Firms with valid Microsoft site licences cannot legally install Windows on PCs bought without the operating system, Microsoft has warned. Many companies with volume licences routinely apply a disk image over pre-installed software to achieve a standard configuration. But firms that try to cut costs by purchasing “naked” PCs, sold without an operating system, cannot legally install a Windows image because site licences only permit upgrading from a pre-installed version of Windows. […] Rob Enderle of analyst firm Giga Information Group warned companies not to ignore the small print. “By contract, [PC makers] have to report any customer that requests naked PCs and it often triggers a software audit by Microsoft. We’ve seen seven-figure bills go to those that were caught.” Read the story at VNUnet.
Microsoft Does Not Allow Installation of Windows on “Naked” PCs
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By contract, [PC makers] have to report any customer that requests naked PCs
That sounds like a giant abuse of monopoly power to me… Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbuilt, Morgan… I bet they wish they had thought of that!
I have to agree with this… this behavior from Ms is really bad.
What a great way to get your customers to buy your OS twice! MS is so fond of double-dipping…
“By contract, [PC makers] have to report any customer that requests naked PCs and it often triggers a software audit by Microsoft.
I remember stories about this a while back. I think MS would give you prizes for reporting PC Nudity. I thought they discontinued the practice. Is it back? (not that I’m suprised that it is)
I love liberty as seen by Microsoft. I wonder why we leave in a democraty because monopoly and dictatureship seem so efficient …
Wonder what will happen the day, PC sales will really collapse because the need to upgrade weaken too strong. May be some laws to oblige you to buy a new PC each year because Bill Gates will be the dictator^W president of the united world ?
So, if the IT department of a company decides to upgrade just the hard drives of the existing machines, they *cannot* reinstall windows ? (because the new hard drives are naturaly blank and thus with no prior version of Windows) ??
Ok, I’m not trying to troll, but is this not the most stupid thing you have ever seen?
What if Ford acted like this? Or Chevron? Or Your local grocery store? How is this company still in business?
What about those full versions of Windows in stores that say ‘For PC’s without Windows’ ??
Is there no limit to Microsoft’s predatory behavior?
I am mainly MS user, I played around with Linux and BeOS for a bit but never did anything too serious. Being a VB6/VB.Net/VC++/C# developer I’ve always used various MS products and always liked them dispite of what others were saying. In fact I don’t have any problem with MS products at all but their business practices are simply driving me up the wall. I wish DOJ would just bitch-slap them, not “settle” with them but actually punish them financially so badly that they’d never even think about such business practices again.
Thoese cost 300 dollars each.
If Safeway did it you wouldn’t be able to buy food and feed it to naked people
they would have to get dressed and go buy there own
Other than the fact that someone is dumb enough to request a “naked PC” or a PC maker is greedy enough to report them, how will MS know if people are installing Windows on naked PCs? Are they going to install some kind of special ROM chip on motherboards to detect if a OS was previously installed or not?
*whisper* Apple’s boot ROM *whisper*
My personal definition of a “naked PC” is one that has the case cover off. My definition of a PC that comes without Windows pre-installed is one that works ;-).
What about those full versions of Windows in stores that say ‘For PC’s without Windows’ ??
The article is talking about volume licenses, not retail boxes. Most companies buy volume licenses because they think they won’t have to worry about audits, managing licenses, etc. Apparently that’s not the case.
To clarify, I wasn’t suggesting that Apple’s boot ROM was intended to detect records of OS installation. My point was that MacOS was dependent of that boot ROM, and that it would be scary if MS did the same thing with PC hardware.
Why buy a Dell or Compaq naked PC anyway… they’ll sell it and shop you…
I’d buy an unbranded box – much safer
>> By contract, [PC makers] have to
>> report any customer that requests
>> naked PCs and it often triggers
>> a software audit by Microsoft
Scary and disturbing to the extreme. Just how free is the United States?
The article is talking about volume licenses, not retail boxes. Most companies buy volume licenses because they think they won’t have to worry about audits, managing licenses, etc. Apparently that’s not the case.
You know how Dell is still selling “naked PCs” even though MS told everyone to stop doing that? Does it worry anyone that maybe Dell is secretly a double agent and luring people into buying those naked systems and then turn around and report them to MS?
I agree with your assement TLy if Microsoft started controlling your boot rom or BIOS it would be all over
I feel really bad for all those change agents within companies who push to quietly replace servers with Linux/BSD one-by-one. They get hammered so hard, and all they want is something that is good for the company’s health.
Clearly, MSFT is punishing Dell for sensing a weakness. Dell hates simply being a Windows console. On the other hand, I don’t have any sympathy for businesses who rely on Windows. I’m happy that they’re bleeding cash, even if it’s less cash than the old Unix vendors like Sun charge.
Does anyone here know the price per machine with one of these site licenses? The lowest Price for OEM XP Pro on Price Grabber is $134.00. How much cheaper is a site license?
Oh, and how long until ReactOS is out
Hey everyone, can’t you feel Microsoft’s Linux fear? Hmmm.. . I smell it in the air… Smell’s good
they seem to have a scary hold on pc manufacturers… they control the pre-installs (bootloader – think BeOS), they control the initial desktop (netscape/aol) they control “naked” pcs and who gets audited for buying them…
have you read clause 1245b? they own your house if you even look at a computer which has at any point run windows…
I am no fan of Microsoft’s activities, but from reading the article the impression I get is Microsoft is saying that if you buy a site licence you cannot then go and buy a bunch of machines that do not have an OS and install Microsofts OS on them.
Usually they negotiate a site licence based on how many installed machines you have. I think what they are saying is that if you negotiate a site licence for 1000 machines and you go any buy 500 new machines, you cannot just install the OS on them, you have to buy a licence for each new machine too.
I am not defending Microsoft. I hate activation and many of the other things they do, and there is a bit of gray area in this, the article was kinda vague about the details. I do feel though that if you want to use their software, you should be expected to buy/own a copy for each machine you have.
Chris
I may be wrong about this (I have been wrong in the past) but a “Site License” is much different than a 1000 User License. A site license covers the “whole” site. For example at K-State University they have a site wide Oracle license. For the *entire* campus. Not for 1000 machines, but for *all* machines.
<irony>
It’s not a way to strengthen MS, but to weaken MS.
This way the companies have no choice than switching to a free OS.
</irony>
Now the facts:
Here in Germany (and most likely in other countries as well) MS says it is illegal to install OEM versions of Windows on other PCs than the PC it was bundled with.
THIS IS NOT TRUE! MS IS LYING in this case!
You are allowed to install Windows on another PC as well.
Windows must not installed on 2 or more PCs at the same time, but if you delete Windows from one PC you may install it on another PC.
I don’t think it’s different with volume licensing.
Look at this scenario, Chris. Let’s say I have a site license for 100 PC’s, but only 90 users (if I bought licensing for 90 users knowing I’d eventually need 100 I’d end up paying much more). This is pretty common practice for companies with site licenses.
Now I need to get 10 more PC’s. Under Microsoft’s licensing, I can’t buy PC’s without an OS pre-installed. So any computer I buy will already have a license paid for – I just bought the OS twice.
Or imagine you’re a company that’s standardized on Win2k. It’s tough getting anything without XP. So now you have to buy PC’s with WinXP on them even though you’re going to wipe the drive clean and install Win2k. Microsoft now not only double-charged you for two OS’s on one machine, but they’ve also propped up the numbers they show for XP sales.
As I’ve said, they’re snakes with legs.
>>>Does anyone here know the price per machine with one of these site licenses? The lowest Price for OEM XP Pro on Price Grabber is $134.00. How much cheaper is a site license?
If you read the court transcripts, Microsoft didn’t raise the OEM pricing for WindowsXP when they took WinME out of circulation. Various news reports have stated that the OEM prices for WinME is about 60-80 dollars, so the OEM price for WinXP is about 60-80 dollars.
I jumped ship and I will never go back.
–
–
Dancing in the streets. Let the party commence. Looks the guys
at the BSA are going to be quite busy for some time. Maybe I could
become an informant because every company I have worked at
bought Naked PCs and then used a MS site license.
And yes they informed MS about the number of machines in the
organization, but they did not inform MS about the nature of
these machines.
What a load of crap i will tell you. The OEM image wouldn’t last
10 seconds on the new machines because they were immediately
blasted with any of a number of images in any of a number of
languages.
Let me get the BSA number on speed dial. I have to drum up some
business.
> Hey everyone, can’t you feel Microsoft’s Linux fear?
> Hmmm.. . I smell it in the air… Smell’s good
LOL, Microsoft is adding over 1 billion USD to their bank account each month! Most Linux companies are merely struggling to survive…
To put this into perspective Microsoft has (only) around 50,000 employees. That’s over 20,000 USD per employee per month!!! (240,000 USD per employee per year!!)
Taking into account the quality and development costs of their products, customers (and developers) are being screwed BIG time. This is all a result of Microsoft’s abusive monopolistic position within the market and the lack of effort by the US goverment to intervene. (They even give Microsoft Tax advantages!?!?)
Since “intellectual property” (i.e. information (i.e. software)) is not a scarce resource like all other forms of property, society has built up laws and contracts to enforce an artificial scarcity on IP in order to make it work like regular property (i.e. to be able to make lots money off it). Once you’ve bought into the whole “information is property” lie, you start believing all sorts of stupid things (e.g. copying information is theft).
Really, requiring you to already have a Microsoft OS in order to get a site license isn’t any more bizarre than requiring you to pay Microsoft $100 to get an OS that you can copy for free from your friend. You see, the rules are arbitrary. There is no contact with reality here.
Wake up! Information is not property.
It seems that, people are using the word “monopoly” without the basic law knowledge of what actually it means? You may not like Microsoft, but saying that this type of contracts shows that Microsoft is abusing its monopoloy is not only stupid, but also ignorant.
Look at many contracts of many companies, and you will see such clauses. This is normal. This case is not normal, because you are so ignorant against Microsoft that, when Microsoft does something legitimate it became an issue. It just that simple.
Do you think that a monopoly or any company doesn’t have the right to protect itself from piracy, or any type of criminal act. If you think that this is abusing monopoly power, go to the court and sue Microsoft. No big company does that so far, because the law is clearly behind Microsoft.
Some posters are falling for Dells “naked” PC routine. Go back and read more carefully the various news items about this that appeared a week or so back. As I remember Dell stated that they would be selling “naked” PCs loaded with FreeDos as a way of getting around Microsoft’s licensing requirement for having an OS loaded on the naked PC. What some of you missed was that the price would be the same whether you bought the one loaded with a Microsoft OS or the one loaded with FreeDos.
Anyone out there having any problem figuring out the new MS-Math?
…its just so, so easy to loathe and detest this bunch of robbing toads.
“all I want for Christmas is me OBOS…….la-la-la-la-la-la”
> but saying that this type of contracts shows that
> Microsoft is abusing its monopoloy is not only stupid,
> but also ignorant.
It is publicly known however that Microsoft has abused their monopoly endless times in the past. Sadly they have very good lawyers and tons of cash to postpone proper penalties (and even fund presidential compaigns for candidates who would hold a hand above Microsoft’s head..)
IMO they are also abusing their monopoly in this case, regardless if it would be currently legal or not.
Here’s a relevant part of a previous reply by me to an earlier article:
“Note that being a monopoly by itself can’t be considered illegal. However using an established monopoly such as the Microsoft operating system monopoly for monopolizing different markets like:
the browser market (i.e. integrating the Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows to eliminate competition from Netscape), the software development market (i.e. integrating Media Player, Office suite market), hardware market (xBox)
and using its market power to form anticompetitive agreements with producers of related goods (i.e. using their power to stop PC manufacturers from supporting BeOS, penalizing Gateway for making new Amiga computers) can easily be considered illegal.
The sad part of the story is that Microsoft holds an important economic monopoly within the US IT sector. Therefor the US is unlikely to take proper actions against this proven abusive monopolist.”
The number of Microsoft employees is artifically deflated. Microsoft uses lots of externally hired people specifically to raise the amount of money earnt per employee. This number directly influences the stock market value.
