible development site in this community down the road from its Redmond headquarters. Even though the real estate market is significantly less than ideal, it could be time for the company to sell the property, given the slower growth it's expecting in the coming years.

Razorfish: This online advertising agency (formerly Avenue A Razorfish) was picked up by Microsoft as part of the company's larger aQuantive acquisition. It has always been a bit of a misfit, given that it places ads not only on Microsoft sites but also on Internet properties operated by the company's competitors. The company has so far downplayed rumors of a possible sale, but this unit is a logical candidate for such a move if Microsoft is looking to streamline its operations.