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

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:05:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

MSFT will muddle thru and ship Win98 to PC maker by 5/15. Time to jump in. Microsoft (MSFT) edged lower despite protest rally held to dissuade DOJ from delaying release of Windows 98... While we contend that DOJ's "case" against MSFT is thin and that they should leave the software giant alone, Gates's comments concerning importance of Windows 98 to America were more than a little exaggerated... Let's face it WIN 98 is a tune-up of WIN95, not a major transformation... Somehow we'll muddle through if DOJ achieves the unlikely and delays release of the updated operating system... That said, anxiety over DOJ actions has created good buying opportunity in MSFT. By Briefing.com. IMHO, the price has gone down a little bit as the volume has dried up. MSFT at 86 presents a great buying opportunity. Chances are Win98 won't be delayed for 5/15 shipment to PC maker, then it'd make little sense to block the same product to retail store by 6/25.Win CE is taking over the hand-held device, set-top box. NT 5.0 in 99, SQL server 7.0 in 8/98, Office 99, Back Office 99, Internet proxy server will add fuel to the fire. I believe, MSFT will muddle thru or outmaneuver DOJ, or make some minor concession, the price will then resume its advance. Time is now to join the chorus "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated".

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:19:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

Not content with dominating the market for desktop computer OS, MSFT is now involved in a struggle for what could be an even bigger business--the real-time system software required by handhelds, set-top devices, and car PCs. From IEEE Spectrum magazine Washington, D.C., is a shrine to history, so those who work there can easily forget that "what's past is prologue," as Shakespeare put it. Amid the tempest of official investigations, government officials concentrate on past practices, disregarding companies' attempts to gain a strong foothold in the future. Microsoft Corp., of course, is in the hot seat today. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Department of Justice are bearing down on whether the software giant's past business practices cornered the market in operating systems for desktop computers and, if so, whether the company used its monopoly to shoulder aside competitors of its World Wide Web browser, the Internet Explorer. The Redmond, Wash., company undeniably dominates the desktop-PC operating system market today, and rolling its browser technology in with its Windows 95 operating system has certainly undercut the vendors of stand-alone browsers. But in tomorrow's computer systems, access to information over the Internet will be basic to most if not all applications. Adding support for Web access into the operating system is logical when it is viewed as a basic input/output function, and the size of the operating system is not an issue. But the general-purpose operating system, although bound to assimilate the naturally related browser technology, is not itself assimilable into some up-and-coming consumer areas. The technology of desktop Windows is inadequate for such new devices as hand-held and palm computers, Web-telephones, Web-to-TV set-top boxes, and automobile PCs. Accordingly, Microsoft's latest target is the need of these novel consumer electronic items for a real-time operating system (RTOS)--its home-grown Windows CE. In these nascent markets, the company could easily be the proverbial 800-pound gorilla and threaten independent innovation the most. Certainly by designing Windows CE, Microsoft is daring a flock of mostly small and obscure RTOS vendors to do better. Equally, the flock is not without strong allies. Competition in a nutshell The demand for the novel consumer devices is expected to be strong; some say it could outdo the demand for desktop PCs. According to The Information Architects Inc., Los Altos, Calif., shipments of consumer products embedded with 32-bit processors will grow from 7.6 million units in 1995 to 36.6 million next year. The market research firm reports that this fivefold growth is aided by, among other things, the declining prices of high-performance 32-bit microprocessors, heavier Internet usage, and greater technology literacy on the part of consumers.

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:21:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

MSFT will dominate pocket computer OS, part II Microsoft is already swooping down upon the market for operating systems for a broad new class of devices, devices Microsoft has dubbed PC Companions. Numbered among them are units that Microsoft is eager to lay its software into. Examples are hand-held computing devices like Palm Pilot from 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, Calif. [Fig. 1]. In a December 1997 report on that market, the Palm Pilot was found to have dominated for the second year in a row, wrote the Dataquest division of Gartner Group, Stamford, Conn. It had a 66 percent share of the 1.3 million units shipped in the first half of the year. In fact, Mike McGuire, senior industry analyst for Dataquest's Mobile Computing program, observed that the Pilot "defined the size, weight, and functionality requirements for the successful handheld." But the report also noted that Windows CE was gaining momentum rapidly as it started to ramp up. The Palm Pilot uses 3Com's Palm OS, which the company will license to others for use in such items as smart phones, graphical pagers, and data collection terminals. But Windows CE runs on handhelds from Casio, Hewlett-Packard, NEC, Philips, Sharp, and others. Second place is not enough for Microsoft, which is issuing a direct challenge to 3Com's lead by promoting a design for handhelds at first called Palm PCs. [As this article was going to press, Microsoft agreed to refer to these devices in the future as Palm-sized PCs, so as to avoid legal action by 3Com.] The Palm PC has much the same form-factor as the Palm Pilot's, but is built around a Microsoft-defined set of hardware requirements for devices that run Windows CE 2.0, its latest version of the OS. Many new handhelds that directly challenge the Pilot are based on the Palm PC specification and will start going on sale this year. They include Freestyle from Everex Systems Inc., Fremont, Calif., the PD-300, from Palmax Technology Co., Hong Kong, and Nino, from Philips Electronics NV, Amsterdam, the Netherlands [Fig. 2]. The Palm class of devices diverges at several points from the HP Palmtop and others in the previous generation. Most striking is physical format. Till now, hand-held computers have reflected the design of the notebook computer: they have opened like clamshells to reveal a horizontal display on top and a miniature keyboard on the bottom. In contrast, the new devices owe more to Apple's Newton, relying primarily on a vertical display format. Nor do they have a typewriter-style (qwerty) keyboard built in (although they may support an external one), but employ some other input technique, such as the touch-sensitive screen created by T9 software [Fig. 3] from Tegic Communications Corp., Seattle, Wash., as the primary means of data capture.

