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To: GST who wrote (102067)	4/24/2000 9:42:00 PM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 164684

But I have never considered MSFT to be a creator of high quality products Have you ever used any of the following Microsoft products - and if so, could you list a product in the same category that is offered by a competitor that you feel is superior (I'm only naming a handful here): Excel Access Word Project Office FrontPage Visual Basic Visual C++ Visual Interdev What qualifications do you possess that support your position as a critical and knowledgeable reviewer of software products? there are many users of MSFT products who believe they "put up with" MSFT because of its dominance And what evidence do you have of this? Is this not just pure conjecture on your part? I have met thousands of customers over the past 8 years that are very happy with Microsoft products. Do you not believe in market forces? What do you think drove millions of Lotus 1-2-3 users to drop Lotus and start using Excel? Did they do it because they were forced to? No, they did it because Excel is a superior product. And it was the superiority of Word that drove millions of WordPerfect users to drop WordPerfect and switch to Word. I don't think anyone - not Lotus (IBM), not WordPerfect (Corel), not the DOJ - would dispute this. MSFT has used its installed base as a lever -- not its innovative capability, product quality and pricing. Again, this is pure conjecture - not to mention, exaggeration - on your part. When I started in the Excel group at Microsoft, Excel had 10% of the spreadsheet market share. When I left Microsoft Excel had 90+% of the spreadsheet market share. We captured that market not through predatory pricing, not through bundling Excel with the operating system - but by developing and selling a superior, and innovative product. You ask anyone who has ever crunched a number and there is no better spreadsheet than Excel. When you state that customers don't like Microsoft - show me some data. I have no idea what you do for a living or what your professional qualifications are. Perhaps you are a technical genius - or maybe you're a DOJ employee. But when you say Microsoft products aren't innovative - I assume you have some basis of knowledge and experience from which to make such a claim. Do you? I guess I would like to know before I start compiling a very long list of innovations that have been released in Microsoft products. Thanks, -Eric