How high will Microsoft fly? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly?

MSFT 451.15

+1.6%

3:59 PM EST

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To: John F. Dowd who wrote (66808)	4/7/2002 6:06:19 PM
From: SC	Read Replies (1) of 74651

Greed and Envy. It's what makes the world go around. If Apple hadn't been so greedy charging outrageous prices for apple hardware as well as software in the late 80's and early 90's most homes would have apple computers as they were in all the schools at the time. If children grew up using apple, businesses would have eventually adopted apple instead of wintel. I remember trying to decide what sort of computer to buy my daughter when she was 7 years old in 1991. All the teachers had apple IIe machines similar to the ones in the schools. But I couldn't reconcile spending twice as much for an apple as a pc clone, so I have never owned an apple. When it came time to buy a word processor program for the office; I asked my secretary what she wanted. She wanted Word Perfect because that's what they had at secretary school. This secretary no longer works for me and the folks that do prefer Microsoft Office. My wife still prefers word perfect but by the time the kids needed a word processor for school, novell had been beaten in the schools by microsoft and they insisted on microsoft office. They were very good at multimedia presentations, using Powerpoint, by about 6th grade. They don't want anything to do with WordPerfect Suite (even though I prefer it because it is much less expensive when bundled with new hardware). Try to run a multimedia presentation on Corel Presentations on someone elses machine. Try to run Lotus software's competing product(I don't even know what it is called!). Like most things in life, this was 5% genius, 5% hard work and 90% luck. Microsoft had no problem offering software that worked on a non-proprietary platform and IBM had no problem offering a non-proprietary platform. Microsoft was in the right place at the right time. Microsoft didn't get there first. They didn't get there with the best product. What they did was to provide an adequate product at a reasonable price that caused most people to buy their products because they couldn't afford the entry price of the better alternatives. Thus they became the standard in every business (except graphics businesses) and in every home. Since they are now the standard in business, most schools have replaced apple software/hardware with wintel software/hardware. As long as microsoft can profitably sell their products they will continue to be the standard. This is why the SUN/ORCL/APPL/AOL crowd is pressing so hard to make the remedy onerous enough to effectively force microsoft out of business. I would be surprised if the legal system and ultimately the federal government would essentially sanction the economic chaos that will ensue if the wintel standard is effectively eliminated. Supreme Court justices don't have to run for office. But then again, they did precisely that when they dismantled the ma bell monopoly. They also don't have to run a business. By the way, does anyone know anyone who was storing data on a remote site that went out of business? Anyone who has would never consider using distributed computing as their only means of saving/accessing their data! Steve

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