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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale J. who wrote (31338)	4/26/2000 5:43:00 PM
From: FiloF	Respond to of 64865

<<SUNW is building Staroffice and over 1 million have downloaded it for free>> That's exactly the point, isn't it? People are "downloading" it -- an affirmative action. I bought a Dell computer and I received Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, etc. etc. I had no choice!!!

To: Dale J. who wrote (31338)	4/26/2000 9:09:00 PM
From: Charles Tutt	Respond to of 64865

You blame the DOJ, the judge, and politics. I guess the only blameless participant is Microsoft. <g>

To: Dale J. who wrote (31338)	4/27/2000 12:22:00 AM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Dale, you are of course as right as you always are. My beef with the DOJ goes back to the days of that great successful Italian-American entrepreneur Al Capone. A successful business man who was the envy of every Italian <g>. There aren't enough movies and TV dramas to depict the greatness of his spirit. I'm sure Bill was inspired by "The Godfather". The DOJ was so unfair to this great Italian-American immigrant. He never would have been treated that way in Italy where they respect and honor such great men. <ggg> Thanks for your wisdom and support, Michael

To: Dale J. who wrote (31338)	4/27/2000 3:42:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Dale J. You are overlooking some important point wrt M$FT & their dominance of the desktop business. First there is the historic monopoly that M$FT has had in PC operating systems. There really has never been a PC O/S "market" because it has always been owned by M$FT. That was BY AGREEMENT with IBM. At first, this "monopoly" didn't amount to much, because PC's were just sophisticated toys. That changed with IBM's influence in the corporate market. The OS/2 issue is a non-issue because it started out as a joint IBM-MSFT venture. M$FT dumped it, if you remember, because it was a dog. I beta-tested an early version of OS/2 and even I could have told Gates to dump it, because it was a dog. The point is this: even OS/2 wasn't a competitor to MS-DOS or Windows. Had it not been a dog, M$FT would have owned it too. You could have produced your own O/S for the PC and try to sell it. But no one would have bought it. Why? Because it wasn't "MS-DOS compatible". That's right Dale, none of the apps, including M$FT apps, would run on it, so you are dead meat. What you could have done was to make your own computer with your own O/S & apps and tried to sell it. Lots of companies did just that. Let's see there was Altair, Northstar, Osborne (remember Adam Osborne?), and of course, Apple. Why did desktop personal computer companies have such a hard time against the IBM-PC???? Take a wild guess, Dale. What I think is that Gates put himself in a really cushy position with IBM and just played it cool throughout the 80's & 90's. He had a proprietary O/S on a piece of non-proprietary hardware and, as a result a virtual head-lock on the desktop applications market. All he had to do was to make sure that M$FT applications ran better on the PC than did anyone elses apps. That's not too hard to do, with a little ingenuity from your "software engineers". That meant that M$FT didn't need to have the best apps for the PC. They just had to be good enough. They would still sell because M$FT would make sure that the competition didn't run as well or at all on the PC. So: Did M$FT steal IP from the competiton & from partners? Yes Did M$FT try to lock out 3rd party apps from the PC Yes Did M$FT participate in predatory pricing schemes Yes How about restraint of trade? Yes That all being true, the court finally had to ask itself so why is that bad for the consumer??? In my mind the point at which M$FT realized that their apps only had to be "good enough" to sell is the point that they violated anti-trust laws and ultimately brought harm to the consumer. This is the point at which everyone realizes that there really isn't any competition in the desktop market, and that consumers aren't getting the best product for their money. The consumer HAS been harmed by the M$FT monopoly Dale. Just walk down the street and start asking anyone you see about their PC and what kind of problems they have with it. You'll notice a pattern beginning to emerge: people seem to be generally ok with the hardware, but the SOFTWARE seems to be more than a little unreliable. Could they buy some other desktop instead??? Sure, if they want to pay more for it. You see Dale, non-proprietary hardware is much less expensive than proprietary hardware because there is competition for increasingly better components at a lower cost. Could they keep the hardware, that is so well built for the price they are paying, and get another O/S??? Up until the DOJ lawsuit 2 years ago, the answer was NO. In fact, the investigation and lawsuit is the ONLY reason that Linux has emerged today as a competitor. It's still going to take some time, but little-by-little the grip M$FT on the desktop market is going to be loosened and real competition will emerge to the benefit of the consuming public. M$FT will also be restrained from attempting to make the internet "windows-centric" by Sun's vision: "the network is the computer".