There are plenty of stories about people going to job interviews at Microsoft, being told they were hired and then told to go to some bureau where they would be officially employed. And then the bureau would lease their man power to Microsoft.
Eighteen states and the federal government sued Microsoft for antitrust. Among the many claims made, the foremost one one that Microsoft, by bundling Internet Explorer in with Windows, pushed out rival companies like Netscape.
Bah.
There is nothing anticompetitive about doing that – in fact, that’s exactly what competition is. Microsoft includes a bundled product with another one, consumers use that product, realize that they like it better than the old one, and switch. If Netscape 4.x hadn’t sucked as much as it did compared to IE4, and if Netscape hadn’t stopped evolving while Microsoft pushed on with IE5 and 5.5, do you really think that bundling would have made a difference?
Consumers didn’t bother installing Netscape because it sucked. By the time Netscape 6.0 and Moz came around, it was too late; IE had such huge marketshare that nothing (save AOL’s switching browsers) could turn it around.
Microsoft’s actions with OEMs are really what shows its anticompetitive behavior. Microsoft, through many different convoluted contracts and EULAs, gave OEMs and end-users an ultimatum: either everything you do is Microsoft, or nothing is. They told users, if you want to use our software at all, you have to do everything we tell you. And because Microsoft is the 800kg gorilla, a huge majority of users and OEMs obliged.
If the EULA (at least in the form Microsoft uses) wasn’t legal, and if the duration and scope of Microsoft’s contracts with OEMs didn’t extend beyond the product order itself, then computers with dual-boot Windows and BeOS, or Linux, or triple-boot with all three, would have been a common sight.
Instead, they’re not. That’s why Microsoft is guilty, and should need to be severely punished/regulated – not because of any stupid browser issue.
Well said, aleksandr…
This is one thing taht really annoys me when people talk about the Anti-trust action against microsoft.
My understanding is taht when you are a monopoly you have extra resposbilities. As long as you conform to them then the monopoly is not illegal. Microsoft leveraged their monopoly. That was their illegal part and its illegal mostly because they are a monopoly.
People try and justify Microsoft when Apple does similar things, BUT Apple is not a monopoly so that it is legal.
Anonymous: That sounds like a giant abuse of monopoly power to me…
That sounds like someone wants the paternal system back…
Hello? Microsoft made the product. Microsoft have a say on the buy and sell process.
Plus, since you mention Rockfellar, have you ever gotten oil that low in price after the DOJ practically killed them?
Big Al: What a great way to get your customers to buy your OS twice! MS is so fond of double-dipping…
If you already have Windows pre-installed, there is no use getting that site licensing Windows. Because it doesn’t *save* cost.
Masai: So, if the IT department of a company decides to upgrade just the hard drives of the existing machines, they *cannot* reinstall windows ? (because the new hard drives are naturaly blank and thus with no prior version of Windows) ??
1) Most companies wouldn’t even think of upgrading their equipment after they purchased it.
2) Hard disks aren’t computers. They are a component. You have every right to move the version of Windows from one hard disk to another, and could also later use Microsoft’ site licensing of Windows.
Allstar: What if Ford acted like this? Or Chevron? Or Your local grocery store? How is this company still in business?
I wonder how Ford or Chevron or your local grocery store could have acted this way…. All three aren’t component suppliers.
linux: Scary and disturbing to the extreme. Just how free is the United States?
Not that free for successful companies. And Arabs.
Here in Germany (and most likely in other countries as well) MS says it is illegal to install OEM versions of Windows on other PCs than the PC it was bundled with.
THIS IS NOT TRUE! MS IS LYING in this case!
Uhmmm, your proof isn’t enough. The OEM version is made for PC makers. The retail version is made for end users. Part of the EULA of the OEM version is that you can only use it on a brand new spanking PC.
aono: If you read the court transcripts, Microsoft didn’t raise the OEM pricing for WindowsXP when they took WinME out of circulation. Various news reports have stated that the OEM prices for WinME is about 60-80 dollars, so the OEM price for WinXP is about 60-80 dollars.
XP Home OEM price is the same as the old Windows Me OEM price. XP Pro OEM price is the same as the old Windows 2000 Pro price.
Get it?
Mike Bourma: LOL, Microsoft is adding over 1 billion USD to their bank account each month! Most Linux companies are merely struggling to survive…
It is difficult to make money from something free. But with record high growth in desktop (30% growth, better than any other competiting OS after MS’s monopoly). Plus, it is the fastest growing OS in the server market.
Yeah, Microsoft is sweating – they aren’t against a company, they are against a swamp of grasshoppers moving to their fields.
Anonymous: Wake up! Information is not property.
Fine. Spend 40 billion dollars on the next gen mainframe application, and I would just download it off the Net for free.
Information is not free.
Mike Bourma: Note that being a monopoly by itself can’t be considered illegal. However using an established monopoly such as the Microsoft operating system monopoly for monopolizing different markets like:
the browser market (i.e. integrating the Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows to eliminate competition from Netscape), the software development market (i.e. integrating Media Player, Office suite market), hardware market (xBox)
Hmmm, Microsoft is not a monopoly in the browser market. It isn’t a monopoly in the media arena (it shares the market with Real and Apple). It isn’t a monopoly in the Office market. And you claiming that XBOX abuses Microsoft monopoly is so darn funny I can’t stop laughing. Also note that WMP and Office is available on Mac OS.
People try and justify Microsoft when Apple does similar things, BUT Apple is not a monopoly so that it is legal.
Legally, Apple is as much as monopoly as Microsoft is. The DOJ excluded Apple as competition. Apple has a huge monopoly over PPC workstations – little sales of Linux with PPC hardware doesn’t count. (Otherwise Windows wouldn’t be a monopoly).
Legally, Apple is a monopoly in the PPC desktop market. Apple leveraged that by getting rid of clone makers in the late 90s. If someone just had sued, Apple would be in bigger trouble than Microsoft.
Oh, well said, aleksandr 🙂
I feel sorry for the people that have to deal with Microsoft
licensing policies on a regular basis. After wasting an hour
on their web site I just had to thank my lucky stars that I got
out when I did.
-No need to buy a site license if you already have systems with
a MS os preinstalled.–
Try telling that to the 10s of thousands of institutions out
there with exactly this environment.
I especially love the line on their site that says, ‘You lease
the right to run a selection of products. At the end of the
agreement you can renew, Buy Out, or REMOVE.’
renew, buy out, or remove. I don’t care if Microsoft sends its
employees to do all of the work my company needs to do, it would
not be worth jacking around with that.
But I digress.
Just remember. Naked PC’s are bad. They have always have been bad.
They will always be bad. Bad, Bad, Bad. I think it was Leviticus that
said. Thou shalt not build nor buy a naked PC. Anyone caught
using a naked PC shall be stoned to death, and it will not be murder
because they brought it on themselves.
What is publicly known is that Microsoft is evil, and this doesn’t mean anything. The reason why you think Microsoft is evil is not because it hurts you, it is because it hurts other big businesses, like AOL, Sun, IBM, Oracle and many others. If they let Microsoft to be big, they will loose. Check out News.com, most of the claims itself turn out to be wrong very clearly. In news.com you clearly see some special attention to make Microsoft look like evil. I mean even on unrelated news, they depict Microsoft as being eveil. They add their own comments and show them as facts. They give some few people’s claims as news. In their own news, you sometimes see that they are lying. I guess you have to be a little bit smarter than you are to really realize what’s going on.
Many people don’t like Microsoft for understandable reasons, but most of the claims against Microsoft are now so outrageous that I think people who are attacking are move evil than Microsoft itself.
Let me just give one example of your wrong accusations. You say ” Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows to eliminate competition from Netscape”. This is simply not true. We are here where we are in Internet age, thanks to IE. Show me what Netscape did in so many years. The version 6.0 was so buggy that I couldn’t use it. I am not talking about buggy anymore, it was totally unusable, it was a crap. Forget about that, but years ago Microsoft supported even the most basic stuff like, changing color when you are hovering your mouse over a link. Netscape to be portable as much as possible, produced some source code which was so crap that it took years for open source guys to get the code to a stable version. So if you blame Microsoft for their problems, then you are being unfair, dishonest and hmmm evil. Because then you are being one of those bad students who tease the best student in the class, because they didn’t work hard enough, because they are not good enough. Come up with a better browser, and then come and say Microsoft is anti-competitive. Until then it is better to shut up and let people do their work.
> Microsoft uses lots of externally hired people
> specifically to raise the amount of money earnt per
> employee
Regarding the adding of 1 Billion dollars cash each and every month to Microsoft’s bankaccount you must note that this figure is minus *all* made costs including payments of employees, external contractors, other development costs, support costs, etc.
The point however is that there isn’t much Linux fear to be smelled in the air at all. IMO Microsoft now and then does make some noise regarding Linux being a major competitor for the desktop market, mainly because they want to show that they haven’t got a monopoly at all. They even used an ultra small company like Be Inc to proof they didn’t have a monopoly… The fact is Be Inc didn’t even stand a chance because of Microsoft’s might.
> There is nothing anticompetitive about doing that – in
> fact, that’s exactly what competition is. Microsoft
> includes a bundled product with another one, consumers
> use that product, realize that they like it better than
> the old one, and switch.
Just saying that people stopped switching to Netscape is very incomplete. People stopped upgrading to Netscape (yes there was a time when Netscape was still being properly developed and offered a superior product …although already severly bloated… product) because a rival product was bundled with a monopolistic operating system offering over 90% of the features people would find useful to use.
Now image that you are a Windows software developer creating audio software, graphics software, webbrowsing software, or whatever other software. Now image that Microsoft would bundle a similar product compared to what your company is developing and bundles it with their dominant windows operating system, offering over 90% of the features your product provides. As the consumer already payed for the rival product by default, you are at a *very* serious disadvatage here.
> in fact, that’s exactly what competition is
No that is everything *but* true competition. (If I would hold a gun in a boxing ring and shoot down an unarmed “competitor” can I really claim that the strongest man has won?) As Windows is such a dominant product Microsoft should have been presured to offer a significantly cheaper bare bones version of their product (next to a more complete version) for true competition to have a chance.
IMO a well designed operating system is completely modular. For example with AmigaOS you can easily take out just about any component. For example webbrowser, application launchers, customization software, multimedia players, etc. Ironically the AmigaOS market still is internally a very competitive market!
For instance there are several webbrowsers still competing against each other, each with similar market shares, there are tons of application launchers to choose from, there are tons of replacement customization utilities to choose from, several commercially developed multimedia players to choose from, etc.
In contrast to the small Amiga market, Microsoft makes sure that as much technology as possible is completely undeletable and non-interchangable by the user. This is very bad for a healthy competitive market.
IMO ideally a dominant OS developer should not be allowed to create rival products for significantly different software and hardware markets. If this would have been the case, Microsoft could have easily switched webbrowsers (i.e. from Netscape to Opera), or from Word Perfect to StarOffice, etc from Windows release to Windows release, offering a good reason for true competition between independent software companies and freedom for consumers to buy a bare bones version to allow them to get the software they prefer without paying for a very similar product twice.
> Hmmm, Microsoft is not a monopoly in the browser market.
Did you miss an earlier posting or have you been away the last couple of years? Microsoft has around 90% market share within this market segment. This was achieved by bundling IE with Windows for many years.
> It isn’t a monopoly in the media arena (it shares the
> market with Real and Apple).
First, I didn’t state that Micorsoft already has a monopoly within this marker segment at all. I only mentioned that they are using their operating system monopoly to *create* another monopoly within this market segment as well.
I beleive there would have been far better options available today and many more competitors if there was a more competive market. In fact Microsoft tries to introduce its own new standards within this market segment, and if they would succeed they would severely hurt the last couple of remaining players due to their operating system monopoly.
> It isn’t a monopoly in the Office market.
I didn’t say that they already have a monopoly within this market segment either. But the fact is that Microsoft is utilizing their operating system monopoly to create a monopoly within this market segment as well. (i.e. commercials on Windows CDs, blundle discounts, marketing)
> And you claiming that XBOX abuses Microsoft monopoly is
> so darn funny I can’t stop laughing.
