Christine -
How many people are going to do this? How many small businesses are going to do this? How many people even realize that they have to do this?
And - yes - buying a new PC might help a little - but you are still going to have to go through many of these steps.
Other than the glancing discussion of Sidekick (there's an oldie!), I saw minimal discussion in your excellent post about the applications.
While it is slightly hairsplitting to bring this up, but MightySoft doesn't make applications (like accounting packages), they make tools... database, word processors, compiliers, spreadsheets.
I'd assume that 99.9% of folks who use a computer have no idea that the accounting package they run isn't written by Microsoft... after all, when the machine fires up, there's the Windoz logo staring you in the face.
In the physical world people can actually tell the difference between a truck & a bicycle... not so easy in cyberspace. In the physical world there are pretty clear lines where one thing ends & another begins... not so clear in cyberspace.
FACT... there's a directory of desktop (Unix, Mac, Tandy, Commodore, MightySoft) products... it lists 3000+ vendors and 21,000 products, largely business & accounting applications. Obviously doesn't list the custom stuff that cousin Harry wrote for Dad's machine shop when Harry was learning to program in dBase II.
So who's gonna fix that dBase II database application that's still happily chugging along on DOS 5.0 on a dual floppy 286 PC that 100% paid for?
- David |
