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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (108582)	4/30/2000 4:23:00 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571871

Bill, <We have seen computer prices fall but not the OS and Apps....they have risen in just the monopolistic way you deny.> If that's the case, how come the price of software in general hasn't fallen like computer prices? Games still cost between $40 and $60. Applications and utilities (e.g. virus scanners, tax and finance programs, music and audio tools) range anywhere from $30 to $200, depending on a lot of factors. The same was true seven years ago as it is today. And certainly Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on those market segments of software. Don't get me wrong, I do think Microsoft should be dinged for blatantly crossing over the line. But I don't think MS is to blame for software prices not falling in tandem with hardware prices. Instead, blame hardware for advancing much, much faster than software. For instance, we can get GHz computers today which are three times the speed of computers just two years ago. Yet can anyone say that their software has three times the reliability or useability of software back then? Of course not. (Maybe three times the bloat.) Tenchusatsu P.S. - I do think breaking Microsoft up into two companies is too extreme a punishment, although it does sound like an interesting thing for Microsoft to do voluntarily (i.e. on Microsoft's terms, not on the government's).

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (108582)	4/30/2000 12:12:00 PM
From: Paul Ma	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571871

If Redhat and all those linux selling companies actually made applications instead of just slapping a cover on linux and calling it their own, then maybe linux would be a worthy contender. Paul, World Controller

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (108582)	4/30/2000 12:35:00 PM
From: Steve Porter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571871

Bill, You talk about eh cost of the OS creeping up, but have you ever noticed how the base os has more functionality, and you didn't forget about inflation? You can't compare what you paid in 1984 for DOS to what you pay now for Windows 2000. You want to talk about getting raped, go look at the licensing costs of HPUX or Solaris (upto last year)... they were 1000's of $ per license. Microsoft isn't hurting the consumer at all. Steve

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (108582)	4/30/2000 10:41:00 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571871

Bill, Let's stick with the subject. Mani's claim was that consumers were hurt in the browser wars. I disagreed with that. In fact, the consumers benefited. The commercial users got the browser for free as well from both companies, as a result of the browser wars. We can all speculate about the long run. I claim that if Netscape succeeded in cornering the market, we would all be paying money for the browser. If Microsoft did not provide free Winsock DLL, and dialer, we would be paying for those as well. That's how it was before Microsoft got involved. Did you ever notice how the cost of the OS has crept up over time? I think the prices are competitive, given added functionality. And the prices were competitive with OS/2 for example, when it still was a contender. Nothing is stopping you from sticking to your old DOS or Linux. There was an article in Register about a user who successfully claimed refund for the cost of OS pre-loaded on his computer. The same goes for the application suite(office). If you are the last person on this earth without a copy of MSFT Office, you can still buy it for $499: necxdirect.necx.com Otherwise, you can get it for $299: necxdirect.necx.com I don't know if you remember the Pre-Office days, when Word Perfect, Lotus and dBase each cost $500 to $750. I don't know what the competing product to PowerPoint was, but I guess it was not any cheaper. Linux, Be, etc are not ready to compete in the goon market ... I personally don't feel good about the environment MSFT created. I would feel much better if they acted and competed honorably. Having said that, I think that you don't understand the basic philosophy of how Microsoft operates. When Microsoft enters a market, they charge (and maintain) a price that is too low for any new competition to enter this segment of the market. If there is an incumbent in this market, they beat this competitor with combination of low prices and increasingly higher quality of the software, with which the competitor eventually can't keep up. So from the point of view of competition, it is a goon-like environment. These companies make a mistake of trying to milk the consumer with high prices. They don't understand that the high prices invite competition, and maybe even competition from Microsoft, which is usually fatal. But from the consumer point of view, all you see is low price of the products. To you these prices may still be high. But you may not be aware of costs of developing software. As far as I know, nobody came up with a way to develop software cheaply. Then there is support. Even if your software includes only 1 free problem incident, or 30 day free support, a single phone call from a customer will usually wipe out all the profit you made selling the peace of software to the customer, and more. Joe