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To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12471)	12/9/1999 9:15:00 AM
From: SOROS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

I put this on 3 threads ONLY in hopes of an answer before market opens. Thanks. techstocks.com

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12471)	12/9/1999 10:07:00 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

My personal opinion: Eudora is being washed out of the corporate desktops by MS Outlook. Outlook is a much more integrated product that I am seeing many very large corporations standardizing on, as part of the MS Office suite. Perhaps Q hopes that Eudora will remain the e-mail of the masses, which ain't bad. I would like to see Q spin Eudora off. It is not part of their core business.

To: Mike Buckley who wrote (12471)	12/9/1999 9:24:00 PM
From: Percival 917	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 54805

To Mike Buckley and The Thread, I promised Merlin I would check out the Nidek/Visix situation yesterday and get back to all of you. After numerous calls to several Ophthalmologists here in Atlanta and to one in California(who did my wife's eyes), I have some interesting findings to relate to all of you. First is the development of the excimer laser which Summit actually had the lead, but Visix's development was close enough that they initially jointly shared in the royalties or what they refer to a pillar points. Summit and Visix eventually came to an agreement where Summit sold their royalty rights to Visix so that they have exclusive rights to all royalties. The hospitals and surgery centers that purchased Visix's laser also actually pay for the royalties up front in the form of key cards. They actually have a set number of procedures encoded in them and they have to use the key card to operate the laser. The Lasik procedure numbers have been doubling for the last 3 years to the point where the one millionth procedure was done this year The conversations I had turned up some interesting thoughts. (1)Visix has about 80% of the lasers currently in use and that gives them an obvious upper hand, however (2)An average practice doing 100 procedures a month(50 patients) pays around $26,000($260/eye) in pillar points each month or over $300,000 a year. A lot of interest is out there for Nidek because if they are completely successful in their fight with Visix then no more pillar points are paid and the procedure comes way down in price. ( for the record Nidek Is telling their clients to escrow the pillar points, for if Nidek ultimately loses then these royalties may be collectible by audits most likely) (3)There are at least 2 other laser companies that are just starting to come into the US and they HAVE agreed to pay Visix the pillar points. They are Technolas out of Germany and owned by Bausch and Lomb and Lasersight, possibly out of Canada(I'm not absolutely sure on that). (4)Nidek and Technolas for sure and possibly Lasersight excimer laser are a newer generation than Visix's is. I won't bore you with all the technical explanations but Visix is based on a broad beam laser versus Nidek's scanning slit beam and Technolas' flying spot beam. It is yet to be fully proven but the thoughts are that they may be a bit better technology. (5)Visix recently lowered the cost of their laser to approximately $450,000 versus $550,000 for Nidek's and around $600,000 for the Technolas. Initially you would think that this is hands down a win for Visix, but if Nidek prevails the total cost remains $550,000 whereas you can add $300,000 or so each year to Visix's cost. Here is where the major fight will begin. Visix is not going to roll over on this. For me the bottom line is this. This market is definitely growing. If Visix can prevail in the royalties, they are going to produce some big numbers over the next few years or longer. The victory for Nidek was only something to do with importing foreign equipment(something to that effect) I originally thought they had won the right to use a certain wavelength that might have well gotten around Visix's patents, but that does not appear to be the case. If it does indeed take a couple of years or more to appeal this and Visix prevails they will have a revenue boost from all those escrowed Nidek's pillar points that will blow the roof off their earnings. Time will tell. If I can answer any questions please PM me so I won't take up too much thread time Squire J