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

To: Alan Buckley who wrote (10739)	9/11/1998 5:48:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Respond to of 74651

It's ironic that MSFT is being harassed for monopolistic behavior when a primary advantage they have over the competition is that their systems run on open, cheap hardware while their competitors do not. Irony, like everything else, is in the eye of the beholder. Offhand, I'd say Microsoft is being harassed for monopolistic behavior because, well, they engaged in monopolistic behavior? Occam's razor and all that? Windows is open too, right? War is peace, ignorance is strength . . . I love PC hardware myself. It's gotten awful darn cheap in the last couple years, while still getting faster. My understanding is it has something to do with "free markets" in the conventional sense, competition and all that. So, why should it be Microsoft's exclusive domain, software wise? You got Bill telling Andy Grove what to do, Bill telling DEC what to do, and the juvenile "Embrace and Demolish" war on Java. It's not like I'm a big fan of Sun, but once again, why can't Microsoft leave Java alone? If it's the big fraud Bill's friends always say, it'll croak soon enough. Why the explicit subvert and sabotage campaign? Oh, I know, Microsoft, and only Microsoft, must be free to "innovate." Windows is this "fertile field" that has to be, uh, burned over from time to time to keep the, er, weeds down, keep Bill's "competition" in place. Cheers, Dan.

To: Alan Buckley who wrote (10739)	9/11/1998 11:21:00 PM
From: paul	Respond to of 74651

Funny that you segment openness of the hardware vs. software. Its like when Microsoft uses the term "Industry Standard" - which translates to its my industry so i make the standards. as far as Sun goes - Sun uses a PCI bus, it can use any monitor, when i peaked into my ultra it had a seagate drive - there are clone manufacturers who make Solaris and SPARC based systems (tadpole, tatung, toshiba) here's a link to a direct comparison between sun's low end 450 vs. compaq proliant - byte.com since that time Sun (like Compaq) have announced cheaper systems. Doesnt look to me like Sun is suffering much from having "proprietary" hardware. Yes the wintel model favors volumes driving the lowest cost manufacturer to the top and the unfortunate ones who add value to the bottom - its the lowest common denominator factor which has been succesful for wintel on the desktop.