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

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (60529)	8/10/2001 7:22:13 PM
From: Dave	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

Windows XP is first and foremost the first truly new and important consumer product from Microsoft since Windows 95. Miss this point and you miss everything. That's why the PC industry as a whole is pinning its hopes on XP as a catalyst. While I certainly agree that Microsoft hasn't had anything compelling to offer consumers in the past six years, why exactly does the PC industry pin its hopes on XP as a catalyst? A catalyst for what? Sure, XP's hardware requirements may help memory and disk sales, and assemblers of PC boxes (not exactly glimmering pillars of innovation), but how will it help, say, software companies? What kind of catalyst will XP be for Adobe, or Macromedia, or Corel, or Alias\|Wavefront, or Avid? How about consumers: Why would a consumer "upgrade" to XP? Because he is tired of seeing his software work after six years of futzing with incompatible upgrades and Registry Wars, and is hankering for some new systems integration challenges? Because he never really liked his scanner, pen tablet, or video capture devices anyway, and wants to have to replace them? Because he's sick and tired of not paying enough for Windows? This all sounds more like a catalyst for the already beleaguered software industry to go into a vicious tailspin. Dave

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (60529)	8/11/2001 3:19:54 AM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 74651

Most people think that "as long as my Windows can read the Word files I receive...". How do you sell a new version of an operating system, that customers don't know what is? It's like selling bit-slice processors to monkeys. They should rename Windows XP to "Internet Explorer 6" - that would probably make it sell much better as upgrades!!! ;-) I'm pretty sure that at least 20% of all Windows users know what Internet Explorer is. Consumers don't care about the OS. Most OS's are sold as OEM, and consumers buy a new PC to get a new PC, not to get a new OS. Windows XP might be a catalyst the same way as a butterfly can initiate a tropical storm, according to chaos theory. But it's impact will be smaller than Windows 2000's impact, simply because OS's mean less to consumers each year, and because corporations won't switch just because of this minor update to Windows 2000, that probably has bugs in it, too. Lars.