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

To: david_si who wrote (46647)	6/14/2000 2:33:00 PM
From: cheryl williamson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74651

david_si These arguments are pure b.s. First, M$FT has always had a monopoly in PC O/S's. Once they signed on w/IBM back in the early 80's everyone who licensed an INTC-based desktop platform automatically licensed "PC-DOS", which belonged of course to M$FT. It was an exclusive deal. Everyone knows that. No one prevented AAPL from marketing their O/S & hardware. Everyone knows that too. That's not the point. M$FT was smart enough to realize that their O/S & appls were inextricably bound and that the success of their company closely paralleled the success of marketing BOTH O/S & appls together. One sells the other. So, M$FT made sure no one else's appls worked on their O/S as well as their appls did. Customers didn't go to the store just begging to get MS-DOS. They wanted the appls so they HAD to get MS-DOS. No one said, "You are not allowed to publish an O/S for the PC becuase M$FT is the BMOC and what they say goes." Later on, M$FT's exclusionary tactics moved from the engineering dept. to their legal dept. Pricing has little to do with this case except that with competition in the PC software market, M$FT's prices would have decreased. The real consumer harm has come in the form of product quality (lack of), and false or misleading statements from M$FT about what their products would do.

To: david_si who wrote (46647)	6/14/2000 2:57:00 PM
From: Andy Thomas	Respond to of 74651

david let's face it... most of msft's competitors were too lazy to write their own oses. certainly no one wrote one which appealed to the market's 'sweet spot' which win9x capitalized upon. apple could've would've should've but didn't stick the stake in msft's heart in 1990. that's their phreakin' fault. you know the vaporware thin clients were interesting in that, all of the touters of such devices were going on and on about 'central storage' but you can bet your bottom dollar that if you were to speak with any of them privately, they would all have local storage of their own. central storage is good for the 'ignorant masses' but not for anyone who really knows up from down. the more things change, the more they stay the same. anyhoo, what kept major venture capital from pushing BeOS or something like that? simply a lack of imagination, a lack of the willingness to compete, or a lack of something else. netscape's whining corporate report(s) were quite laughable until you realize that some people actually believed that tripe... getting back to thin clients, yes i know there are actually some out there, but completely removing a user's option for local storage smacks of stalin and not 'open source' to me. there is probably a compromise somewhere between thin clients and pcs which are sort of like, well, 'thick clients.' i know that i will always prefer having the option of local storage but throwing a local-storage-less device or two into the mix could be advantageous at some point... i personally haven't reached that point. andy