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

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (46677)	6/14/2000 4:39:00 PM
From: Andy Thomas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

-The consumer experience using these products includes putting up with bugs that cause system crashes, sometimes requiring daily rebooting and re-entering lost data. - translation: 'we at sunw are jealous because we never made that kind of money and furthermore we can't figure it out but people prefer pcs running windows to our $10,000 machines or vaporware thin clients' andy

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (46677)	6/14/2000 5:05:00 PM
From: Michael Do	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

>Message #46677 from cheryl williamson at Jun 14, 2000 4:10 PM ET There are innumerable, documented cases of failures in Windows 9x. The consumer experience using these products includes putting up with bugs that cause system crashes, sometimes requiring daily rebooting and re-entering lost data. If you dispute that that is the case, you are not living in the real world. It's common knowledge that for lots of reasons Windows blows up on a regular basis. Let's say this is 1985 and you live in East Germany. You buy a Yugo and the alternator fails once every 2-3 months and it needs replacing. Since this is East Germany, you have no choice but to buy a defective product. If cars couldn't be made with reliable alternators that would be one thing, but the fact is it's done all the time in the West. It's just that you can't buy one of those cars, so you put up with your piece of sh** Yugo. If no one knew how to write a reliable O/S, you could make the argument that the consumer wasn't really harmed, it's just that the technology isn't there yet. However, that is NOT the case. Reliable O/S's exist all over the place, and many of them are free of charge. You have to say that the consumer was harmed because they had to use MS-DOS to get appls (usually from M$FT) to run on the PC. You could argue that people don't have to buy PC's (or any other kind of computing equipment), which is true. In that case they aren't harmed at all by M$FT's actions. However, if they DO buy a desktop computer, you could say that the consumer deserves the best O/S for the cheapest price. However, M$FT has seen fit, up until the DOJ lawsuit, to make sure that that "best O/S" isn't available from the major resales channels. True, you could build your own PC or buy a Dell and clobber MS-DOS, but that's like saying that you could re-design the Yugo's electrical system to insure the alternator didn't fail. That notion is not protection for the consumer. A consumer should be able to buy a reliable desktop off-the-shelf for a fair price. Since that is not the case with IBM-spec PC's, the consumer has been harmed. Back to the auto-analogy: It's easy to say that all manufactured autos have "bugs", but some have more "bugs" than others. Furthermore, the ones that perform poorly on crash tests (like the one Ford made in the 70's) are yanked. The very fact that Windows has NO security, and that M$FT knew there was no security, and they advertised the use of Windows as internet-friendly, should make them a prime candidate for a product-liability lawsuit. 45,000 viruses infecting Windows over the last 12 years is a pretty good indicator of poor product quality, wouldn't you say David??? < Good analogy: FORD Taurus is not as good as BMW 850 it costs $25000 instead of $85000. Lot of people buys Ford Taurus because it does what they need at a reasonable price and not a Trial Lawyer who got pay $700 per hour by the tax payer who can afford the BMW at $85000 with just marginal better (remember they all can go from point A to point B maybe just a few second differences). SUNW, ORCL, AOL can keep their thinclient to themselves and leave my PC alone. The last time I check the word P in the PC stand for Personal, I would not trust Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy or Steve Case to change oil in my car let alone my data at their site. No thank you for protecting me from Microsoft. Who will protecting me from all Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy or Steve Case and the DOJ? Mike

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (46677)	6/14/2000 9:06:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Cheryl - your argument is logical but misses the point. Consumers have rejected reliable operating systems, which were available for Intel desktops before Windows, in favor of the combination of features, bugs and re-boots they get with Windows. The market has determined that the inconvenience is worth suffering in comparison to the benefits. Users may curse the system when it crashes but they vote with their dollars. The argument that the DOS monopoly somehow gave MSFT the ability to sell Yugos is also flawed. Windows was sold as a separate product for more than 10 years. Lots of other people also made layered windowing products. But the market chose Windows. While we are on the car analogy, it is perfectly possible to build a car with much better reliability, features and longevity than even the excellent offerings from Japan and Germany. But almost no one will pay for them. In fact, in percentage terms, almost no one will pay even for the current high end cars. Look at what sells the most - it is cheap, reliable transportation with "OK" features. Why? It is easy and cheap to service, buy tires for, lasts long enough. Sure, most people would rather drive a Mercedes than a Neon. But not enough to pay for it...