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To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (17774)	3/4/1998 11:56:00 AM
From: Thure Meyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Let me address the last point first. 1. The Unix workstation market as well as servers and other distributed components has a number of viable competitors who all adhere to POSIX and other standards (HP, IBM, SUN to name a few). 2. Applications can be ported between the hardware platforms with relative ease precisely because the workstation vendors build hardware as well. There is no real comparison between SUN and Microsoft until MS decides to develop its own hardware. Also, SUN has a strong but not necessarily dominant market position. 3. The contention that Windows got to the market first and that is what the common user wanted is wrong. If the "common" user wanted Windows he would have bought a Macintosh long before. 4. Microsoft exploited the emergent clone PC market and IBM shot themselves in the foot with MicroChannel and other proprietary marketing nonsense. By the time Windows 3.0 received mass distribution (say 1990) MS had already achieved a dominant position with DOS. This allowed them to leverage Windows quickly. Its not what the market demanded, however it was accepted. But all of that misses the point. In 1998 Microsoft constitutes a monopoly no matter how they got there, and they exploit that position shamelessly. Thure

To: Reginald Middleton who wrote (17774)	3/5/1998 2:13:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

I hear this every time I reply to someone who says there is no competition. Either there is competition or there isn't. What I think most mean is that there are no other competitive OSs. That is a function of MGMT's execution and not Anti-trust laws. Wrong. Yes, there is competition, with OSes that can meet or beat MSFT, but the problem is none of them can even hope of having the marketshare that MSFT does, regardless of how smart or hardworking the people work. We've already discussed the various reasons why. Another example is the corporate workstation market. McNealy complains about MSFT's dominance, but he is the dominant player in this market. He is simply refusing to cave in to market demand and provide them what they want - lower prices and mroe productivity apps. Wrong. Have you seen the new Darwin line of computers? Also, workstation users can get productivity apps for workstations. For example, they can get WordPerfect.