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To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (21859)	12/1/1998 6:01:00 AM
From: Charles Hughes	Respond to of 24154

>>>Microsoft replies that over those years the company has vastly improved Windows so that when adjusted for performance the price of Windows remains low. <<< The hardware I am typing this with is 75 times faster than my first msft/intel box, and has 150 times more memory and 1000 times more disk storage. The modem is 100 time faster than my first modem. The price of the hardware is about 70% of what I originally paid, not adjusting for inflation, and I had to buy a lot of do-dads to accomplish that. And whither Windows? AKA DOS 7? Well, it allows me to use most, but not all, of the features of my hardware. It now has this GUI and about a shazillion API features for me to try to program with. To be fair, software in general has not increased in performance like hardware. Software is somewhat tied to the human condition, unfortunately. Then again, the software prices in general have come down. I used to pay several thousand dollars a month for my IBM OS on my 1 meg minicomputer. A compiler used to be many thousands of dollars. Computer games used to consist of spacebar-tapping little pixel dots across the screen at the 'asteroid' collection of straight lines until it 'exploded.' So you would think the trend was better and cheaper even for software. It's just so hard to tell when everyone except the gamers have been scared off doing anything really new and cool in software design. Cheers, Chaz

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (21859)	12/1/1998 9:17:00 AM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

<Note that there was no attempt by Microsoft to claim that the price of Microsoft software is falling, as has often been asserted here. Instead, we have the Microsoftese definition of "performance" - featuritis. > I'm the one that said MSFT software prices were falling, and they are. The testimony on the stand focused on the Windows OS, not software in general. Visual Studio 6.0 and Office 2000 represent a nearly 70% drop in prices(give or take), unadjusted for performance increases and inflation. Or have you forgot the days of $595 Wordperfect and Dbase.

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (21859)	12/2/1998 1:22:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

Cyrix WebPAD tomshardware.com And now for something completely different. I stumbled on this on Tom's seldom updated Hardware page, old news from Comdex. Looks pretty cool, though the size is a bit vague. For an information appliance, it looks better than WebTV, which bites on the TV end, the comparison with a notebook computer is harder. Ergonomically, it looks good, another attempt at Alan Kay's ever elusive Dynabook. Something to keep an eye out for. For me the product that should have won the price for the most innovation and user friendliness is the Cyrix WebPAD. Following Brian Hala's speech at Microprocessor Forum, Cyrix is following new ideas to bring computers to people who can't be bothered to buy a clumsy, super user unfriendly Windows PC. WebPAD is a reference design for a product that will make Internet browsing real fun. No word on what software it uses. I haven't seen much other news on this, but I've been somewhat remiss in following the broader news. I like the line about "clumsy, super user unfriendly Windows PC". Et tu, Tom? Some people just don't appreciate the integrity and uniformity. . . Cheers, Dan.