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:22:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

MSFT will dominate Palm-sized OS, smart phone, AutoPC, part III Smart" phones are yet another new consumer market for system software. In Europe this quarter, Philips Consumer Communications--a joint venture of Philips Electronics NV and Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, N.J.--will market an attachment for its Ilium GSM phase II phones, called Synergy. (Global System for Mobile Communications, or GSM, is the European digital cellular phone standard.) The Netherlands company has based Synergy on the EPOC32 operating system from Psion Software PLC, London. Besides being a phone, Synergy can access e-mail and the Internet and can send and receive faxes and data. The pioneer in this field was Helsinki, Finland's Nokia Group. Since mid-1996, it has been selling a smart GSM phone in Europe based on the GEOS 3.0 real-time operating system from Geoworks Corp., Alameda, Calif. The latest implementation from Nokia is its 9110 Communicator [Fig. 4], a combined GSM telephone and personal digital assistant that will make some amazing capabilities available in the third quarter of 1998. For one thing, it comes with a Web browser that can download pages at "off" times, when the Internet is not so jammed up. For another, it connects to a digital camera to transmit pictures. It can also send faxes and e-mail, keep a calendar for its owner, and, of course, send and receive phone calls. The day of in-car computing is dawning, too. Microsoft has introduced the AutoPC, a Windows CE-based computer intended for use in automobiles. At the same time, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, Calif., has a program it calls Connected Car PC, promoting the use of its chips in systems for navigation, information retrieval, communication, and entertainment [Fig. 5]. Both after-market and new-car equipment suppliers--Clarion Corp. of America, Gardena, Calif., and Ford's Visteon Automotive Systems, Dearborn, Mich., respectively, for instance--are actively involved in developing appropriate designs. he auto market may develop at a slower pace than the others. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), of Warrendale, Pa., in cooperation with the Big Three U.S. auto makers and Federal regulators and independent researchers, has been studying the harmful effects of such automobile gadgetry, and is drafting voluntary guidelines for its manufacture and installation. After all, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C., recently issued a report on safety problems caused by cell phones distracting drivers. So the SAE effort may fend off Federal regulation as well as allow auto manufacturers to offer profitable new options in an era when making equipment like CD players standard in cars has been the rule.

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:23:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

MSFT will dominate set-top box OS, part IV Improved set-top boxes are another arena in which Microsoft wants success for its system software. Consumer equipment of this kind lets people browse the Web at home on their television sets. Last year, the software giant bought market leader WebTV Networks Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., and is now planning to put Windows CE in the next generation of set-tops. Further, it has licensed Windows CE to Tele-Communications Inc., the largest cable operator in the United States, for use in its set-top box. The Englewood, Colo., company is not committed to a CE set-top box alone. It has also licensed PersonalJava, from Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, Calif., for possible use in a set-top that would run small applications--so-called applets--written in Java. At last month's National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas, Nev., Sony Corp., Parkridge, N.J., and Microsoft announced plans to collaborate on future products involving Windows CE and Sony's Home Networking Module for consumer electronics. Collision course Windows CE, a totally new RTOS, sets Microsoft at odds with many vendors of real-time system software, most of whom are small and obscure. A Java machine to run on top of CE adds insult to injury; Microsoft is the first licensee of a new Java virtual machine, built from scratch by Hewlett-Packard Co., for both consumer applications and computer peripherals. RTOS vendors have found an ally in Sun Microsystems. Sun's support for operating systems from Acorn Computers, Geoworks, Lucent Technologies, Mentor Graphics' Microtec division, Microware Systems, QNX Software Systems, and Wind River Systems, among others, takes the form of PersonalJava for consumer devices. PersonalJava is an environment that tailors an RTOS to the types of tasks that consumer devices will perform using Java [Fig. 6]. Because it offers a standard, open environment, PersonalJava ensures that RTOS need not be a one-vendor market; many can coexist profitably. To repeat, Windows CE is an RTOS, like the products with which it competes and unlike Windows 95 and NT, which are general-purpose operating systems. In some respects, though, it resembles Windows NT. Like NT, CE is designed to run on other microprocessor architectures besides Intel's. It supports ARM and StrongARM chips from ARM and Digital Equipment; MIPS-based designs from NEC, Philips, and Toshiba; the PowerPC from Motorola, Hitachi's SH3, and others.

