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

To: William C. Spaulding who wrote (40541)	4/3/2000 5:07:00 AM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Every computer I've bought had only one line item with a price on it; the rest of the lines list the components that come with your package, to show you what you bought. You bought a system "package", get it? Just because your "101-Key Keyboard" doesn't have a price next to it on your invoice, doesn't mean that Gateway got it for free, and therefore is passing on the freebie to you. As for MS-Office, I read once that the OEMs pay MS about $65 per copy shipped. Retail price is significantly more than that, as you may know. The reason the OEM gets it cheaper than you is because they are buying in volume. Now let me ask you, do you think that $65 is below the cost to produce the CD? Do you believe that Microsoft "dumped" their software at below cost at some point, to gain market share? If so, please provide dates, prices, and customers. If you can't do that, then you are making gross assumptions. Re "If it's because it has patents, as in Qualcomm's case, or efficiency, or superiority of product, then there's nothing wrong with that." Let me see if I've got this straight: In your mind, if a company has "patents" then it's free to use the free market to set its pricing. If it only has a lowly "copyright" (yes, Win95/98/NT/2000 etc are copyrighted products, which you pay a license fee to use), then it may not profit unduly, and must use some other form of pricing mechanism, one which doesn't allow much if any profit.

To: William C. Spaulding who wrote (40541)	4/3/2000 11:02:00 AM
From: brightness00	Respond to of 74651

Actually MSFT did have a good product at a good over-all price, a whole bunch of them. Lotus (now part of IBM) and Borland (now Inprise)lost their market shares because they were reluctant to jump on board when Windows was clearly sweeping the desktop in the early-to-mid 90's. Let's not forget that Lotus used to own the spreadsheet business, and Borland the development tool business. Even in the case of user-friendly GUI operating system, MSFT was a relative new-comer when compared to AAPL. MSFT ate all their lunches because it could consistently deliver quality/cost ratio.