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

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (40169)	3/30/2000 4:59:00 AM
From: SunSpot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

I am saying, that companies need to buy MS Office or a very high degree on PC expertise. This also accounts for the local electrician, the local baker etc. Of course, most out-source that job to the accountant, who then buys the MS products. StarOffice and Corel Office doesn't always read those documents correctly. There are several examples. Another one is the new central system, where debts to public institutions i deduced from employee's pay before they get their monthly pay check. This system is 100% electronically, and based on a Windows program. So if you have employees that don't pay their bills to the public, you are suddenly enforced to use a Windows program. Macintosh and Linux is not a choice. Buy Windows or out-source that part of your business, thats the message. Microsoft is not guilty of forcing companies to use MS Office or any other MS products. But the interesting thing is, that the discussion is about "how do we avoid using Microsoft?" and "You may not base anything on Microsoft technologies". It's well under way now, with legislation about using Linux, introduction of StarOffice in some public institutions etc. The key in this is: 1) The "Microsoft" name looses its trademark value. 2) The growth in the market will be difficult to achieve, if people switch from MS products to other products. 3) Standards like MSIE-HTML, Windows 2000 ADS, COM, ActiveX etc. are mostly rejected in favor of technologies that is not controlled by third parties. This makes Microsofts abilities to keep that market share more difficult. For some fairness, maybe I should mention, that our exporting high-tech computer industries are much dominated by Intel, Nokia, Ericsson and IBM daughter companies, which are all pro-Linux and historically always view a standards as something with at least two reference implementations. Most technical universities only teach software based on Linux (and Unix). We have virtually no Microsoft based export industry, but a huge import of MS software. MSIE has a much bigger market share here than in the US. What Microsoft needs to do, is: 1) Defend itself in the public media. Do something about the badwill. 2) Make Microsoft one of the companies that represents the new wave of open standards with at least two reference implementations, which slowly migrates from the telecom world into the computer world. 3) Deliver quality products, compatible and well thought through. Reading about Office 2000 SR 1 on ZD Net is a key example of something that (again) shouldn't have happened. I think a company split would be the perfect way to do this the fastest way, and I don't believe that this will be at the cost of investors in the long run. If Microsoft makes a split, where Windows, Internet software and Office are no longer in the same company, I would buy MSFT stocks again. Just imagine, how a company with this impact on internet software on all computer platforms could have on the internet?