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Technology Stocks : Corel Corp. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kashish King who wrote (8408)	1/4/2000 8:30:00 PM
From: Nawien Sharma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9798

Rod, There are many problems with Corel; its had a bad run over the years with lots of missed opportunities. Management and its infrastructure is largely to blame. Unfortunately, Copeland the main culprit, won't let go. Although he started Mitel and is scholarly, he knows nothing about running a company. Terrence Matthews used to be the but of all jokes in those days at Mitel but I believe Newbridge is in better shape today than Corel (even though they are look for suitors). Copeland is no Gates, Jobs, Steve Case, or Richard Branson, actually, he's belongs in the same league as Phillip Khan. He will quickly align himself publicly with the enemies of his enemies without thinking of the ramifications. He jumped onto the Java development bandwagon without taking a serious look. He hates Microsoft big time. The final straw when he seemed to have lost it was when Microsoft chose to use Micrographix drawing software over his own. Corel has not been able to capitalize on developing new and exciting products, let alone buy other companies that add strategic value. Beyond Copeland's short comings, a lot of bad development has gone on. Corel doesn't seem to learn from their failures. After the following two failures, my patience wore out with this company. 1) Attempting to rewrite their office product in Java without fully investigating the suitability of Java. 2) Attempting to develop a PDA that could have been where the Palm Pilot is today. I would love to know how Corel expects to grow its revenue base. IMHO, large multi-billion dollar businesses are where the money is at. Microsoft dominates there and thus at the homes of those who work there. If Linux is to penetrate that market, how will that segment be supported ? Microsoft has a Solution Provider program and ultimately has control of the source code. How will Corel capitalize and structure custom development work with big outfits such as defence and government work ? How will changes be co-ordinated with Redhat and other independent developers ? Aside from Linux, what other growth opportunities exist for Corel ? Also IMHO, until purchased games are made to run on Linux instead of Windows, Linux will not move into the mainstream. I have been using Linux, freebd, bsd386, bsdi and other OS's but I still need a Windows box to run games for my kids and do work that uses formats that other co-workers can use. NS

To: Kashish King who wrote (8408)	1/4/2000 10:03:00 PM
From: Scott Volmar	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 9798

Rod, I'll bite. I was once accused on this thread for analyzing "yesterday's news." But lately, you've made me look like an amateur. Three months ago, if Corl was at $15 or $16, we would have been singing praises to Dr. Cowpland. But somehow because Corl hit $44 and receded, we seem to be crying over the problems of the past. Can we fault Dr. C for trading the outcome of Office for Java, jBridge, to GraphOn in exchange for 25% equity in the company. Even after today's misery, Corel's stake in GOJO is worth some $42 million. I would say Dr. Cowpland has made some pretty good lemonade out of the sour Java lemon. As to Corel Computer, the value of the Rebel.com investment will not be known until the IPO, but its another move to recover and profit from the effort. Further, if Corel had not gone into the thin client area, they might not have capitalized on the Linux opportunity when they did. I'm sure the best of Linux is still down the road. You did actually mis-state some facts about Corel Linux that should be corrected. First, Corel did not a include a "light" version of Corel Office, it didn't include any Office at all. Corel included a light version of WP 8 for Linux with the shrink wrapped standard version of Corel Linux. The deluxe version contains WP 8 for Linux complete with 250 fonts. Quite frankly, the deluxe version of Linux has many desirable extras. Further, Corel has vastly improved the KDE GUI and provided it with a far more "windows like" look and feel. As to Debian, it is the most reliable and stable flavor of Linux, which was carefully chosen for those essential characteritics. As to the installation of Linux, Corel has advanced the state of the art far beyond any other distributor, not to mention Windows. I'll argue with you on the merits of Star Office. It's a product far closer to Microsoft Works than a full featured office suite. Corel's office for Linux will be the first industrial strength office suite available for Linux. From the demo at Comdex, it looks mighty nice. It'll be out shortly and when it is, it will add to the desirability of deploying Linux on the desktop as well as at the server level. The desktop market is exponential compared to the server market. Even as we argue, Corel engineers are busy working on their next iteration of Corel Linux. It will include the coming Kernel 2.4 complete with USB support, more drivers, and improvement in the interface. Have you considered that a new version of the Suite is being created? Maybe it'll one-up MSFT. Cheer Up, Scott