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:25:00 PM
From: Maverick	Respond to of 74651

MSFT dominate Palm PC, part V That the operating system for these new consumer devices be real-time is essential. Unix, Windows NT, and others like them are not designed to respond instantaneously to an event because time--on a computational scale--is not of the essence for the tasks they have had to perform. But the time it takes the computer to react to an event can play havoc with the tasks given to real-time operating systems. To amplify, if a user strikes a key on a computer running Windows 95, it does not matter whether the computer takes 5 or 500 microseconds to respond. As long as it responds within a reasonable time, it is doing its job. But in a control system with an RTOS, an incoming signal may require acknowledgment within 50 microseconds or else an essential process will shut down; it is important that the system respond within a fixed time. Such signaling is common in equipment ranging from telephones to factories, particularly in highly automated systems. In the types of consumer devices that are being developed, the operating system has to be able to handle several functions in such a way that the time it takes to accomplish them is not arbitrary, but predictable, which is to say, deterministic. Further, some of the tasks tackled by these devices will have a higher priority than others, and it may be necessary to preempt one task to perform another, while other tasks must never be interrupted. The juggling of several tasks simultaneously is done with multiple threads of computation, and these on occasion must be synchronized so that information is delivered when needed. On other occasions, task priorities may have to be assigned in such a way that an often executed but low-priority task does not interfere with a low-frequency but critical task--a phenomenon called priority inversion. The ability to satisfy these kinds of requirements is what makes an operating system real-time. The design of real-time system software is a new commercial venture for Microsoft, all the trickier because the size of the operating system is in some ways key to minimizing hardware and battery requirements. The latest Windows CE (version 2.0) requires about 2 megabytes of ROM for a full-fledged system with graphical interface, and devices built using it typically have 8 megabytes. The Palm OS occupies much less space--about 300 kilobytes--so the Palm Pilot has only a 1MB ROM. While operating systems do not drain batteries directly, their size seems to be a rough indicator of battery life. The smaller ones--like the Palm OS from 3Com and the proprietary OS used by Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, in its Avigo--come in handhelds with a battery life of one to three months, while the battery life of Windows CE devices is mere hours.

To: Bald Man from Mars who wrote (6560)	5/6/1998 2:26:00 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

MSFT will dominate Palm PC OS, part VI To offset the Palm Pilot's lack of keyboard, its operating system has a quasi-handwriting recognition system called Graffiti built into it. It does not recognize cursive script--only a special form of hand printing that the would-be user must first take half an hour or so to learn. If dissatisfied with Graffiti, the user can add the T9 software from Tegic Communications to obtain another form of keyboard-less data input. T9 displays a telephone-like keypad on the Pilot's touch-sensitive screen for alphanumeric input. When a key is touched, the software uses its linguistic database to decide what letter is being entered; in more detail, the database ascertains what the likeliest combination of letters is suggested by the input, and tells the unit how to interpret that input. Not only is T9 available for the Palm Pilot, but it comes with Texas Instruments' Avigo, which is based on a proprietary operating system. Naturally enough, the software is also finding its way into cellular smart phones, as well as set-top boxes, since it can work with a telephone keypad instead of a touch-sensitive display. Even though it is larger, Windows CE does not have handwriting recognition built in. Instead, it supports the keyboard for native data entry and Note Taker for recording bit maps of handwriting and free-form drawings. Nonetheless, software from other vendors provides CE with different ways to enter data. One package--Jot, from Computer Intelligence Corp., Redwood Shores, Calif.--lets CE machines recognize handwriting much as Graffiti does. Computer Intelligence also offers Quick Notes Pro, which lets the user capture handwriting and drawings as Note Taker does, but which compresses them and makes it easier to sort and organize notes. In creating new programs for CE, developers utilize a subset of the Win32 application programming interface, which is familiar to anyone who writes programs for Windows 95 or NT. Thus Microsoft is leveraging its existing developers to ensure there is a lot of software for its Windows CE. It claims that over 1000 developers enrolled in its Windows CE technical beta program. Development tools for Windows CE are also widely used; they include Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual J++. To induce system developers to devise the hardware needed to get things rolling, Microsoft has issued a suite of CE software. For the Palm PC, there is Pocket Outlook, a CE version of the Microsoft Outlook 97 that lets users manage contacts, calendars, tasks, and e-mail. Other software captures voice notes (Voice Recorder). Add in Mobile Channels software for off-line viewing of World Wide Web content, downloaded to the CE machine from a PC. Microsoft also has a number of Pocket versions of programs from Office--Word, Excel, and PowerPoint--aimed at CE machines like the HP Palmtop with built-in keyboards.