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

To: Bearded One who wrote (6814)	5/10/1998 2:02:00 AM
From: Dwight E. Karlsen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

I don't think that threatening to terminate a customer/vendor relationship is the same as a threat to put them out of business for competitive reasons. Clearly CPQ could have purchased Win95 from a different source and put the CD in the package. In case you didn't know, it has been my experience that when purchasing a new PC, I as the end user has to install Win95. Win95 was written onto the HD, but the install process had not been done. This was not some no name PC vendor, but Dell Computer. I'm not sure why they even wrote some code onto the HD, as the original CD was included with the package. So I disagree with you that MSFT threatened to put CPQ out of business. For that matter, CPQ could have simply given a coupon for customers to order the software from any number of resellers. No big deal. Clearly there needs to be some kind of DOS boot disk, and the customers like for the HD to be pre-formatted. That stuff could have been done w/o Win95 I would bet. I'm sure there was a way around it. If Compaq bent to MSFT's demands to keep the IE icon on the desktop, they chose to do that willingly, and no harm would have accrued to them, IMO. DK

To: Bearded One who wrote (6814)	5/11/1998 11:55:00 AM
From: Deliveryman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Bearded One pointed out: "When Compaq removed the IE icon from the startup screen, Microsoft sent them a 60 day notice of termination for Compaq's license to install Windows 95." Should MSFT allow OEMS to change the O/S anyway they want? Its a slippery slide...

To: Bearded One who wrote (6814)	5/21/1998 4:29:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 74651

Your understanding of the MS-CPQ dispute is incorrect, MS never threatened to put CPQ out of business or even to revoke their ability to ship Win95 for their mainstrewam products. The dispute involved only a single relatively small series of consumer products. The gentleman quoted by the DOJ is named Steve Decker, he is responsible for MS purchasing at CPQ. I know him personally. The DOJ framed this to make it look much bigger than it actually was. CPQ had purchased a small company in San Mateo CA which made game SW, headed by a woman named Celeste Dunn. They were supposed to write applications for the Presario line which was looking for some market 'pull' at that time, especially for children's applications. This group of people in california (at that time about 30) engaged in a number of practices regarding the substitution of non-MS components into the OS before it was sold by CPQ. This would have created support problems for MS. The dispute between this small group and MS had gone on for several months. Finally Celeste decided to take a hard line about her ability to do what she wanted with the SW, a position which included removing IE and substituting Netscape. Note that including Netscape is not a problem, and many CPQ machines (then and now) including the ones involved in the dispute already had netscape pre-loaded on every machine. This was not the problem for MS - their problem was removing IE when the license said it would be included with the OS. Even so, their 'threat' was only related to this one product line, not to CPQ's mainstream business. The press coverage of this issue, and your repeat of the myth, is typical of the kind of distortion and rumor that surround these business practices. If MS had tried to do something stupid like hold back Win95 from CPQ, what do you think CPQ would do? MS would not start Nuclear War with their biggest customer. CPQ does not get the bits from MS, they make them and tell MS how many they made. Even if MS tried to stop CPQ from shipping Win95, CPQ could claim irreperable harm, just keep shipping, and tie it up in court for years. This is the real world not 'ozzie and harriet'.