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

To: NetFlyer who wrote (32679)	11/7/1999 9:11:00 PM
From: Sowbug	Respond to of 74651

That is, why are you prepared to accept that everyone who buys a PC from a major supplier must pay Microsoft? You shouldn't, but you do have to put some operating system on your machine, or else it's just wires, lights, and buttons that don't do anything except sit there on your desk and suck up electricity. The "tax" you speak of turns that $2,000 worth of useless junk into a smart device that can run most of the software out there today. Sure, I joke about Microsoft being the evil Borg empire and all that just as much as anyone else, but imagine the alternatives -- your local CompUSA stocks 12 different copies of a single word processor, each for a different OS??? What if each brand of car needed its own brand of gas and could drive on only certain types of roads? What if Electric Company A used 110 volt electricity, and Electric Company B used 160 volt electricity, and I had to make sure I bought the right appliances, or else they'd explode when I plugged them in? I'm more than happy to pay $80 to one company and never have to worry about which OS is installed on my machine. Does Windows suck? Sure it does. But it sucks a whole lot less than anything else out there, and it sucks a whole lot less than not being able to buy certain software because it doesn't run on my OS (ask any Mac user and you'll hear what that's like).

To: NetFlyer who wrote (32679)	11/7/1999 11:55:00 PM
From: Gerald Walls	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Do you like taxes? Why are you prepared to pay a Microsoft Tax? That is, why are you prepared to accept that everyone who buys a PC from a major supplier must pay Microsoft? I'm sorry. I didn't know that someone was holding a gun to your head and was telling you that you had to buy your PC from a major vendor. Otherwise, I'm sure that you would perform your function in a free market and you would Vote With Your Dollars and would buy from the vendor that offered the choice that most fit your needs. After all, the Mom & Pop operations are the ones that have been Prohibited From Entering The Market so wouldn't it be best to buy from them anyway? My first computer was an 8088 4.77 MHz PC-XT clone 2-floppy 640K system bought from PineCom computers from an add in the back of Computer Shopper for $1000 in 1985. I added a $500 20-Meg Seagate HD and controller from another ad. I didn't buy from any Major Vendor. I also wrote my own line-based editor (far superior to edlin) using Mix-C, also purchased mail order, by using "copy con <file>" commands to produce small chunks of C code that I later appended all together and compiled. That way I'd only have to retype a few lines if there was an error. After getting a version that would insert and delete lines, I used the program to write the program. (Pretty good for a Fresh Out from college, huh?) I stopped using it when I downloaded and purchased the shareware program PC-Write. So take your coddled whining elsewhere. This old-timer doesn't want to hear how Microsoft has stifled innovation and hurt the consumer from someone who doesn't know sh\|t about how it used to be.