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Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (160)	4/12/1998 6:04:00 PM
From: Shane M	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

Wayne, I'm an insurance analyst and was wanting to echo a statement you were making about productivity. The "upgrade" to Windows NT at my company (Allstate) may have provided centralization for the IT department, but at a tremendous cost in productivity for the rest of us. We are literally crawling now. I'm not exagerrating when I say I spend approximately an 45 minutes each day waiting on my machine to respond. And we don't have slow machines (P-133 w/ 32 meg RAM). I think one of the major problems that NT is bringing to the fore is one of responsiveness by the Tech departments. NT allows people hundreds of miles away to set-up and manage our LAN. They rarely, if ever, come to the field to see how slow our machines are running with the current setups. In my view NT is more for the IT departments convenience than for end-user productivity. Shane

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (160)	4/17/1998 4:57:00 PM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

<< I have a much more favorable opinion of the internet!!! >> Not the pipelines I take it. These will be the railroads all over again. Once the "tracks" are laid, competition, especially in a recession, will push revenues below the cost of replacing used up infrastructure. Especially since any "Mom and Pop" can lease tracks. But, the railroads were a boon for manufacturers and retailers, who were able to "go national" via the superhighway of its era. Now, the Internet makes it possible for someone sitting in their home or office to "go global". I just visited your site, at: members.aol.com There were 8042 hits (before I arrived). And they are, no doubt, from all over the world. What would have been the cost of reaching that many people 10 years ago? How many workers would have been required? GADR--The Newsletter goes to about 1000 people all over the world. The last edition, which was average, was 8 print pages, single spaced with 3/4" margins. Assuming it was offset printed, on both sides of the sheet, we're still talking 8 500-sheet reams of paper, 1000 preprinted envelopes, 1000 mailing labels, postage for 1000, much of it international, etc. In other words, I could not have done it alone, and it could not be free. No one is measuring this productivity gain -- yet it's happening anyway. I also get free real time quotes (that my broker's firm pays a fortune for). Multiply these savings by a million serious Internet users. The productivity gain is massive -- but it's barely accounted for in the government stats. (Btw, doesn't Wintel get at least a little of the credit for this?)