IMO Microsoft should not have been allowed to enter this market because of their desktop OS monopoly. And yes Microsoft is using their operating system monopoly to enter this market segment as well. That doesn’t mean that IMO an external company shouldn’t be allowed to use WindowsXP for a games console.
> Also note that WMP and Office is available on Mac OS.
Why don’t you understand that this would actually give Mircosoft alot more power? If consumers get familiar with these products on MacOS, pulling the plug or releasing inferior (i.e. buggy/incomplete/less featureful) versions would severely damage the remaining MacOS market. Again this development is very damaging for a competitive market.
Obviously Microsft is trying to battle competitors who moved large parts of their remaining business to MacOS as well.
> Legally, Apple is as much as monopoly as Microsoft is.
Apple’s market share within any market is far too low for them to be a monopoly. Even Nintendo and Sony don’t hold real monopolies within the video gaming industry (or any other market segment). You could only say that Nintendo does hold a sub-monopoly within the handheld console gaming sub-segment (within the console gaming market segment).
> You say ” Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows
> to eliminate competition from Netscape”. This is simply
> not true. We are here where we are in Internet age,
> thanks to IE.
No we are in the Internet age because of fast/cheap modems and internet providers. There already existed many webbrowsers, bulletin boards, FTP servers, IRC servers, newsgroup servers etc long before Microsoft started to monopolize the browser/internet market. Internet usage was very popular on Amigas even earlier than within the PC market.
Software advancements would have continued without Microsoft’s browser as well. IMO the market would actually have thrived!
> Show me what Netscape did in so many years.
Netscape was clearly superior to IE for several years until their market largely collapsed (together with healthy commercial development of Netscape) due to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.
> Come up with a better browser, and then come and say
> Microsoft is anti-competitive.
LOL did you really think that nowadays offering a superior product (within the browser or mediaplayer market) is enough to ensure commercial success? No way… and that fact is killing any chance of a healthy competitive market. Opera is a good low bloat browser, how many people would actually *buy* (not pirate or use a free version) of it for Windows when they already paid for IE and this even comes “integrated” (and pre-loaded) with the OS they are already using? IMO *alot* less than would have been the case within a competitive market.
Except you are meant to convice people to jump to your platform not leave. Microsoft will have to cover this up with some good PR.
Is it just me or does capitalism (or at least my understanding of it) completly fail for the software market?
There are many different new things that this software market has that no previous low tech market really had. Maybe the capitalism model of the market ruling isn’t enough to ensure there is healthy competition and a fair chance for all players.
Lets face it, whether its illegal or even unethical MS is an anti-competitve company, they loathe any competition (not entirly uncommon). This combined with their monopoly positions makes for an unfair market.
It seems perfectly reasnoble that MS should be able to bundle software with their OS, it is even a positive thing in many respects for the consumer.
However whether intended or not, this makes it virtually impossable to compete against. You can rave all you want about how crap the non-ms products are, but this doesn’t change the fact that is is virtually impossible to compete against somthing that someone already has that is of an acceptable quality. This fact can even partially explain the crapness of the non-MS products, that they lack suffienct investment because of the way the market is.
IE even has problems competiting agianst itself. How many people(non-geek) actually intentionally upgrade IE. Last I saw IE 6 only had 35-40% of the market.
Would somebody explain to me in plain and simple English how having already paid for a Microsoft OS on a machine one would want to go out and pay again for zero gain. It looks like the accounts departments in these organisations are asleep on the job. Somebody should sue Microsoft for what is arguably fraud or sue company management for wasting shareholders money.
…..Because IT depts are stupid and / or inherenly conservative?
No-one ever got fired for buying Windows 2000
Which is a shame as everything I do on my Win2K Dell box at work could be done just as well on almost any OS – I use SAP Accounts ( Linux / Unix compatible ) , Spreadsheets and a wordprocessor… I was quite happy with my Win98 Pentium 2/266 until they took that away and gave me a new Dell…..
I bet I’m far from unique in this too… our firm has several hundred employees all doing accounting/stock control and spreadsheet work, all on 1600mhz P4s with Win2k or XP Pro.
What a waste of cash..
… what disgusts me more — the way Microsoft behaves, or the way some people, who are otherwise quite decent, well-read, and educated, I’m sure, nonetheless flock to places like this all over the internet to defend MS at every turn.
Remember AstroTurf? That was the “Grassroots Uprising” in support of MS. It’s a shame it failed, really. Microsoft paid damned good money for it. MS neither needs nor cares about your support. That’s the fun of being the only game in town. Besides, when they need support, they just have a bunch of dead people from cities that never existed write letters to the Attorneys General of those pesky little states that won’t fall in line like good little drones. And everyone knows testimonials from beyond the grave carry *much* more weight than our comparatively mundane and banal verbal scuffles in this little forum …
I have lost my capacity for fresh disgust as regards Microsoft. Whenever I hear about some awful new (or old, yet only just come to light) thing they’ve done, my typical response is, “Hmm. That figures.”
Let me read that article again …
Hmmm. That figures.
Software advancements would have continued without Microsoft’s browser as well. IMO the market would actually have thrived!
If IE didn’t come along, the market would still be the same. Pre-IE Netscape is the same embodiment of current IE. It doesn’t supports current standards, it creates its own and many uses it etc.
Do I think the market would thrive if Microsoft never thought of violating someone’s trademark with IE? Nah. Plus, normal consumers would still have to pay for Netscape, the same goes for OEMs, software developers have to pay exborbidant amounts of money, and must gurrentee that they sell a certain amount of their products etc.
Heck, the world is better now then it would be is IE never existed. If AOL doesn’t want to move from IE to Gecko, what could you expect?
A few points:
* Site licenses are per site, not per pc.
* MS volume licenses are for *upgrade* versions and hence require a previous qualifying MS OS.
* If you went out and bought XP Pro Upgrade, it requires a previous qualifying MS OS. This is the same thing, just on a much larger scale.
* These are the terms of the License Agreement, plenty of other software companies do the same thing, don’t bash it just because it’s MS.
* Saying this is an ‘abuse of their monopolistic power’ is utter crap – it’s business, they’re just reminding corporates of the actual terms of the license agreement.
* MS *are* getting too big for their boots – hence RH’s change in direction to the desktop with ‘null’.
+——————+
| Just my £0.02GBP |
+——————+
After I typed that last comment, I started thinking. A couple of scenarios occurred to me. They are both great for Microsoft (and they’re a service company, right?) but awful for their customers. “Customer” doesn’t mean the same thing it used to anymore.
Scenario:
Company A has an XP site license. It presently covers 300 workstations, but because Company A (rightfully) predicted huge growth over a 3-month period, the decision was made to preemptively purchase a license for 500 seats, and begin adding to these 300 immediately, as growth necessitates.
In order to achieve homogeneity and keep the tech guys from having regular and escalating nervous breakdowns, all the workstations are identical (except, of course, for a handful of specialty machines tricked out for graphic design or some such). As such, it is a simple matter to create an image (Windows, apps, everything) that can restore any of the workstations to default specs in minutes. In a networked environment of this size, this type of simplicity and homogeneity is critical.
Sales are up. Several new workstations must be ordered. There are new sales guys, new customer reps, and of course new secretaries and assistants. Then a requisition form crosses the boss’ desk. Fifteen new workstations, needed ASAP. But what’s this? They ship with Windows? He calls the head tech guy, who’s been up for 3 days straight attempting to purge the latest Outlook worm from the system and restore something approaching sanity to his silicon charges.
“I thought we had a site license that would cover us for 200 more machines over the next year. What the hell is this? Just because business is booming doesn’t mean we THROW money away.”
Tech guy: “Well, I … that is, we originally thought … the thing of it is, we’re going to have to buy these machines with Windows on them.”
“Why?”
“Because Microsoft says so.”
“And then when we get them here?”
“My team will wipe the hard drives clean, throw the corporate disk image on the drives, and they’ll be set.”
“So. We have to buy a copy of Windows. Then we have to delete it and replace it … with a copy we’ve already paid for?”
“That’s it exactly, sir.”
“That’s absurd! Didn’t you CHECK this before you recommended the original deal?”
“Well, sir, that’s the way we’ve ALWAYS done it, and … common sense, sir. We never thought they’d want us to buy the thing twice …”
“Yes. Well. Now, about this virus thing …”
The tech guy cringes, looks over his shoulder. Out the window he sees sunlight. Somewhere there’s grass, plush, green, absent the wriggling of bare toes. Somewhere there’s sparkling blue water under a bloated orange sunset …
“It’s under control, sir. Mostly. A couple of my guys are gonna stay with me tonight, finish the backups, assess what we’ve lost.”
“E-mail?”
“Outlook, sir. The memos … the meetings. It does no good. They work hard. They forget. They open attachments. It only takes one click …”
The boss looks thoughtful for a moment. “How much money are we losing here?”
“I don’t have the exact figures, sir … I … we, um … I’ll have someone do the math.”
“We really do have to buy it twice, don’t we? If we buy some off-brand piece of crap machine without an OS, we risk getting busted by Gates AND ending up with a machine we may or may not be able to depend on.”
“That’s it exactly, sir. They certainly seem to have us by the, um … exactly where they want us. Sir.”
The boss looks thoughtful again, says nothing for long seconds. The tech guy begins to calculate, in the back of his mind, exactly how vested he is, how well he’ll do if he cashes out his stock. Hoping for a generous severance package seems sadly optimistic …
Instead, the boss smiles. “Come over here. Let me show you what I’ve been reading about.”
The tech guy approaches the desk. Anytime the boss smiles while his wallet is still hemorrhaging cash, something is very, very wrong with the world. Then he looks at the LCD panel on the boss’ desk, scans the webpage the boss has open.
“Linux, sir. I use it at home.”
“Ah,” the boss says. He scrolls the webpage a bit, reads for a second. “Tell me about Linux …”
Mike Bourma: I didn’t say that they already have a monopoly within this market segment either. But the fact is that Microsoft is utilizing their operating system monopoly to create a monopoly within this market segment as well. (i.e. commercials on Windows CDs, blundle discounts, marketing)
Bundle discounts was extended to Apple, but Apple didn’t accepted it. Microsoft Office’s huge userbase don’t come from bundle discounts, don’t come from ads – but from corporate customers. Sun is the only company that realizes this. Besides, commercials on the Windows CD only happen in the Windows retail box, which itself is a small minority of sales.
Besides, the last I checked, marketing isn’t an abuse of an monopoly. So, Intel promoting “Intel Inside” is an abuse of monopoly, or Apple promoting “Think Different” is an abuse of monopoly.
Mike Bourma: The point however is that there isn’t much Linux fear to be smelled in the air at all. IMO Microsoft now and then does make some noise regarding Linux being a major competitor for the desktop market
Yeah right.
Let’s see their conology of PR statements
“Linux isn’t a competion to us”
“Linux is cancer”
“Linux is our competition on the servers, but no on desktops”.
Yeah right. Microsoft is fighting the adoption of Linux in any way possible. From promising government jobs to trying to please the government by donation of computers to schools – Linux’s growth is still 30%.
Reason: Price. Until Microsoft could make something as cheap or cheaper than $0, the third world goes to Linux. And guess what? the third world is on a tech adoption frenzy.
Mike Bourma: IMO Microsoft should not have been allowed to enter this market because of their desktop OS monopoly. And yes Microsoft is using their operating system monopoly to enter this market segment as well. That doesn’t mean that IMO an external company shouldn’t be allowed to use WindowsXP for a games console.
Mike, that has to be the most idiotic thing I heard you say.
1) Microsoft in no way uses its dominance in the OS field to push XBOX. The fact that PS/2s sell better than XBOX tell that.
2) XBOX doesn’t run Windows XP. It runs a highly modified form of DirectX on top of Windows NT’s kernel using a highly modified form of NTFS. Again, I don’t see how this is “leveraging” their monopoly.
3) Microsoft makes money from royalties from game developers to use their highly modified form of DirectX. I have trouble understanding how an external company would be able to make money from a game console using Windows XP.
Mike Bourma: Why don’t you understand that this would actually give Mircosoft alot more power? If consumers get familiar with these products on MacOS, pulling the plug or releasing inferior (i.e. buggy/incomplete/less featureful) versions would severely damage the remaining MacOS market.
