Steve Ballmer (left) isn’t averse to doing more deals. The Microsoft honcho said so this morning, noting that Redmond’s willing to consider deals the size of the $6 billion aQuantive transaction.

Microsoft’s M&A approach has been less than stellar. In fact, its strategy might best be lumped into two categories: Desperate and Not So Desperate. In the Desperate camp are the New Media acquisitions and partial-stakes, as the company tries to secure its place in the changing world around it. Think of its attempts to land a stake in AOL, its big-ticket price for aQuantive and its ongoing negotiations for a share of Facebook.

The Not So Desperate column is shorter, consisting of a slew of tiny research-and-development companies, plus the likes of the $1 billion purchase of Great Plains Software in 2001, and the $1.5 billion purchase of Visio back in 2000.

Here’s how some prospects shape up. First the Desperate list.

Facebook.com: The most talked-about move for Microsoft, which is eagerly trying to insert itself in the online-advertising and social-networking arena. From Microsoft’s point of view, this is a business the company can’t not be in, as it wants to use its new technology to serve ads over the Facebook network. This approach seems to miss an essential point: The best way to create value is by building a better product, not by buying off a customer. While this might have worked for Microsoft in the past, the game has certainly changed.

Creative Technology Ltd.: Despite nearly ubiquitous advertising, the Zune digital-music player has been a complete flop. A new version is expected to debut shortly, featuring a thinner profile and some new software features for sharing music. We can’t begin to estimate Microsoft’s development costs in building new devices from scratch. But what if the company were to just chuck all of its flailing efforts and buy a relatively cheap and nimble device developer, such as Singapore’s Creative Technology Ltd.. Turns out the rebranding would be pretty easy. Creative’s player is called the Zen.

AOL: Microsoft wants to build “mass” in new media. The most mass-y move would be to finally put together its MSN online site with AOL, which soon will fall under the stewardship of new chief Jeff Bewkes. Last month, Microsoft’s second-ranked sites attracted 525 million unique visitors, while Time Warner sites (mainly AOL) brought in 270 million uniques, as the fourth-most visisted site.

Would this create the proverbial three out of the “one plus one”? It certainly would be easier to cut overhead (their two homepages look eerily similar). Marketing spending could be halved. And there would be some value in creating the first truly massive global audience, with nearly 50% more visitors than leader Google. On the contrary side, AOL was valued in 2005 at about $20 billion, which would make a deal the largest ever for Ballmer & Co.

The irony is that AOL-MSN might best work as a standalone company, discharged from both their corporate parents to chart its own path. As long as they remained chained to bigger entities, they will be stuck serving objectives other than their own.

The Not So Desperate List:

Salesforce.com: This Web-based application provider proudly states its motto: “No Software.” Which is precisely why this could be a thrilling piece of jujitsu for Microsoft, as it tries to move more of its applications directly on the Web. What if, for instance, Salesforce.com apps were integrated directly into new editions of Office? Consider that Microsoft is mulling buying into Facebook — earnings roughly $30 million — at a $10 billion-plus valuation. By those standards buying Salesforce.com — earnings $111 million — at a $7 billion valuation almost looks reasonable.

E-Health companies: There are a flock of small-cap companies, each trying to take a piece of the E-health business. The idea is to convert as many health records as possible into electronic form, thereby eliminating errors, overcharging and tens of billions of dollars in waste. Microsoft already has made a step into this area, with the launch of a site called HealthVault, used to store and manage an individual’s health records. This was done in part with the small acquisition of Medstory. It seems the bigger opportunity is playing a role in the inevitable — really – march into electronic health records. With Democrats looking like they have a good shot at taking back the White House, it would be a reasonable guess that they would include such initiatives as part of any overall health-care overhaul. It might be good to get positioned in advance with a few acquisitions in the area.