John, The flaw in the Pentium chip was minor, but the reaction to it was MAJOR!! It was all over the news and TV. Intel was arrogant, and its reputation was destroyed. People would run for Power PC's and the superior MAC operating system and leave PC's and their defective chips in the dust. People sold their Intel stock and bought Cyrix and AMD. WIN95 was bug-ridden, it was MAC 86, it was better sticking with WIN 3.1 or getting a MAC. It would be Microsoft's debacle. NT would never be popular, not as powerful as UNIX, etc., etc., etc.
AOL is not a commodity ISP. It is THE ISP. Earthlink, SlipNet, Netcom are commodity providers. If I ask someone if they are on AOL, they will say yes or no. If I ask them if they are on Earthlink, they will say, "What's Earthlink?" AOL is a brandname, similar to Coke. You may not like AOL, but I think once their upgrades are complete, it will continue to be a big winner. |