Microsoft released WMP so that Mac customers could use Microsoft’s propreitary formats. Microsoft knows nobody wants to use WMP in its Windows form on Mac OS.
Microsoft Office 2001 was much more featurefull than Office 2000 (suprise suprise!). Office v. X wasn’t more featurefull than Office 2001 nor Office XP because it took the Mac BU so long to port it over to Mac OS X. The blame should go to Apple, not Microsoft.
Mike Bourma: Obviously Microsft is trying to battle competitors who moved large parts of their remaining business to MacOS as well.
When Microsoft arrived on the Mac market, there weren’t any competition to Office.
Mike Bourma: Apple’s market share within any market is far too low for them to be a monopoly.
Apple’s market share in the desktop market is far too low for them to be a monopoly. But since the DOJ recognizes Apple as not a direct competitor to Microsoft because it is on a different platform, it’s monopoly status would be determine that way. Apple is a monopoly of the workstation PPC market.
Mike Bourma: Even Nintendo and Sony don’t hold real monopolies within the video gaming industry (or any other market segment).
They don’t. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo share the market. For one to be a monopoly, it would need to have close to 100% market share.
Mike Bourma: You could only say that Nintendo does hold a sub-monopoly within the handheld console gaming sub-segment (within the console gaming market segment).
Not if you consider Digimon, Tamachoci, Pokemon etc. which are handheld console games.
Mike Bourma: Netscape was clearly superior to IE for several years until their market largely collapsed (together with healthy commercial development of Netscape) due to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.
If Netscape was so good, why did it decide to start a rewrite?
Thunk about that. Also think about why Netscape was the slowest, most resource hungry browser back then.
Mike Bourma: Opera is a good low bloat browser, how many people would actually *buy*
Opera is targeting a niche. It is a niche player.
Rob: “Ah,” the boss says. He scrolls the webpage a bit, reads for a second. “Tell me about Linux …”
Ahh, Rob, we finally agree.
Actually, if my hypothetical company had 300 workstations, they’d fall into this category:
Enterprise Agreement 6.0
Level A: 250-2399 PCs
There is no “blanket” MS site license. The notion is silly, when you consider MS’ business model. You buy a site license for a specific number of PCs, within a range. For instance, the level goes up to:
Level D: 15000+ (PCs)
Now, according to this, here is what you get (for, say, 15000 PCs).
“3 years with the option to renew, at the end, for an additional 1 or 3 years.”
“Each enrollment receives one introductory Product Fulfillment kit containing an initial set of CD-ROMs for the pools and language groups selected with updates throughout the term of the agreement.”
So. You get an “initial set” of CD-ROMs, which you can then use to image your 15000 PCs which ALREADY HAVE WINDOWS ON THEM. If each of these 15000 machines does NOT already have Windows on them, you can’t install from these “initial CD-ROMs” under the License Agreement you just entered into (for 3 years).
Computers wear out. You have a license to use your legally licensed product on 15000+ machines. Over the course of 3 years, let’s say, just grabbing a number, 5000 of them must be replaced. Because you can NOT replace them with PCs that do not *already* have Windows on them, you must buy 5000 PCs *with* Windows on them so that you can then image them with your “initial CD-ROMs”. So (and, yeah, this is a serious question) what the hell is that license actually GOOD for?
Every time you buy a new machine to replace an old one (or just buy a new one because you’re growing but STILL in your “Level”!) you have to purchase Windows … again? So. You initially purchase a machine with Windows. You use your “initial CD-ROMs” to then image the machine (with the corporate image) with ANOTHER copy of Windows. You then replace this machine (buying yet ANOTHER copy of Windows) … and, again, image it with the corporate CDs (for the sake of homogeneity, which would be crucial in maintaining THAT many machines).
One guy up there said, “Other companies do this same thing …”
I challenge you: Name one.
Name ONE company that forces you to buy your computer (which is hardware and, despite what MS would like everyone to believe, NOT licensed to you by them) with their product on it. Name ONE company that forces you to buy its product TWICE in order to legally use it.
Microsoft would love nothing more than to convince everyone everywhere that Windows and the machine on which it runs are inextricably intertwined and let no man put asunder what MS hath joined together …
I *bought* my PC. I *own* it. If I want to, I can throw it out the window, then go down and drive over it repeatedly in my car. I can set it on fire just to see what color it burns. Yet, there have been how many cases where MS wrongfully informed people that the OS and the machine are not discrete entities?
Microsoft reminds me of one of those over-the-top, it could never really happen in the real world, B-movie world domination villains. Except … this ain’t celluloid, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who really cares. I mean, computers are at the core of our society (by virtue of being at the core of our economy) and we sit idly by while MS inexorably tightens its grip …
I should go to sleep. Been up since, um, I don’t even know when. Guess I let this get under my skin a lot more than usual. Rant over. =)
Internet usage was very popular on Amigas even earlier than within the PC market.
Because the vast majority of people in the world care about the Amiga and it accurately represents the trends of those people, right? (Which is why it died such an embarrassing death.) IE helped bring the internet to the masses. Netscape did it first, no doubt, but IE did it better, seemlessly integrating into other products, getting out of your way, and offering a nice browsing experience rather than trying to take over your desktop. AOL couldn’t use Netscape 4.7 even if they had wanted to, because Netscape was too greedy to make it into an OLE object. (See Joel’s current article on platforms) Netscape was focusing on world domination (“we’re gonna replace the desktop!”) while Microsoft focused on writing a damn good browser.
Netscape was clearly superior to IE for several years until their market largely collapsed (together with healthy commercial development of Netscape) due to Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.
I still remember reading the review of Netscape 2.0 for the Mac–this was way before IE was a credible competitor–and Macuser gave it 3 out of 5 stars, for being slow, buggy, unreliable…you name it. At the time, Netscape was the darling of the industry, the guys who made the product that everyone was using to change the world. And their flagship product was, while better than anything on the market, decidedly mediocre. Netscape was “better” than IE only for as long as it held the feature edge; its programming was awful from almost the start.
LOL did you really think that nowadays offering a superior product (within the browser or mediaplayer market) is enough to ensure commercial success? No way… and that fact is killing any chance of a healthy competitive market.
You’re insinuating that offering a superior product should ensure commercial success. Look at history; that’s usually not enough. The superior products don’t always win. And I could just as well whine and bitch about Linux distributions. How could I, for example, expect to sell an MP3 player for Linux when those bastards at Red Hat include Xine? Or heck, anything that’s included with your darling, the Amiga?
Opera is a good low bloat browser, how many people would actually *buy* (not pirate or use a free version) of it for Windows when they already paid for IE and this even comes “integrated” (and pre-loaded) with the OS they are already using?
If Opera were $35 better than IE to users, they would buy it. For most people, it isn’t.
Rob: Because you can NOT replace them with PCs that do not *already* have Windows on them, you must buy 5000 PCs *with* Windows on them so that you can then image them with your “initial CD-ROMs”. So (and, yeah, this is a serious question) what the hell is that license actually GOOD for?
Just say you standardize on Windows XP. And just say when you buy new machines, they have Windows Me, Windows 98 or maybe Windows 2000. That’s where it makes the big difference. Plus, just say after a year, Microsoft releases XP2, you can upgrade (3 years, right?).
Rob: I *bought* my PC. I *own* it. If I want to, I can throw it out the window, then go down and drive over it repeatedly in my car. I can set it on fire just to see what color it burns.
You can do anything that pleases you, except something that breaks your agreement with Microsoft or break the law. If you make your computer a P2P node for swaping old episods of Friends, you can’t do that, even if it is your machine. You can install Windows on it, as long as you agree to the purchase agreement. If you don’t agree, go ahead, use Linux or BSD, or what the heck, ram it over with a car.
bkakes: You’re insinuating that offering a superior product should ensure commercial success. Look at history; that’s usually not enough.
Exactly what I have been trying to point out here, marketing does the job. Netscape had a lot of money when IE was desperately trying to be compatible with at least 10% of the web. It could have taken advertising steps to ensure Netscape becomes a household name and stay an household name.
Just how stupid are companies nowadays? Wasn’t it them in the first place that made Windows a huge success? Did they ever read and learn about what they bought?
I have no clue about site licenses, just like most people on this forum. However, if site licenses, as has been stated, are simply upgrades, then what’s wrong about MS saying you can’t install it on a “naked PC”?
Taking a quick look at http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/programs/sa/saolsleacompare.asp it is easy to find out what you are buying.
If your company needs 500 licenses, it will be in Level A, 250 to 2,399 computers. What do you get:
– Microsoft Office Professional
– Microsoft Windows Professional Upgrade
– Core CAL
– Additional products available on an ad hoc basis
As can be seen easily, only the Windows upgrade, not the full version, is available. It is not even in fine print. It is exactly what you buy in the first place. Some articles are very misleading. The headline was even more misleading.
I guess Dell shot itself in the foot with the inclusion of FreeDOS. Of course, it depends on the type of license your company has. Only the Enterprise Agreement 6.0 and Enterprise Subscription Agreement 6.0 offer the upgrade only (there is still the option to have additional products).
I do not always agree with Microsoft. However, the way some easy to verify facts are presented in the daily press is awful. It probably is all in the name of sensationalism. Any competent purchasing guy should know what he is purchasing. Having the Enterprise Agreement doesn’t mean you buy Windows twice, either. You buy Windows from your computer supplier – and then you buy an upgrade. It is your fault if you buy the upgrade if you don’t need it.
This policy is also in line with Microsoft’s stand on not shipping a computer without an OS. If your company doesn’t need Windows, then they always can buy a computer without Windows installed. The issue of the Enterprise Agreement upgrade license to Windows is a non-issue then. And if you need Windows, you get it with your computer and then you can upgrade using your Enterprise Agreement license.
> If IE didn’t come along, the market would still be the
> same.
No a webbrowser monopoly would in that case not be directly linked to an operating system monopoly. That’s an enormous difference for a company which wants to penetrate the webbrowser market with a new (superior) product.
BTW IMO if another company would abuse their position as well, IMO it should not automaticly mean that it’s OK to do so. IMO ideally an international organisation should watch over newly introduced standards and anti-competive monopoly abuse. Just like for instance the Opta in the Netherlands.
Mike Bouma: No a webbrowser monopoly would in that case not be directly linked to an operating system monopoly. That’s an enormous difference for a company which wants to penetrate the webbrowser market with a new (superior) product.
Not being a part of an OS wouldn’t make Netscape be ported to various platforms. Currently, Netscape only supports a handful of platforms (while Mozilla supports much much more).
So, what you are saying is total balloney. Whether or not a new web browsing could penetrate the market would be the same during netscape reign and IE reign. I’m happyly using Opera and mozilla on Windows 2000 and XP, no restrictions there.
Mike Bouma: BTW IMO if another company would abuse their position as well, IMO it should not automaticly mean that it’s OK to do so.
Then why are you protecting Netscape? Look at Netscape pre-IE. It hardly support new standards, it introduces new stuff that aren’t standards (until recently), like JavaScript (IIRC, called LiveScript at first, and now called EMCAScript).
Wow. Between Mr. Cooper and CDN this whole mess has been cleared up.
And all without any bloodshed. I would advise we all return
to our lives and stop fretting over what is obviously a sane
and reasonable license. I for one feel alot better.
Hello? Microsoft made the product. Microsoft have a say on the buy and sell process.
And they should have control over just that. Microsoft can dictate the terms of buying and selling the product, but once it’s bought, doctrine of first sale among other things dictates that they shouldn’t be able to force the buyer to do anything else.
Plus, since you mention Rockfellar, have you ever gotten oil that low in price after the DOJ practically killed them?
Some industries are natural monopolies. In those industries, the ideal situation is a single, highly regulated company which is forced to surrender most (but not all) of its profits in the form of a “public dividend”, paid out equally to every citizen.
Luckily, the software industry isn’t like that. As long as there are common standards, competition works great, in an industry where the main products are intangible.
Not that free for successful companies. And Arabs.
Successful companies like small businesses? They’re responsible for creating over 90% of new jobs nowadays, yet regulations on them are exceedingly harsh, while big business gets huge tax breaks.
