(EVIL QWIKSAND ON THE AIR: BWAHAHAHAHA....)
The Star freebies are good, but many of them represent tire kickers and software-collecting geeks (the same people who download Linux and Solaris 7 freeware and then never install them.) Even at 2 million a month, it would take six or so years to catch up with M$ Office, and it's questionable whether that would ever really happen. The giveaway of 62mb installable bit boluses is mostly a light show to buy time for the real thing (that is, the portal product), by mesmerizing the slow-witted ZD press for a few months. It has some other benefits, sure, but its principal benefit is time.
Hence my bull-headed opinion that the StarPortal product, the suite-as-free-web-service model, and the ISP/Portal Co. relationships that absolutely must precede the success of that product, are all that really matter. This is why I harp on the need for Sun to let the flacks handle the hype and PR while the sales, engineering, marketing and service machinery are putting together a StarPortal and some big customer relationships that will move it ASAP.
Downloads be darned. It's StarPortal execution, execution, execution. After reading Reggies financial and technical writings I can't tell exactly whether he's more like Visionary Steve Jobs or Mad Genius Lex Luthor, but I can see he's ready to try to make this model work if Sun blows it, and there have to be other like him. Ours to lose...let's not lose it.
So I will remain singularly unmoved by any self-congratulatory StarOffice download figures trumpeted by SUNW over the PR FlackWire. I will be impressed by the first few announcements which involve customers P.O.'s for StarPortal with numbers at the bottom that end in 7 zeros.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
What? What did I just say? I can't remember...GO SUNW!
Regards,
--QwikSand |
