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Technology Stocks : BORL: Time to BUY! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam Scrutchins who wrote (7755)	11/27/1997 4:42:00 PM
From: David Miller	Respond to of 10836

a White Paper on the buyout Sad, but it seems that the meaning of "White Paper" has rapidly moved from "sober, thoughtful and in-depth analysis of technology issues on a specific topic" to "bland and patronising marketing hype". Can anyone point to any part of this document that allows it to be classified in any other way than a marketing press release? david

To: Sam Scrutchins who wrote (7755)	11/27/1997 5:39:00 PM
From: David Miller	Respond to of 10836

a White Paper on the buyout - revisited. I had a look through a couple of last year's Entera White Papers, to look for clues on the product's positioning within Borland, and found a couple of interesting tidbits. According to a little note at the end of one of them, it was last updated on 8th November 1997 - even though the author of the paper left Open Environment prior to the Borland acquisition. Despite this "update", some of its information is now (naturally) out of date, and therefore misleading. What are the ethics here? If Borland did update the paper, surely they had an obligation to update all of its information, not just selected pieces. I wonder how the author feels? david

To: Sam Scrutchins who wrote (7755)	11/27/1997 11:51:00 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10836

Does it mean that JAVA is in fact a direct threat to Microsoft? Certainly, Java is the most serious threat Microsoft has seen to date. And, while there are things that can happen that will derail Java (like the introduction of something bigger and better), it certainly will play a significant role in IT for the next few years. As to whether Rod is right--well, I don't think anyone here has argued with Rod that Java isn't likely to have a significant role. The principal argument with Rod has had to do with whether Java is the solution to all problems, which it isn't, and when this is likely to occur, which is still up in the air (no significant product to date is Java-based--those who have tried have failed). At any rate, over the coming couple of years, Java will become a significant and workable language -- but not without a lot of revision along the way. If so, then what is Microsoft likely to do to counter this, and how will that ultimately affect Borland? Microsoft screwed up a year or more ago, in its belief that it could not be defeated. It made the same basic mistake Kodak (and many other companies with near monopolies have) made over the years. This is good news for Borland because Borland continues to put forth better products than Microsoft, and Borland is now competing with MSFT on turf where quality matters. When you're dealing with the average consumer/end user, you can sell crap and get away with it (just ask McDonald's) -- which MSFT has done for years (look at Access as a perfect example). But when your end users are pros, it is tougher to get by with selling crap. Today, pros are starting to move to Borland for its superiority--and MSFT is devoid of products that can compete in a serious way with the likes of Delphi, J Builder, & C++ Builder; now with all this new stuff, I believe MSFT is totally losing control of the languages business. This, I might add, is what put them on the map in the first place, long before MS-DOS made its debut. Seems to me that this a pretty important issue to the long-term viability of Borland. I believe Borland is going to end up with the tools market. But MSFT will continue to make its billions in applications.

To: Sam Scrutchins who wrote (7755)	11/28/1997 2:09:00 AM
From: Kashish King	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 10836

For those not aware of this, there's a little known company by the name of IBM which is going after Microsoft with both guns blazing at the same time its sales of Microsoft-compatible hardware and software are booming. The notebooks, semiconductors, hard-disks and other top-notch hardware offerings are doing rather well, too. The combination of Java and IBM simply boggles the mind. www4.zdnet.com Is it possible that Lotus and IBM have come up with an office-pack capable of producing the same quality workproduct just as effectively and efficiently as a person using Microsoft Office but with a smaller, leaner code base? When the product is officially released, the official coffee coaster of Corporate America will be Microsoft Office CDs. They also have a full-blown developers pack to write object-oriented extensions in Java instead of this COM nonsense. The package is premised on a version of the old 80/20 rule: 80 percent of the use goes to only 20 percent of the software's functions. WorkPlace permits business customers to bulk up applications for power users and enables centralized upgrades for large numbers of users. It also promises an easy-to-use interface, intruding on traditional operating system turf. Lotus' suggested price is $49 per user, which Merrill Lynch characterized as very aggressive pricing against traditional office suites costing hundreds of dollars. Skeptics and Microsoft counter that the eSuite concept is fundamentally flawed, that customers and users have never responded favorably to truncated software products, and there's no reason to think they will reverse their field now.