Michael, to answer some of your questions:
Perhaps you expect W2K to lead IA processors to new arenas and to upgrade buyers. Why?
History, for one. One of the analysts quoted today went back and determined that INTC went up 100% or so during the year following each of Windows 95 and Windows 98 intros. I guess that was enough for him. We'll see.
A better argument: it was also pointed out on this thread that there are advantages, on corporate networks, in upgrading not only the servers, but also all of the workstations and PCs that are connected. Things like the new DNS, that Microsoft is so proud of, won't bring any advantage unless all machines on the network are upgraded to 2000. Corporations tend to bundle major software upgrades with new hardware, hence Intel Pentium and Xeon sales. Some individual corporations have thousands of machines, world wide, on their Intranets or VPNs.
To the first argument, what about W2K do you think gets it places not already on NT? To the second, if W2K is better than
NT4, where's the new bottleneck that necessitates upgrades?
Everyone knows that Windows NT has been lacking in comparison to Unix in a lot of areas, like scalability, robustnesss, RAS and security. I hope that the years in the making, cast of thousands, project up in Redmond has addressed some of these. I hear they have. I think W2K will be a big seller, and pull through a lot of Intel sales with it.
Oh, I forgot, the Y2K BS is over; perfect time for companies to spend the bucks they've been sitting on, on W2K and Intel processors..
Tony |
