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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (29220)	9/6/1999 10:27:00 PM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Sun web site reports over 100,000 downloads of Star Office in less than 100 hours. Most of these downloads should be in the US since the Europeans would find it expensive to download such a big application (65 Megabytes and Europeans pay by the minute for local calls - hence the so-called free Internet access in Europe). MS Office is estimated to have 100 million users. For Sun to begin to challenge MSFT, the numbers will need to go up by a factor of 10. If, and when the download numbers cross a million, we may see a negative impact on MSFT, IMHO. Any analysis of these numbers will be appreciated. For example, how many new licenses of MS Office are sold every year worldwide? I would guess at least 10 to 15 million if the installed base is 100 million today. That works out to be 25,000 to 40,000 every day of the year.

To: RTev who wrote (29220)	9/6/1999 10:32:00 PM
From: Stormweaver	Respond to of 74651

All of them won largely because they were perceived to be easier to easier to use and later on Corel... They must be credited with doing a superb job of making those apps familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft Office. Exactly (period). When I switched from character based Wordperfect with it's inane keystroke control combinations to MS Word I never looked back or at any other office product. As you also hinted too, MS has the superior office metaphor - Star is just an imitation and just playing follow the leader like the others. Not much of a desktop revolution. I'll stick with my MS Office - "the real thing" ;) OT> I wonder if Coke's "real thing" phrase is protected ? Cheers James

To: RTev who wrote (29220)	9/7/1999 8:48:00 AM
From: Ex-INTCfan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

RTev, Your comments, and the ones immediately preceding yours, lead me to believe that Sun is not going after MS Office -- they are attacking Windows. This may be obvious to many on the thread, but it only occured to me after reading the last few posts. I agree with you that this will be a difficult task. Most of the computer users I know have tremendous difficulty switching to new software. I know people who still use the enter key at the end of each MS Word line. (Drives me buggy!) INTCfan