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To: XiaoYao who wrote (21349)	11/10/1998 10:27:00 PM
From: almaxel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Oh boy, what do you mean by more advanced software? You are not talking about MS software, are you? Like more people to write more than 35 Mill. lines of code for NT 5! This piece of software sounds very advanced to me! Please look at " Solaris 7 " and than tell me who got advanced software! MS got away with great marketing not quality for the longest time, they know it does not work anymore and that's why they do not know in what direction to turn: First NT 5 ,than Windows 2000, NTE4 and so on, what is that? All big noise, but nothing behind it! Ralf

To: XiaoYao who wrote (21349)	11/11/1998 8:20:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Very sophisticated economic argument, Xiao Yao. Fixed costs, variable costs, economies of scale, we wouldn't want to get into that, would we? Microsoft's production costs are approximately zero, something no hardware company could say. Paper could go cheaper but book won't. And Microsoft used to put a book in the box, now you get a box of air with your CD. But the CD costs what, $.10 to press in quantity? Cheers, Dan.

To: XiaoYao who wrote (21349)	11/11/1998 4:20:00 PM
From: Keith Hankin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

You can't compare hardware with software. Hardware production cost goes much cheaper once manufacture reached a certain point of mass production. But software cost would only go higher since you need to hire more software engineers to write more advanced software. Software costs are fairly fixed. The cost of hiring more software engineers is a relatively low cost. Even adding another 500 people to support an OS would only add up to about $50 Million, assuming $100K per person. This is a paltry sum when compared to the money MSFT rakes in. MSFT products cost almost nothing, especially when you consider how many copies that they distribute. It is the support that is where the costs go.