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Technology Stocks : DELL Bear Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Wisdom who wrote (1046)	6/14/1998 4:11:00 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2578

Hi Gary Wisdom; There are some differences between the 386 situation and the current Pentium situation. We had a change from the DOS environment to the primitive Windows 3.x environment, then to the Windows 95 environment. Windows 96 is a lot more mature than the earlier DOS environments. This is not a simple as saying that it is newer. There are fewer things it is missing. That is why Windows 98 is no big deal. Now, the new cheap machines run 98 fine. So when will MSFT be able to foist a new operating system on the public that will obsolete current machines? Probably not before 2001. And if you buy a $500 Pentium 166, you are probably about as safe from obsolescence as if you buy a $1500 Pentium 400. It's not like you are buying a 386 while everybody else is buying a 486. Instead, it's more like you are buying a slightly slower machine just like everybody else's. Again, the difference between a Pentium Pro and a Pentium is nowhere near as great as the difference between a 386 and a 486, in terms of instruction set changes. So I don't see a big change in operating systems in the next few years, and I don't see a big change in CPUs over the next few years either. A contributing factor is that the PC market is approaching maturity. There are a lot more machines already out there, compared to what future PC sales will be. A much larger percentage of the public is on line. And the operating system provides a much greater percentage of your needs for software. (Which has the justice department a little upset...) -- Carl