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

To: Mike Milde who wrote (10010)	8/7/1998 11:53:00 AM
From: Phil Melemed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

So to carry the analogy a little further, would you compare including a web browser in an operating system more like including a car radio in a car, being optional equipment? Many people want both, may want the best version of both, could personally replace either with a more expensive or different featured one with no major difficulty, and should ideally be able to buy the base product without this accessory? logical extension 1: are you saying that all operating systems should be offered in versions that do not contain web browsers? Under what circumstances would a company be allowed to ship an OS that only came configured with a web browser? logical extension 2: Car radios are typically optional equipment. Some cars however include radios (some pretty nice ones) as standard equipment. Should it cost me more or less to buy that car without the radio? logical extension 3: Car sales are individually crafted, PC operating system sales are mass market. There are a moderate number of car models available with many many optional configurations. It pays to offer all these car configurations because of volume v.s. ticket price. At what point, based on price, volume or overhead does it make sense for a corporation to make certain components required rather than optional, or user-configurable v.s. vendor-configurable? In other words, if users can remove the browser, at what point is it impractical from a business sense for Microsoft to ship both a browser/os and a non-browser/os? In similar circumstances, would the Cracker Jack people be required to sell boxes of Cracker Jack that did not include the prize inside? Logical extension 4: Let's say hypothetically that Toshiba had a monopoly or predominant share of the portable computer market. How would this be different from Toshiba only shipping portable computers with a built-in modem on the mother board v.s. one with just a pcmcia slot and maybe a card? Thanks for your opinions.