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

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (10768)	9/12/1998 9:08:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 74651

Dan - Without Windows 95, Compaq would be, uh, a bit handicapped? Correct, but my understanding was that the contracts in dispute did not apply to either CPQ's commercial desktop business or their mainstream consumer business, but only to one specialty consumer line. So this was a 'surgical strike'. BTW, given CPQ's share in desktops at that time, MS would be about as likely to pull CPQ's desktop license as they would be to fire steve ballmer - it would have been a 20% revenue hit. could you give us some idea of desktop revenues vs. server/unix/other stuff for Compaq? The revenue numbers are not bandied about as freely as the share numbers, but I have heard that desktop revenues contribute about 50% of the total, but contribute only 25% of the gross margin. In the new business, including DEC, the numbers will be even more skewed, given that 'the company formerly known as DEC' will contribute 30% of CPQ's total top line but almost no desktop revenue. This stuff's not going into NT5 I share your skepticism about NT5 ship dates, although I just received the beta 2 disk and it is a lot better than beta 1 release. However, Maritz said 'would not be included in the first release of NT5'. I would expect this technology to go into the 64 bit release, which is based on NT5 but has a separate development team (that's what cutler is doing, he's not on the mainstream NT team any more and has not been since the release of NT4) and also a separate release date. A recent client-server news article claims that there will be some developer's beta in mid-99 and a targeted release date of mid ' 00 for the 64 bit product. Maureen O'Gara has been pretty accurate about MS internals in the past. Microsoft admitting any shortcomings is some kind of watershed event, what does it mean in the larger picture? That's the biggest news in this whole deal. What it means IMHO is that MSFT has gotten back to the successful model they had early in their history - identify the technology that is needed to get where they want to go, and cut a deal to get it into MSFT products. If they can manage to absorb some of the enterprise culture as well as the bits, it could mean an acceleration of a highly capable NT, maybe by years. The only news I recall about it was GTW breaking ranks, this spring GTW is the weakest of the big players, I don't even rate them as a major. They are dependent on Intel for HW technology and MSFT for software in a way that none of the others are (CPQ, Dell, HWP, IBM). So they probably waited until 'everyone was doing it' before diving in. But the big 4 have nothing to gain by rubbing it in publicly, so they spoke softly and wielded that big stick. Half of the machines I have at home are built by me, half are brand-name. The CPQ professional workstation is a cut above, but the rest are a wash, and I like some of the 2P machines I built from Tyan boards a lot. BTW I have a relatively large network in my home (at least my wife says so).