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

To: t2 who wrote (22312)	5/7/1999 2:26:00 AM
From: RTev	Respond to of 74651

Welcome back, t2. You seem re-energized from your vacation. And you picked a good time to be away from the market. I think the first ones to get interested in set top boxes are going to be the ones with money or good jobs. Maybe. I think they'll be some of the first, but they'll be joined by people with just enough money to pay the monthly cable bill and the installment payments on that big TV with surround-sound speakers. The point is it's a different market -- much different. The designers of WebTV knew that. They didn't work for Microsoft at the time, so they were free to pick just about any kind of user interface. What they came up with doesn't look at all like Windows (or didn't when I last saw it a year or so ago). Maybe it will look more like Windows when Microsoft manages to get it running under CE, but should it? I figure it's good that Microsoft is forced into a position to compete on technical and market merit even after signing this agreement, because Microsoft does its best work that way. IE4 would have been a dreadful browser if Netscape hadn't forced its designers back to the drawing board. They came up with a great browser because they had to follow the storyline that was set by Netscape. This is the same kind of situation. The other folks making boxes using Java or other OSes will be hungry to win this one. AT&T has made it clear that they will encourage that kind of competition. Oh... and yes. I figure Microsoft can win in the end, but only if they resist the temptation to force their solution onto the market.