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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: QwikSand who wrote (12953)	12/30/1998 12:53:00 PM
From: trouthead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Do you think DVD has a chance of displacing VHS as the preferred technology for viewing movies at home? The game is never over. jb

To: QwikSand who wrote (12953)	12/30/1998 5:40:00 PM
From: Dale J.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 64865

Quicksand, RE:Bill answers this question himself in "The Road Ahead". It's in his "positive feedback" rap about why the VHS VCR beat out the Betamax in the marketplace. It had nothing to do with one being "better" for the consumer. The marketplace needed a single standard. Yes, Beta was better, but only in picture quality. Better has many aspects: ease of use, availability, price etc. Beta wanted the market all too themselves. That was a mistake. The consumer chose a standard (VHS), that had a ready supply of tapes from the video rental stores. MSFT did to Apple what VHS did to Beta. RE:Not to take anything away from Gates: he parlayed his original good fortune into the greatest monopoly business empire in history through shrewdness, drive, smarts and leadership of his people and, when he had to, hardball tactics that were at times criminal. Why didn't the Unix camp recognize what Gates and IBM were doing in the PC world early on? Why didn't Apple recognize Gates had a better business strategy and change? Why did IBM develope OS/2, an OS that needed 4MB of RAM at a time when the average computer had only 1MB of RAM? MSFT out worked and outsmarted many of the big players. Now he is being treated like a criminal. RE:But don't paint him as anybody's benefactor except Microsoft shareholders. I disagree. He has produced countless jobs to the economy as well as benifits to the consumer. Apple was another company that made computers easy to use. But MSFT surpassed even Apple in making computers and the internet easy to use. Dale