Perhaps a fairer system would be to eliminate the corporate income tax and sales tax, which would eliminate almost all requirements for corporations in competitive industries to report to the government? A couple percentage points increase in the personal income tax could easily cover the loss in governmental income; and because corporations wouldn’t have to pay 50% tax on income, they could pay employees more, thus the employees despite paying more in tax would still be earning the same amount.
I agree with you completely about the Arabs though.
Uhmmm, your proof isn’t enough. The OEM version is made for PC makers. The retail version is made for end users. Part of the EULA of the OEM version is that you can only use it on a brand new spanking PC.
There’s a thing called the doctrine of first sale. It states that, once a product has been sold by the creator, it can be resold, traded, etc. at will, and the creator can’t have a say at all.
Microsoft has repeatedly tried to work around the doctrine by including EULAs prohibiting resale. The US is notable for not only letting Microsoft do this, but by making it easier, in the form of the UCITA; Germany is notable for enforcing the doctrine of first sale even on Microsoft’s software, which means people can and do resell OEM versions in Germany.
Most Linux companies are merely struggling to survive…
Linux is a brand-new industry. Some companies, like RedHat and Mandrake, emerge as successes. Some established companies like IBM and Sun build on their old strengths and leverage Linux. Some companies, like the UnitedLinux group, are not successful. That’s just the way it goes. The same thing happened in the proprietary market, except that the unsuccessful companies are long gone.
Fine. Spend 40 billion dollars on the next gen mainframe application, and I would just download it off the Net for free.
Well, as you of course know, information wants to be free.
What’s that next-gen mainframe application doing being developed in a company? Applications that have consumer value are best developed privately, but a $40-bn mainframe app probably has a lot of value outside the consumerism spectrum. It should not be controlled privately, or kept proprietary, or patented, etc.; it should be done out in the open, in university laboratories, and the results should be placed in the public domain for commercial and non-commercial groups alike to improve on it.
Yes, there are times when a private company actually has reason to develop something that big. But it’s rare. If Microsoft was to do that, they wouldn’t have any cash left in reserve!
Note that being a monopoly by itself can’t be considered illegal.
In the US, monopoly maintenance is illegal, but monopoly leveraging is not. In general, I don’t necessarily agree with that; there are many times when a monopoly is leveraged illegally. But in the case of Microsoft, IE truly was a better product.
Microsoft’s other products, in general, either aren’t bundled with the OS (Office) and are monopolies in their own right; or they’re bundled but not used. People used MSN Messenger not because it came preinstalled, but because they had Hotmail or MSN accounts, saw the ads, and decided to try it out. People don’t use Windows Media Player; Winamp is still the largest by far, and as Winamp3 can do video, I only expect its marketshare to continue rising.
Funny, too, that you bring up the Xbox. Many people cite that as an example of Microsoft leveraging its monopoly status. But the Xbox is actually much different; it’s Microsoft leveraging its $40 bn of cash for growth.
Microsoft is decidedly not a sexy name in the industry, and people bought the Xbox not because it said MS but because of the games. People love Project Gotham Racing, and Halo, and all the others. If independent developers like Sega hadn’t agreed to produce games, and if Microsoft hadn’t bought up myriad independent game studios, then the Xbox would be a joke.
As it is, it’s a very good thing Microsoft entered this market, and also the handheld market. In both of those markets, there were established competitors; in the console market, it used to be Sega and Nintendo, in the handheld market, Palm, Apple, and Psion. But then, some of the competitors started to go; Apple discontinued the Newton, Psion became a minor player in N. America, Sega lost marketshare then finally exited the hardware business, and Nintendo lost marketshare to upstart Sony with their Playstation. And it looked as if Sony was bound to have a monopoly on the Playstation for a while to come, and the same for Palm on handhelds.
Then Microsoft came along. They created the Pocket PC platform, making it possible for the first time for many different manufacturers to offer devices based on the same platform. They weren’t too good at first, but by version 3.0, the Pocket PCs were quite good indeed. And competition between hardware vendors meant better products for everyone.
By the time Palm introduced competition among hardware, it was too late; now, Palm and Handspring hardware companies are on the road for bankruptcy, it seems that the only hope PalmSource has for survival is getting bought up by Sony, and Microsoft’s dominance is all but secure. Now, it’s Microsoft versus Nokia/Symbian; two strong competitors.
Similar things happened in the console market. As Sega and Nintendo had problems, Microsoft replaced them as a viable #2, so that neither one can have a monopoly.
Legally, Apple is as much as monopoly as Microsoft is. The DOJ excluded Apple as competition.
Whatever stupid things Apple does, they’re not a monopoly.
Microsoft has over 90% marketshare on the desktop; they lack 5% from Apple, 4-5% from Linux, and a tiny bit from other platforms. Saying Apple has a monopoly over PPC desktops is absurd as saying that Sony has a monopoly over Emotion Engine-based machines, or Microsoft over Intel-based game consoles.
People don’t care about what goes on inside; they care about what you can do with it. Apples and Wintels do much the same things. Except that Wintels have over 90% marketshare. Apple is not a viable competitor to Microsoft, simply because Microsoft is so far beyond critical mass; Apple could introduce computers that were cheaper than any Wintel box (they have at times done that), and people would still buy Wintels. Once you’ve gotten over a certain amount of marketshare, you could have all the competitors in the world and you’ll still be a monopoly.
> Bundle discounts was extended to Apple, but Apple didn’t
> accepted it.
A Mircosoft monopoly on MacOS could have proven to be a disaster for MacOS. What if Microsoft later decides to pull the plug with regard to the MacOS version? This when for instance all viable alternatives are commercially eliminated..?
> Besides, the last I checked, marketing isn’t an abuse of
> an monopoly. So, Intel promoting “Intel Inside” is an
> abuse of monopoly, or Apple promoting “Think Different”
> is an abuse of monopoly.
First Intel does not have a monopoly within any market segment. The slogan “Intel Inside” is totally off topic with regard to my comments. I nowhere stated that Mircosoft couldn’t use their “Where Do You Want to Go Today?” slogan. (If I stated such nonesense then your comment would be a good parallel to use). What I meant is that Microsoft can market itself into totally *different* markets with billion dollar loses, solely because they can use their enormous cash reserves created by their operating system monopoly.
So they do use their operating system monopoly directly to pentrate totally different market segments which gives them a very unfair advantage. This in the long run is very bad for a competitive market.
If you owned a supermarket and Microsoft would decide to open another supermarket nextdoor and offer all products at cost prices until your company goes under, would you consider that fair or healthy competition?
> Let’s see their conology of PR statements
> “Linux isn’t a competion to us”
> “Linux is cancer”
> “Linux is our competition on the servers, but no on
> desktops”.
You forget all the “leaked statements” or what they state in court. I wasn’t talking about their marketing efforts.
> 1) Microsoft in no way uses its dominance in the OS
> field to push XBOX. The fact that PS/2s sell better than
> XBOX tell that.
The fact that the Playstation outsells the xBox has no relationship with Microsoft using their operating system monopoly to enter the game console and embedded systems markets.
> 2) XBOX doesn’t run Windows XP. It runs a highly
> modified form of DirectX on top of Windows NT’s kernel
> using a highly modified form of NTFS. Again, I don’t see
> how this is “leveraging” their monopoly.
Although this is getting totally off topic, I believe a Windows 2000 kernel was used, regardless both W2K/WXP kernels were derived from the WNT kernel. BTW my mention of the WXP was only an example, why should you take this out of context?
They were entering a healthy competitive market and for instance SEGA was one of the victums, as they could not see a future for themselves with another strong (read wealthy) competitor entering an already extremely competitive market. In my opinion Microsoft itself should stay out of hardware, just like IMO they should stay out of politics, education or markets where they can use their established monopoly to gain an anti-competitive advantage.
The same goes for other companies. Personally I wouldn’t like to see Shell sell cars either. (OK, not a very good example as they haven’t really got a monopoly, you would still be able to get fuel from many other competitors and creating a global car monopoly by itseld is already close to impossible.) A global fuel monopoly however would probably be far worse than an operating system monopoly. Luckily also oil can be found in many different countries around the world.
> 3) Microsoft makes money from royalties from game
> developers to use their highly modified form of DirectX.
> I have trouble understanding how an external company
> would be able to make money from a game console using
> Windows XP.
It is much easier using standard PC components to build a (not so elegant) game console. WindowsXP has a relatively mature kernel and I see no reason why an external company could not license DirectX from Microsoft as well. BTW it was only an example.
> Microsoft released WMP so that Mac customers could use
> Microsoft’s propreitary formats. Microsoft knows nobody
> wants to use WMP in its Windows form on Mac OS.
They simply want to expand their monopoly and expand their influence on the entire computer market.
> When Microsoft arrived on the Mac market, there weren’t
> any competition to Office.
The Mac is know for its great desktop publishing applications long before Microsoft started to support the Mac. Also AmigaOS had some excellent software titles like Wordwordth (Insert WordART/instant spelling corrections/etc) or Final writer when most PC users were still using Word Perfect 5.1 for MSDOS.
> They don’t. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo share the
> market. For one to be a monopoly, it would need to have
> close to 100% market share.
Why do you repeat what I said regarding there being no console market monopoly, but only with different wording? There is no console market monopoly. What I said is that Microsoft is using its operating system monopoly to enter a totally different market segment.
> But since the DOJ recognizes Apple as not a direct
> competitor to Microsoft because it is on a different
> platform, it’s monopoly status would be determine that
> way.
Then the DOJ would be wrong. Microsoft’s business directly affects Apple, there’s nothing more obvious that the two companies are within the same market segment.
> Not if you consider Digimon, Tamachoci, Pokemon etc.
> which are handheld console games.
Actually Pokemon is also owned by Nintendo. Nintendo has sold over 120 million gameboys and without a doubt currently totally dominates the handheld gaming industry. PDA/Cellphone gaming is on the rise however.
> Thunk about that. Also think about why Netscape was the
> slowest, most resource hungry browser back then.
IMO from a efficiency point of view IE was just as bad as Netscape back in those days, but I still prefered Netscape if I really had to choose. As I stated before I consider both Netscape(/Mozilla) and IE to be unoptimised bloatware. IE is currently faster mainly because large parts of this software is already loaded into the memory at startup. (Hence results into unfair comparisons when comparing it performance wise to Netscape)
> Not being a part of an OS wouldn’t make Netscape be
> ported to various platforms.
That not at all what I was getting at. New players would have had a much better chance. Maybe Opera would have been in the position IE is now or Netscape has been in the past. Currently there is no healthy market for 3rd party developed commercial browsers on the Windows platform.
> I’m happyly using Opera and mozilla on Windows 2000 and
> XP, no restrictions there.
Maybe Opera would have been much better. For instance by making more money and using this for financing their software development. Or maybe you would be using something totally different. Think about it for a while.
> Then why are you protecting Netscape?
I’m not protecting Netscape at all. I never really liked Netscape nor Internet Explorer that much. IE is currently the best browser for any new PC user, simply because it is the standard (this is mainly a result of the bundling and and integration with Microsoft’s monopolistic operating).
No that is everything *but* true competition. (If I would hold a gun in a boxing ring and shoot down an unarmed “competitor” can I really claim that the strongest man has won?)
In my mind at least, you’re proving my point. What Microsoft did to OEMs was just that; they held a gun to their head, and said that if you don’t bundle every machine with Windows and nothing but, then you’re dead.
What Microsoft did to consumers was much different. Consumers couldn’t lose! Before, they would need to have a CD to install a web browser, causing great inconvenience. Now, they had the choice of either using the included Microsoft browser, or if that didn’t suit their needs they could download Netscape or another browser.
Now, if MS had done something like what they did with Win3.1, where they put in special code to prevent DR-DOS from working though it otherwise would have worked fine, then that would have been illegal, and rightly so. But bundling, when consumers have the full capability to use a different product, in no way hurts the consumer.
IMO a well designed operating system is completely modular.
