Joey:
Let me see if I got this right, you are basing your assessment of the market on the number of downloads of primarily diagnostics tools from one site?
As per your earlier post to which you referred to this link...
www6.zdnet.com
which is a shareware freeware site page at zdnet.
As you noted this is one site. Even at this same site if you do a simple search you get this link...
hotfiles.zdnet.com
which has evidence of greater downloads of y2k related tools (still primarily diagnostic tools).
You can also go to this link at CNET....
cnet.com
which also has a download counter.
There also is this site with downloadable diagnostics though it doesn't have a counter so we can't account for these downloads
cmpnet.com
PINC's own site and several of its competitors also provide free down loads of diagnostic software.
millenniumbugkit.com (PINC)
computerexperts.co.uk (Competitor)
So there are numerous places that keep count and many others that don't. Consequently your conclusion that you made previously in
(#reply-6213007) ,that you now slightly qualify with the words "one popular site", "that the total combined downloads to-date [are] less than 1/2 of ... 100,000" is completely unsustainable. Your prior quote also states that "...some of those other utilities listed are free..." without acknowledging that these free utilities are primarily diagnostic tools and not fixes.
As you also note , "...to-date the market is small" .
I agree with this statement. I disagree with how small. Again your numbers that you presented are completely meaningless, since there are numerous downloadable sites for diagnostic tool- many of which don't keep count.
I agree with "to-date" part of your statement because the brunt of y2k compliance has focused on central and mainframe applications, not on desktops. See the following link that addresses this issue.
techweb.com
From that August 26th article, please pay particular attention to the following quote.
"Nearly 75 percent of respondents have yet to develop desktop compliance plans, and almost half have yet to evaluate which applications take priority."
Also read this link from 10/28/98
news.com
which states...
"PC Year 2000 compliance has slowly caught the attention of companies who in the past focused Y2K efforts on major back office systems, but industry analysts have begun sounding the alarm on the computer glitches affect on the desktop computer. "
Note that even the companies you would have expected to be competitors are only now rolling out their desktop products.
Symantec, a name you would expect to be involved, just shipped its product at the beginning of this month. The following link explains Symantec products and strategy
news.com
So the market is really only getting targeted partly due to being overshadowed by larger systems (and neglected) and due to corporations and individuals not dealing with compliance until closer to the year 2000.
Regarding your statements...
"...In any case, I hear that MBCK appears to be an altered version of Survive 2000, and I'm told that entities other than PINC have the unrestricted marketing rights for Survive 2000 version 1.3, and no one at this stage has the rights for version 2.1...."
your "research" is hearsay. You "hear" and are "told", but offer no proof. Your statements wouldn't be admissible in a court of law.
If you have proof, please present it. I'm not adverse to arguments you can substantiate, which you have hitherto been unable to provide.
Regarding MSFT, that's funny. Every time someone wants to raise "concerns" about competition, they say the boogie man Microsoft is going to monopolize market share.
Quicken is still here despite MSFT's attempts to monopolize financial software.
I used MSFT as my ISP, and dumped it after two months. MSFT didn't put AOL out of business and didn't discourage a myriad of other smaller ISP's from getting involved.
Plus it just doesn't seem consistent with MSFT business strategy to enter this particular segment at this time.
Plus, if you hadn't noticed MSFT has a little legal problem right now.
Here are links to some real competitors....
techweb.com
of which this competitor's product seems the most similar
beyond.com
Plus I found this site to ponder over as well which is a comparison of y2k products
sawkins.com
I emailed them to include PINC's product as part of their review and
gave them the link to the millenium bug site..
Finally here are directions to Planet City's booth at Comdex in Las Vegas which starts on Monday...
planner.comdex.com
Why don't you go and check them out. Unfortunately, I live on the other side of the country.
Cheers,
ztect
btw....you really should refrain from making all those nasty comments, remember keep it clean.<ggg>
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