Again - doesn't matter. The same with SUNW. The point is that SGI (and others in the same game), will expend resources to promote *alternatives* to NT.
Having said that, NT's saving grace, is application ware. That has been the MSFT way to leveraging and growing it's dominance of the desktop. The question is whether the advantage that NT presently has in that regard is large enough to allow for the same maneuver that Win 9x pulls off. NT has the initial advantage. But apps are being written by major developers as we speak, and momentum appears to be gathering. The race is between NT's lead, and the "other guys" momentum. That is why I'm desperately interested in the fate of Win 2000 in all it's flavors. On the one hand, I wish Win 2K would come out ASAP, because MSFT still has the IT mindshare of the majority of the market, and the sooner Win 2K takes advantage of that the better. The transition may be a bit tricky, but I imagine MSFT will pull out all the stops. OTOH, I can fully understand why MSFT has taken so long - they want to come out with something that is robust enough that even if alternatives have a slight edge, it won't seem worth the hassle given the fact that you are working with a great pool of appl ware (and that's why MSFT rightly worries about legacy questions, and spend considerable resources to "drag" stuff along as far as it can).
In the end, I'm optimistic. If Win 2K lives up to its billing from the performance point of view, the advantages of uniformity, incumbency and MSFT marketing should carry the day. |