IMHO, the perfect operating system is something like Windows CE. It can fit, with applications, in 64 MB of flash ROM; you can download an application in a single package and run that, no setup or install necessary; and at the low-end it can fit in a couple megabytes of ROM, while at the high end it can use DirectX and is capable of running games as powerful as those on Dreamcast (which used it) and Xbox (which I think uses it). Palm and Symbian can claim to be as modular, but not as scalable on the high-end; Unix and Windows in all their forms are powerful enough, but not anything else.
After all, a user can only really be using one application at once. They may want another one on the screen as a reference, but no one really uses two apps at once. At most, they use two different screens of one app.
But that well-designed OS shouldn’t stop people from bundling apps. Microsoft’s handhelds come with PocketOffice, and Pocket IE; should they not? The Xbox, IIRC, comes with a browser disc. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
and non-interchangable by the user
You’re criticizing the fact that for a user to use Netscape on Windows, he has to put up with IE being auto-loaded at startup. And I agree, that’s a bad thing. But that has less to do with antitrust and more to do with bad software design.
Opera is a good low bloat browser, how many people would actually *buy*
Isn’t that what competition is? Whether or not you buy Windows, IE is available for free. And it’s available for free on other platforms (and arguably, the Mac version is better than the Windows version). So why would you buy Opera when you can get IE for free?
You’ve got to remember, antitrust laws are designed to protect the consumer, not other companies. Corporations should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want; antitrust only kicks in when they use their monopoly to exploit consumers.
Let’s say Opera stopped developing tomorrow, AOL discontinued Netscape, and every single Moz developers’ computers, and all the servers, got struck by lightning and all the code was lost. So that suddenly there was only a single browser available for Windows, and that was IE. It would, at that point, seem like quite a good idea for Microsoft to discontinue their free version of IE, requiring people to either buy it separately, or buy it bundled with Windows. But that would be illegal. As long as Microsoft continues to offer IE for free, consumers benefit, even if MS’ competitors don’t.
Is it just me or does capitalism (or at least my understanding of it) completly fail for the software market?
Most markets have standardization. If you buy apples at one place, and you can get them somewhere else cheaper, you do. You don’t need to worry about different types of roads, or whether the new apples will be crushed by the old ones, or whether your food processors will only work with the old apples and you’d need to buy new ones.
Software, by its nature, is among the markets that aren’t inherently standardized; and in that repect, it’s among the rare markets that aren’t artificially standardized either. No matter what kind of a project you’re doing, you can always find the screws you need at a local hardware store; but if you have an application, you need to use exactly the OS called for.
Ideally, software that doesn’t require real-time performance should be written in some bytecode language which can be run by any operating system. Games won’t work with that, but most desktops apps would. Also, all applications should use the same storage formats. Essentially, someone should be able to completely replace Windows with Linux without needing to change anything else. When that happens, the software market will finally have competition.
> Which is why it died such an embarrassing death.
Actually Amigas were selling great when Commodore bankrupted (after huge loses created by their PC branch). If Microsoft would bankrupt today (I know it is hard to imagine, but the same counted for Atari/Commodore at a time) lots of companies would fight over Windows rights for many years as well.
To be correct the Amiga market is still alive today. Not in the numbers it used to, but much better than you could expect after many years of court battles and false starts due to i.e. pressure by Microsoft on Gateway. Considering that the last completely new desktop Amiga systems were released in 1992 the Amiga market is remarkable.
> Netscape did it first, no doubt, but IE did it better
IE did it better much later. Would you think it would be relevant to say 100 years from now that a new webbrowser is better than IE 6.0? Hopefully that would be the case, that is called progress nor do I expect people to switch back to Internet Explorer 3.0, do you?
> You’re insinuating that offering a superior product
> should ensure commercial success.
No, I was only pointing out that there isn’t a healthy competitive market within the computing industry of today. I know for instance *in advance* that no 3rd party webbrowser (regardless if its superior) can defeat Miscrosoft’s IE on Windows. It is not a good investment.
> And I could just as well whine and bitch about Linux
> distributions. How could I, for example, expect to sell
> an MP3 player for Linux when those bastards at Red Hat
> include Xine?
Linux offers many different alternatives and many different distributions. Although the Linux market commercially isn’t a healthy market, all new applications are being offered a similar chance for “success”.
> Or heck, anything that’s included with your darling, the
> Amiga?
The above also counts for Amiga although with the exception that a large percentage of Amiga users actually purshase software.
> If Opera were $35 better than IE to users, they would
> buy it. For most people, it isn’t
They have to cover their development costs. When they sell more copies, costs can come down significantly. Windows/IE sales have covered Microsoft’s development costs a million times over and still these products costs far too much money. This is due to their monopoly position within the market.
With this kind of behavior, I can see this happening to the mono project. If ever the mono project becomes successful implementing the .NET in linux, MS can just say: thanks for showing that .NET can run on linux but you cannot use our .NET technologies (APIs). I hope this would not happen.
Uhmmm, your proof isn’t enough. The OEM version is made for PC makers. The retail version is made for end users. Part of the EULA of the OEM version is that you can only use it on a brand new spanking PC.
MS EULA is not a law. It’s not even a contract signed by two parties, so it’s complete useless in most of the civilized world. This is why they allowed people in Germany to resell their Windows CDs and Microsoft couldn’t do anything about it.
> Now, they had the choice of either using the included
> Microsoft browser, or if that didn’t suit their needs
> they could download Netscape or another browser.
The trouble however is that most people don’t care what browser they are using, they only want it to work. Most *ordinary* users don’t even know what Opera is.
Most people simply use the software that comes installed on the box. OEMs should have been given much more freedom to completely delete IE and WMP without worries and instead easily install alternative 3rd party solutions instead. Of course there should need to be a rational price different between bare bones Windows and a complete bundle. Microsoft could have easily used a 3rd party browser and media player for such a bundle instead of making sure to dominate these important market segments all by itself.
> But bundling, when consumers have the full capability
> to use a different product, in no way hurts the
> consumer.
Bundling by itself is not bad. And actually I am completely for bundling software with *computers*, just like I have always been. However the consumer already pays for IE and WMP and therefor is extremely unlikely to opt for a 3rd party solution. If a rationally prices bare bones version of Windows was offered they would far more likely look for the best possible solution available.
> But that well-designed OS shouldn’t stop people from
> bundling apps. Microsoft’s handhelds come with
> PocketOffice, and Pocket IE; should they not? The Xbox,
> IIRC, comes with a browser disc. I don’t see anything
> wrong with that.
Me neither, although I do believe such should be 3rd party applications. Having everything under one roof (OS/browser/applications/games) etc is very bad for a competitive market.
> But that has less to do with antitrust and more to do
> with bad software design.
Actually this “integration” was a major part of the antitrust case as well.
> Whether or not you buy Windows, IE is available for free.
The development costs are covered by Windows sales, and therefor it isn’t really free.
If you buy a can of coke, do you really think the can is free and you only pay for the cola? (or vice versa?) note however that I’m not against bundling cans with cola.
> And it’s available for free on other platforms (and
> arguably, the Mac version is better than the Windows
> version).
This “free” availability comes at high price though for developers (And IMO for consumers as well in the long run), especially with regard to 3rd party oppertunities for creating a competitive browser market for MacOS. Believe me Microsoft isn’t allowing this because of goodwill.
> or buy it bundled with Windows
<snip>
> As long as Microsoft continues to offer IE for free,
> consumers benefit
Consumers cannot buy Windows without Internet Explorer. The development costs of IE are covered by Windows sales and therefor the consumer pays for it. (Microsoft wants you and me and the court to believe it is free and in the best interest to the consumer) Do you really think that if IE was Microsoft’s only product (or there simply existed no Windows) they would offer it to consumers for free and continued its development for free?
> Ideally, software that doesn’t require real-time
> performance should be written in some bytecode language
> which can be run by any operating system.
Actually this is something the Amiga community is working on, with the only differences being that AmigaDE software isn’t interpreted and that AmigaDE does give realtime performance.
If you don’t want to be taken advantage of by Micro$oft then don’t buy thier products.
Too simple – right by yah.
Business owners think the best for themselves. Saying that, a business owner is stupid because it makes business with Microsoft is more stupid than anything else.
Do business with Apple and you will quickly see that, you are not as efficient as your competitiors are, and you will loose. That’s the fact, this fact has been proven by many many companies so far.
Mike Bourma:” IMO Microsoft should not have been allowed to enter this market because of their desktop OS monopoly. And yes Microsoft is using their operating system monopoly to enter this market segment as well. That doesn’t mean that IMO an external company shouldn’t be allowed to use WindowsXP for a games console.”
Saying that it is using OS monopoly to promote its XBOX is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. Actually this comment effectively makes all your comments worthless.
Thanks to Microsoft we don’t have to buy expensive hardware from Apple. Thanks to Microsoft we don’t have to buy our browsers from Netscape and pay money for it. Thanks to Microsoft it is cheap to use computers. Thanks to Microsoft we are more productive. Thanks to Microsoft we can do much more with our computers. They have produced products far more better than any other competitor, and all those competitors only complained about Microsoft, nothing more. Nobody accepted their own failure. Instead everybody accused microsoft, it became so mainstream to do that, even realnames.com’s owner complained about Microsoft, because Microsoft prevented them from selling names to companies for millions of dollars. Thanks to Microsoft it is easier to install and use wireless network, and that’s why Intel got out of this market, and they also accused Windows XP for the fact that they can not sell expensive hardware to people. People are not stupid, their decisions are well made decisions. Accusing Microsoft for no reason doesn’t make any sense anymore. Most of the people’s claims against Microsoft is based on assumption. If Microsoft gets more stronger it will do this, if Microsoft gets dominant here it will do this, and so on. We have Internet Explorer, and tell me what happened. Microsoft didn’t abuse anything, people just wants to use Microsoft to promote their own business. They even want Microsoft to do everything for themselves, like putting Java to every Windows.
> Business owners think the best for themselves. Saying
> that, a business owner is stupid because it makes
> business with Microsoft is more stupid than anything
> else.
I believe not many people are claiming such things. Actually in my opinion it is almost impossible to ingnore Microsoft because of their prominent position within the computing industry of today.
To give you a simple example. Microsoft is very important ally for the AmigaDE developer community. What would be the point of developing a state-of-the-art platform independent technology when it wouldn’t run on 90% of the (Win32 powered) desktops in use today or on a large part of the more advanced embedded (PocketPC powered) PDA/cellphone devices?
> Saying that it is using OS monopoly to promote its XBOX
> is the most stupid thing
I agree and luckily I didn’t state that but you just did.
What I stated was that Microsoft is using the money it generates with their operating system monopoly to pentrate a totally new market for them. They are making huge loses but they are able to afford this easily. That is not a good way of doing business for a competitive market to thrive.
Think about it for a minute, if you would for instance be a small American supermarket owner and I was the owner of a huge European chain of supermarkets. Then all of the sudden I would open a new supermarket in your neighbourhood and simply sell everything half the price you are selling it at, just because I can afford to make an enormous loss, do you think such would be good competitive business practises? Luckily Sony is a solid professional giant (you could compare it in my example to another huge chain of supermarkets), but for instance SEGA is much smaller than that.
> Thanks to Microsoft we don’t have to buy expensive
> hardware from Apple.
You mean if there was no Microsoft, IBM (with i.e. OS/2) would have required you and me to buy Apple hardware? Or Commodore with their Amigas maybe?
> Thanks to Microsoft we don’t have to buy our browsers
> from Netscape and pay money for it.
If you are a Windows consumer then you are paying for it, only you don’t know it. Ignorance is bliss.
You think IE developers are living on wellfare or something?
> Thanks to Microsoft we are more productive.
Amigas allowed me to do creative things which took PCs with Microsoft’s OSes installed over a decade to come on par with.
> Thanks to Microsoft we can do much more with our
> computers.
Compared with MSDOS powered computers most certainly. However I don’t think you can do so much more with Windows PCs as compared to Apple Macintoshes or even in some cases very old Amigas systems.
> They have produced products far more better than any
> other competitor, and all those competitors only
> complained about Microsoft, nothing more.
IMO many competitors helped making Microsoft’s products such a great commercial success only to see themselves being back stabbed when they weren’t needed anymore.
