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

To: Michael L. Voorhees who wrote (46185)	6/7/2000 10:17:00 PM
From: keithsha	Respond to of 74651

Would you like to define the horrendous, awful nature of the O/S? Be glad to discuss technical issues but the point seems to be that nearly all software developers, business and consumer users have wholeheartedly endorsed Windows as the best price performance value in the marketplace. There is a reason for that... They like, it cuts costs, and makes more money than competing systems keithsha

To: Michael L. Voorhees who wrote (46185)	6/7/2000 11:42:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Michael - I was an early Unix user and confirmed Unix bigot long before there was a Windows product. Also, because I happened to be the boss, I could insist that all of my staff use Unix also. But by the mid-80s, almost all of the office staff and many of the programmers were using PCs. None of the non-technical staff ever got comfortable with Unix - if they had to go outside of a carefully pre-defined menu, they were dead. When Windows 3.0 came out, Unix desktops pretty much disappeared except for the senior development staff. Sure the Windows desktops were buggy, sometimes locked up, did strange things - no one cared. They wanted the features, they wanted to control their experience, and the occasional irritation of a re-boot was no big deal. And the same thing happened with our customers. While we continued to use Unix systems on the back end, the desktops went to Windows. And it had nothing to do with people not seeing a better OS - they were switching from Unix. "Better" has a lot to do with the needs of the customers. I saw it happen, and I eventually came to accept that Windows was actually better and easier to use than the alternatives for what the majority of people wanted to do. Cheaper too. It was customer demand which drove that phenomenon. I still think Unix is a way better OS in terms of reliability and robustness (as I type this on an Ultra running Solaris). But those don't happen to be very important to most desktop users. Unix was around before Windows. It's still too hard for most users, and too expensive, in comparison to Windows.