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Technology Stocks : MSFT -- Should the DOJ Break it up? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (68)	5/10/1998 2:56:00 AM
From: mozek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 144

JF, I didn't know that AT&T did not control the entire US phone system. What other company could sell phone service to residential customers? Was it business service that could be sold by another company? I remember having to pay AT&T to use more than one phone in our home even though we had more than one phone jack. Since we had no alternative source of phone service at all, we couldn't just buy the service. In fact, I remember that AT&T at one point owned all of the phones in our home because they wouldn't allow us to purchase another brand of phone and connect it to our (er, I mean their) lines in our home. Honestly, I'm curious what options were available and what companies offered alternative phone service. Thanks, Mike

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (68)	5/10/1998 10:55:00 PM
From: David Spruiell	Respond to of 144

Agree that a breakup could mean good news for MSFT stock holders. As far as the DOJ being right or wrong, that is secondary to shareholders. I think that there is opportunity in playing the game of what they will do. I am thinking that the short term effect of the DOJ will be to delay the May 15 release of Win 98. So....I went short on some of the computer retailers Friday. Hey I don't know, but sounds like a reasonable risk. We will see later this week. Best luck David

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (68)	5/11/1998 11:54:00 AM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 144

Yooo Fred, Sounds like you are stepping into a hornet's nest...again. Anyway, back from the land of the oracle, and poking around. Noticed you qualified the evil empire as having market power at the desktop. Sorry have to take issue there. The desktop is certainly correct as far as it goes, but the other place msft is establishing as its dominant domain, is the central computing center. I've been seeing more and more CPQ Proliant servers showing up in these rooms replacing older and typically larger monolithic servers with organized hordes of these WinNT modules. Not to mention their acquisition of DEC and the Alpha 800 servers that started showing up there recently too. Looks like a pretty clean sweep to me, throwing in the laptop crowd for good measure. If it looks like a monopoly and feels like a monopoly and smells like a monopoly, good thing you didn't step in it. By the way, not that I'm interested, but are there any good reasons to convert from Win95 to Win98 ? I'd like about 3 good ones as to why I should be bothered by this disrupting event. Just ignorant but curious that's all. (For the msft geeks - Being a beta tester doesn't qualify as good, sorry).