If you actually thought, you’d realize what a silly comment that is: “just don’t buy their product”.
Fine. Everyone who disagrees with MS should simply not buy their products. Unfortunately, their products are chained to PCs themselves. I wanted a Toshiba laptop, for various reasons. I could NOT buy a Toshiba laptop without a Microsoft product thrown in. I COULD have bought some little off-brand laptop of questionable pedigree, sure, but I wanted Toshiba.
A while back, my LCD died. I took it in on a Monday, Toshiba overnighted a new panel, and I picked it up Tuesday afternoon. *That* is customer service. I stand behind Toshiba, and I don’t blame them for including Windows against my wishes. THEY also didn’t have a choice in the matter. And that, no matter how you look at it, is simply wrong.
Microsoft is a service company. So why is it that customers who deal with Microsoft often end up being the ones who are dictated to and who must, for lack of any other reasonable choice, capitulate to whatever demands MS makes? Name me one other profitable service company who treats its customers this way. Just one.
Without competition, MS has no reason to care what its customers think. If you are the only guy in town with a working water faucet, it won’t matter that everyone in town hates your guts, you can bet they’ll all turn up on your doorstep sooner or later. For many businesses, not using MS products would be financial suicide. The first time you tell a customer, “We’re sorry, but could you please not send us Excel spreadsheets and Word docs anymore? We don’t use Microsoft products here.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen …
>If you are a Windows consumer then you are paying for it, only you don’t know it. Ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is sure a bliss. Saying a free downloadable software is not free is sure a bliss. If you distort the term “free software”, then you will end up saying that everything actually comes with a price. You don’t say what the price is. Now developers can write software for windows which can automatically handle HTML files. You can not do that in Mac OS X, that’s why Apple has to make sure that its OS has to look as beautiful as possible, because it is not as functional as Windows. I am paying the price of IE, by browsing faster than any other operating system. That’s why Apple included IE in its own OS. Maybe you think that Microsoft hold a gun to Steve Job’s head to include its browser in their OS. Why didn’t Apple include Netscape? Do you also claim that, this free software also comes with a price to the Apple users? No wonder why you claim that Microsoft can not use its money the way it wants, it can not enter a new market, because you don’t like them. This was more stupid than your previous statement by the way. Go ahead and sue Microsoft for using their money this way, and waste your time and money.
By the way your European market chain example was a good example. As far as I know there is such a law in Germany which protects smaller markets, and that’s the reason why German consumers loose. So in your mind we have to protect smaller competitiors, because they suck and they can not compete with Microsoft. There are so many markets in software which you can not simply compete, because there are so many big companies in that market, but still there are small companies trying to compete, and some of those become the big companies. Trying to control the markets according to your moral rules will create immoral situations at the end, because you prevent consumers getting a better service or product for less money. Go ahead and read some Economics books. Microsoft is winning most of the competition, because of 2 main reasons.
– They are extremely efficient.
– The competition is extremely stupid
Your example of Internet explorer is totally stupid, because you can not define the market here. Why don’t you complain about mIrosoft including a memory manager into its operating system, because you have no idea what it is. Why don’t you complain about Virtual Memory manager, notepad, paint, calculator. Because you didn’t think about these. There were once people selling these products. How about Apple’s Sherlock vs Watson? Because you didn’t think about these too, you are stuck with Internet Explorer vs Netscape, because that’s what you have seen in the media. You don’t think, you repeat what you see in the media, news sites on the net. Tell me why we have to say that browsers is a market and can not be integrated into the OS. Yet, SUN, the company accusing Microsoft for including its own browser tries to force its own java tools to be included in the OS. Think think think!
By the way:
“Fine. Everyone who disagrees with MS should simply not buy their products. Unfortunately, their products are chained to PCs themselves. I wanted a Toshiba laptop, for various reasons. I could NOT buy a Toshiba laptop without a Microsoft product thrown in. I COULD have bought some little off-brand laptop of questionable pedigree, sure, but I wanted Toshiba. ”
MS products are not really chained to PCs. Toshiba sells laptops with Microsoft Windows, because it thinks that if it sells with other OSes, it will not be able to sell. Microsoft probably used its monopoloy by certain contracts to prevent these companies including other OSes before, and they are phunished because of that, they don’t do this since long time ago.
When I bought my first computer I wanted it to come with Linux only, it came with Windows though. But I am really really happy, because Linux simply is a pain in the ass, even if you are experienced. When I do shop for a computer whether it has windows or not affects my decision. There are millions of people like me, and that’s why Toshiba sells Windows only. They don’t want to invest some money for making available other OSes. According to them, it just doesn’t worth. It is not Microsoft’s fault, it is the decision of the market. People don’t want to buy Linux desktops, and retailers do not want to sell them because they think that the money they invest for these will not worth.
… don’t want to sell them? Of COURSE they don’t. One of the illegal things Microsoft was found guilty of was charging retailers for a copy of Windows for EVERY PC that retailer sales, whether it had Windows on it or not.
So the retailer says, “Hmmm. We have to pay for a copy of Windows whether we install it on this PC or not. I know, let’s pay for that copy of Windows, throw it away, buy ANOTHER operating system and put that on the PCs instead.”
Right. When will people like you open your eyes? There was NO choice. Period. Toshiba would have paid MS for a copy of Windows for my laptop whether the laptop shipped with Windows or not. Seriously. Think before you type. MS was found guilty of exactly what you say they did NOT do. You say retailers wouldn’t want to invest some money to make other OS’s available? Of COURSE they don’t, because they were ALREADY forced to invest in Microsoft. Forced. Choice was simply not a factor. Not for he retailer, not for the consumer. That is the definition of a monopoly, and the last time I checked, the US DOJ found MS guilty of being precisely that.
So after all this, what do people actually think about Microsoft’s
attempts to keep Naked PC’s off the market?
No browser wars please. Save it for law school.
Should a software company be able to dictate terms to hardware
companies ??
If ‘naked pcs’ are OK, how does microsoft protect itself from
piracy?
Does piracy actually hurt Microsoft, in the long run ??
If you buy a site liscence and then go out and buy say 500 pc’s you have got what you paid for.
During the year 50 pc’s need to be replaced. You cannot use naked pc’s so you must pay for 50 more Microsoft liscneces
The next year you need to replace 100. You again pay for another 100 liscences but at a higher cost because Microsoft has increased the price of their operating system.
So in the end instead of just paying for 500 liscences for your 500 machines you paid for 650 liscences. How does that make sense?
“Think before you type. MS was found guilty of exactly what you say they did NOT do”
I didn’t say that and I don’t know why you make this up. I exactly said that, microsoft did force retailers for such things, but since long time ago they don’t do it anymore.
Overall there is choice now, so if there are better products out there people will buy it. But it is nonsense to say now that you don’t have choice because of Microsoft. If you think that Microsoft abuse its monopoloy power and limit the consumer choice, go ahead and sue them. Seriously, if that was the case, believe me some company would do that long time ago. There is nothing illegal now, people are just amusing theirselves by anti-microsoft, microsoft bashing news.
Mike Bourma: MS EULA is not a law. It’s not even a contract signed by two parties, so it’s complete useless in most of the civilized world. This is why they allowed people in Germany to resell their Windows CDs and Microsoft couldn’t do anything about it.
The EULA is an agreement with the buyer and the seller. It is protected by the law. The agreement doesn’t have to be signed by you – just by agreeing to use Microsoft’s Windows you have agreed with it. Live with it.
Mike Bourma: The trouble however is that most people don’t care what browser they are using, they only want it to work. Most *ordinary* users don’t even know what Opera is.
Opera is relatively unknown. But Netscape isn’t. Do a survey, Netscape can still be remembered by a lot of people. All the people that I survey that know Netscape had something negative to say. But of course, Malaysia and the place you are living is completely different.
Mike Bourma: OEMs should have been given much more freedom to completely delete IE and WMP without worries and instead easily install alternative 3rd party solutions instead.
Could a car shop be allowed to remove tires and add a third party one? NO! Besides, Netscape failed to stay in the market because of it’s own fault. Being so greedy, they decided not to modularize Netscape allowing third partiies to use it in their apps. Heck, AOL couldn’t user Netscape because of this.
Mike Bourma: If a rationally prices bare bones version of Windows was offered they would far more likely look for the best possible solution available.
A rationally price bone Windows wouldn’t be able to run the many applications based on IE, and a growing amount based on WMP. If you want to remove IE? Sure, go ahead. Go to Control Panel > Add Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Components > Select Internet Explorer, follow the wizard. Yeah, all you are deleting is a 98k *.exe. Same case for WMP, only you save more space (notice WMP doesn’t use standard Windows widgets).
Mike Bourma: Me neither, although I do believe such should be 3rd party applications. Having everything under one roof (OS/browser/applications/games) etc is very bad for a competitive market.
Okay, fine. You are right, and god damn am I wrong.
Now lets push for MS to remove everything from the framebuffer to the printer drivers, from the defrag to the scandisk.
Let’s just have a small kernel and some tools, and let everything else be supplied by third parties.
Mike Bourma: The development costs are covered by Windows sales, and therefor it isn’t really free.
Early development cost was covered by MSN. Now, it is covered by Windows sales, and Office for Mac sales.
Mike Bourma: This “free” availability comes at high price though for developers (And IMO for consumers as well in the long run)
Right, let’s force Linux to be for-pay only.
Mike Bourma: What I stated was that Microsoft is using the money it generates with their operating system monopoly to pentrate a totally new market for them.
Holy moly. So people aren’t allowed to make a certain amount of money. You know what Microsoft is doing? Making sure all their eggs aren’t in one basket. Something a lot of companies have the oppurtunity to do, but never did and died later on.
Microsoft is smart, they know that they can’t be relying on one market to survive. Besides, Microsoft biggest cash cow is Office (plusing Office for Mac sales).
Mike Bourma: Then all of the sudden I would open a new supermarket in your neighbourhood and simply sell everything half the price you are selling it at, just because I can afford to make an enormous loss, do you think such would be good competitive business practises?
That is completely fair in my view. This is what WalMart did, and now it is the biggest retailer on earth, bring in more money than any chain of stores.
What you are suggesting is that we revert to the 18th century Paternal system from Europe, where the goverment sets the price.
Mike Bourma: You mean if there was no Microsoft, IBM (with i.e. OS/2) would have required you and me to buy Apple hardware? Or Commodore with their Amigas maybe?
Commodore died with Amiga because of two greddy men. IBM planed to make PCs something like Apple’s Macs (closed hardware) with OS/2. If weren’t for Microsoft, we all need to use IBM-branded machines.
Mike Bourma: Amigas allowed me to do creative things which took PCs with Microsoft’s OSes installed over a decade to come on par with.
And now they are practically dead, only a glimer of hope with Amiga OS 4 running on super expensive hardware. tell me NOW, what Amigas could do that PCs couldn’t?
Mike Bourma: However I don’t think you can do so much more with Windows PCs as compared to Apple Macintoshes or even in some cases very old Amigas systems.
I’m using this very famous example: 3D graphics. Apple only have one or two 3D designing software. It doesn’t have 3dsmax used by a lot of gaming companies. In other words, unless you are making a movie, your only choice is Windows NT workstations. I could give a lot more examples, but there is a 8000 char limit.
Rob: I wanted a Toshiba laptop, for various reasons. I could NOT buy a Toshiba laptop without a Microsoft product thrown in.
Actually you could. When you get the product, don’t boot into Windows, call Toshiba or Microsoft, say you don’t agree with the EULA. They have to refund you, but it is so little, it doesn’t matter.
So, wow, you want to save $40.
Besides, if I want an iBook laptop, could I get it without Mac OS? If I wanted an SGI workstation, could I get it without IRIX? If I wanted a Sun SPARC server, could I get it without Solaris?
Rob: One of the illegal things Microsoft was found guilty of was charging retailers for a copy of Windows for EVERY PC that retailer sales, whether it had Windows on it or not.
I don’t see this is the verdict.
The next year you need to replace 100. You again pay for another 100 liscences but at a higher cost because Microsoft has increased the price of their operating system.
