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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (16929)	6/8/1999 3:52:00 AM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Often, I have wondered if Intel's problems with smaller profits than expected is because Intel has stuck with the MSFT monopoly. Microsoft's operating software development is so slow-moving and trailing-edge ("The Best There Is", as Dale would say), that Intel is sitting today with basically one processor core which has been reverse-engineered into a commodity by a slew of competitors, none of whom are making a dime. Intel had a 32-bit processor in 1985 (the 386), but Microsoft didn't even partly support it with operating software until 1988, and even that support (Windows 386) was a joke for seven years. If Intel came out with Merced tomorrow, Microsoft would leave them high and dry for another four or five years with no 64-bit OS, the Best There Isn't. That's why Intel is looking anxiously to Sun and Linux and SCO and HP and other Unix players. The world sees right through the phony Celeron-Pentium-Xeon differentiation which is 95% marketing and 5% technical. Those three chips are all the same to a very good first approximation. So which one does the world buy? Why, the low-cost, low-margin Celeron of course. The weirdly overpriced Xeon has already "augered in", and the Pentium III is a slow starter that will be on rapid price cuts for life support. Why pay $300 extra for a jot more cache and 70 multimedia instructions that no software uses yet? And by the time there is some software, the SIMD extensions will have dribbled down into the "Celeron III". My guess is that all the P6 chips un-MIRV within a year or two when the charade becomes counterproductive. If Sun gets off the dime with the Ultra Sparc III, they can build a lead at the high end that even mighty Intel will have a hard time closing. We will know a lot more by the end of calendar 1999. As I said in an earlier message, you can never count out Intel. But IMHO they're at the most critical juncture in their history in terms of continued revenue growth. Regards, --QwikSand