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

To: Doc Savage who wrote (33657)	11/10/1999 4:09:00 PM
From: Valley Girl	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

I also prefer and continue to use Navigator. I've read through the FOF pretty carefully, and, while I don't agree with it, the thrust of the Judge's argument appears to be twofold: 1) MSFT muscled boxmakers to exclude Navigator from bundles. I'm blessed with several siblings and two healthy parents, not a one of whom would even attempt to install or upgrade the software bundled with their machines. I guess the Judge is worried about the masses, for whom "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 2) MSFT is forcing us all to have IE installed on our machines whether we want it or not. This is a truly daffy argument when you consider that a megabyte of disk space costs less than a penny. I like having IE around; sometimes I use it for pages that don't work as well in Navigator, and it lets me get a peek at advanced feature (vector graphics, XML) that have yet to make it into Navigator. Against these two points, there's a huge plus noted by many others but ignored by the Judge: 3) MSFT's entry into the browser market meant that both browsers remained free; it defeated NSCP's strategy of seeding the market with freeware while plotting to stab us in the wallet for $50. Amusing, isn't it? This is more than the learned Judge thinks MSFT has a right to charge for the (vastly more complex and useful) OS! Val

To: Doc Savage who wrote (33657)	11/11/1999 3:18:00 AM
From: Duane L. Olson	Respond to of 74651

Doc, I use Netscape Navigator myself primarily. If elements of IE are tied into the OS and slow up my processing when I'm using Navigator, I suppose there is some small element of "harm"... But mainly, I'd rather just have the option of either installing, or not installing IE. As for the "harm" in the case, however, I think the focus was more on the fact that a consumer who wished to purchase a computer from a major vendor was forced to pay for the cost of the OS of MSFT's choice, regardless of what he might have wanted. I ran into that myself... I was buying a new computer about the time Windows 98 was coming out, and I thought it would be better to have Windows 95 instead. If I had moved fast enough, before 98 came out, I could have bought a system with 95 installed, with a promise of a free upgrade later. Once 98 came out, however, the price for Windows 95 was raised to the price of Windows 98. So I was forced to pay for Windows 98 whether I wanted it or not. This particular type of occurrence was cited by the Judge in the Findings of Fact. The ability of a company to arbitrarily raise the price of a product, even if obsolete, is one mark of a monpolist. Many people would consider having to pay for one product they would rather not have, in order to get another product they do want, without any additional economic benefit is "harm". If you don't mind being treated that way, then perhaps you aren't "harmed", and the suit doesn't apply to you. For the rest of us, we'd rather get a decision as a matter of law. tso