Microsoft didn’t increase the price of Windows since Windows 95/ NT 4.0. It had increased the price of the upgrade deal for the enterprise by making them upgrade whenever possible.
– It’s depressing to see how many people still just don’t get it. If there wasn’t so much ignorance and mindless acceptance of the computer industry’s rules of engagement, no one would still be arguing over this crap.
– Thanks for the notes about Germany’s first sale laws. I didn’t know about that. It is really sensible. The first step is to know what the alternatives are. The second step is to keep corporations from convincing you that alternative ideas are wrong.
– EULAs are not legal contracts. Hello. There has yet to be ONE single court case to prove or disprove their validity nor are they in any way handled like real contracts (do you know what a legal contract is?). EULAs are mimics of contracts that invent their own one-sided terms or rules of engagement. Others have explained all this before, but no one seems to give a crap. The ignorant acceptance of EULAs is NOT the legal validation of them. EULAs set a very dangerous precident that must be recognised before more damage is done to social intercourse.
– These issues, and any others in relation to the computer industry, have worn me out so much that I really can no longer be surprised by anything seemingly shady or wrongful, nor am I able to calmly or rationally discuss these topics any more. There are simply far too many people who think they know better but who are actually either greedy self centered persons who actually admire domination tactics in the hope that they can one day replicate them, or they are simply missing a large amount of clear and obvious facts and other data that really spell everything out quite clearly. But without becoming aware and learning all the issues and perspectives, they judge with an incomplete set of evidence. They are also possibly too lazy to exercise effort to see beyond their own myopic views.
> Mike Bourma: MS EULA is not a law. It’s not even a
> contract signed by two parties, so it’s complete useless
> in most of the civilized world. This is why they allowed
> people in Germany to resell their Windows CDs and
> Microsoft couldn’t do anything about it.
I did not write that! That’s pretty creative replying there. Please be more careful to actually quote the person you are replying to!!
Also it is Mike Bouma and not Mike Bourma!!
Jace: Thanks for the notes about Germany’s first sale laws. I didn’t know about that. It is really sensible. The first step is to know what the alternatives are. The second step is to keep corporations from convincing you that alternative ideas are wrong.
This ultimately screws the customer. In other parts of EU, and even in the US, customers can get cheaper stuff because there are big retailers who have less cost because they buy in bigger bulk. Not only that, big retailers are a huge source of jobs.
This was just done by Germany to aplease the socialist.
Jace: EULAs are not legal contracts.
There is no court that has a final verdict that the EULA is not a legal contract. There is no law saying how EULAs aren’t contract. If you don’t agree with the contract, don’t use the software.
Jace: There are simply far too many people who think they know better but who are actually either greedy self centered persons who actually admire domination tactics in the hope that they can one day replicate them
I’m not supporting Microsoft because I want to follow the same road as Microsoft. It is because I think it is fair. You are using the same arguments as the Islamic fundamentalist opposition in Malaysia which is introducing Islamic laws in their states – “Those who oppose the laws are afraid they get caught under it”.
I’m no afraid of that laws, I don’t think is it fair. The same way here. So, having a completely different opinion from you means ultimately I’m a immoral being that wants to dominate the world like Microsoft? Even if I wanted to, I don’t think it is possible.
Jace: or they are simply missing a large amount of clear and obvious facts and other data that really spell everything out quite clearly.
I’m not missing an clear and quite obvious facts here. Once upon the time, I was like you, Rob and Mike Bourma. That is until I started to get both sides of the story, I started to read the court transcripts, I started to the act etc.
And because of that I’m quite certain that anti trust laws are just a bunch of laws punish the successful because of their success in competition with the incompetent.
Jace: “There are simply far too many people who think they know better but who are actually either greedy self centered persons who actually admire domination tactics in the hope that they can one day replicate them ”
Oh yeah, just because you don’t know much about the technical details of what we are discussin here, you couldn’t come up with a better idea. Just accuse any person who doesn’t think like for planning to dominate the world. THat’s just great. I want to dominate the world. By the way, I also don’t like Microsoft. There are things which I don’t like about Microsoft, there are things which I like about them. But I am not stupid to say always something against them, just because this is what I read in the newspapers or magazines or web sites.
rajan r:”I’m not missing an clear and quite obvious facts here. Once upon the time, I was like you, Rob and Mike Bourma. That is until I started to get both sides of the story, I started to read the court transcripts, I started to the act etc. ”
Me too, but actually I changed my mind when I read totally bogus news from CNet and other sources. It seems that nobody uses their logic, they just make claims and never back up, and usually I am seeing in the story itself that the claims are bogus.
I hated Microsoft, I wasn’t using IE just because of this for long time, and then I started to see that actually Netscape sucks, and IE is far more better than Netscape. I loved Linux, I used Linux, but when it comes to usability, it sucks. I listen everyday how great Linux is, but when there is a problem, even the gurus struggle to solve it. I am listening to the so called geeks complaining about Microsoft’s software, how bad it is and so on, and then when the Linux screws something up, they say you are the one who is responsible for that, not the Linux. This is all bull…. Check out News.com and when you read all the security news, usually at the very end of the story you understand that actually the security problem they are depicting in the headline as a serious problem is not that much serious, because it involves so many assumptions about certain issues. I have read that in News.com IE 6.0 will not work with Java, I was hesitating to upgrade, but once I did, I didn’t see any single problem. Some people are constantly lying about Microsoft out there. I don’t want to listen to these lies anymore, because while they want to hurt Microsoft, actually they are hurting me, because they give me wrong information and make me give wrong decisions.
> Saying a free downloadable software is not free is sure
> a bliss.
I’m saying Internet Explorer isn’t free! I’m not saying that you can not download Internet Explorer for free, but still these are two very different things. Let me explain this to you:
Internet Explorer has a huge well paid development, marketing and support team behind it. It is 100% a commercially developed product. Just name *one* other product you think is free for which this would also be the case! The fact is that every Windows costumer, be it individuals or OEMs are also paying for Internet Explorer when they are buying Windows.
> I am paying the price of IE, by browsing faster than
> any other operating system.
Actually Opera and many embedded browsers are faster than IE.
> Do you also claim that, this free software also comes
> with a price to the Apple users?
As I said before Micrsoft isn’t doing this because of goodwill for MacOS users. They are simply expanding their browser monopoly and making IE even more monopölistic by doing this. When all the competion is destroyed MacOS fans will get in real problems if Microsoft at one point decides not to support MacOS anymore, and I believe this will happen eventually when Micrsoft’s monopoly expansion isn’t stopped somehow.
> This was more stupid than your previous statement by the
> way. Go ahead and sue Microsoft for using their money
> this way, and waste your time and money.
All I am saying is that Microsoft shouldn’t be allowed to expand further into totally different market segments because they already have a huge monopoly in one segment, and they can use this to gain an anti-competitive advantage in different markets.
If this would be allowed to continue then Microsoft could eventually own everything computing related and in a way they could even laregely own the internet. The internet IMO simply should not be owned by anyone, just like the air you are breathing.
> As far as I know there is such a law in Germany which
> protects smaller markets, and that’s the reason why
> German consumers loose.
Actually this is why German and other European consumers benefit. Many European consumers actually prefer smaller individual supermarkets. Also people can more easily start a new independent supermarket when they want to do this, contributing to a more competitive climate. (i.e. by providing unique services, (all McDonalds and large supermarkets chains are roughly all the same))
> So in your mind we have to protect smaller competitiors,
> because they suck and they can not compete with
> Microsoft.
No, because they offer a good (often even superior) product. Commercial success should not always go to an established monopoly by standard. IMO instead of giving Microsoft tax advantages the US goverment would have done a much better job to give such advantage to smaller companies like Be Inc or Amiga Inc.
Then the US goverment would actually contribute to creating a competitive global computing market instead of even worsening the current computing climate.
> Microsoft is winning most of the competition, because of
> 2 main reasons.
I would agree 100% that Microsoft is excellent at marketing. That they were actually able to sell MSDOS products proves that point. If somebody would be able to sell ice to eskimos it will probably be Microsoft.
But another important aspect of their success is the abuse of their market position and a US goverment which does nothing to intervene. Believe me if Microsoft was an Iranian company the US would have intervened with everything in their power.
> Why don’t you complain about mIrosoft including a memory
> manager into its operating system, because you have no
> idea what it is
Actually this is a very stupid example. A memory manager is part of the OS just like the mouse pointer you are using.
> notepad, paint, calculator
Such basic and small applications are easily deletable from the system. But I would also have no problem if a bare bones version of Windows would exclude such software so that OEMs can use 3rd party solutions for this software as well. (provided there is a rational price difference)
> You don’t think, you repeat what you see in the media,
> news sites on the net.
Actually I have been saying this ever since Microsoft massively entered the webbrowser, office and gaming markets. I have always stated by doing this they are competing against their own oldtime allies who helped them by making MSDOS and Windows a success.
> Tell me why we have to say that browsers is a market and
> can not be integrated into the OS.
Because it can easily be a healthy 3rd dominated market segment, there is no need for Microsoft here. Webbrowsers are external applications just like word processors. I don´t want to see Word integrated into Windows either.
> Yet, SUN, the company accusing Microsoft for including
> its own browser tries to force its own java tools to be
> included in the OS. Think think think!
Java actually is a market wide adopted standard. By excluding Java from Windows would hurt many Java developers and would hurt a competitve market. However it is obivious that Sun doesn´t want Microsoft to alter Java so that many programs would solely run with Windows.
> By the way:
> “Fine. Everyone who disagrees with MS should simply not
> buy their products. Unfortunately, their products are
> chained to PCs themselves. I wanted a Toshiba laptop,
> for various reasons. I could NOT buy a Toshiba laptop
> without a Microsoft product thrown in. I COULD have
> bought some little off-brand laptop of questionable
> pedigree, sure, but I wanted Toshiba. ”
Why oh why do some people all of the sudden quote other people as well when replying to my messages….. This is getting really confusing for people to read. Some may actually think I have said this.
PLEASE CLARIFY TO WHOM YOU ARE REPLYING TO!!!
What ever happened to discussion? Debate? Rational discourse? What is our future as a species if we can’t even have a civilized discussion in a text-based medium like this? Here we have the perfect forum: we can think, carefully and at length, about every single syllable we send into the world. But do we?
For myself, I can answer an unhappy and maybe even a bit embarassed: No, I guess sometimes — too often — I don’t.
I get the impression that, more often than not, these forums aren’t about communicating at all. I get the impression that we — almost all of us, certainly a majority — come with our minds already made up, our opinions about even the most trivial carved in the deepest bedrock of our minds, locked carefully away, and guarded as jealously as XP source code. And over the silliest things. If we were all in the same room, face to face, would this degenerate into a particularly pathetic episode of The Jerry Springer show, with geeks on all sides beating each other over the head with chairs?
Do we REALLY read and THINK — *really* think — about what other people are saying, or do we simply scan the responses, pick the one or two or three we find most disagreeable and/or personally offensive, and then dam the torpedoes and set phasers to obliterate?
Why is friendly disagreement so easily transmuted to hostility?
Let me summarize (or maybe more aptly: distill) this and countless other discussions, in this forum and pretty much every other, stripped of whatever “issue” is at hand:
You’re wrong.
No, you are.
No, YOU are!
You’re stupid.
You’re an [idiot | fool | moron | sell-out | pathetic representative of the human animal].
I can’t believe you said that, name-calling is lame, you loser.
I didn’t say that, the other guy did. I agreed with you, you jerk, but now I think you’re an idiot.
You DID say it …
Did not!
…………. and so it goes, and what is ever accomplished? How about a little poll which will answer all these questions:
Have you ever came to a discussion such as this holding what you feel is a strong, justifiable, well-reasoned opinion on something, only to learn in the course of the discussion, that you were ignorant of some important gem of information, and subseqently reversed your opinion?
Even SHIFTED your opinion?
Even given long, hard, honest thought to the mindset and rationale of the “opposition” before deciding your initial premise was correct after all?
Or is it simply an easy, anonymous virtual slugfest where you can be as outspoken (even vicious) as you want with no real-world conseqences?
The world is neither black nor white, and there are damned few questions with absolute answers. So why, then, do places like this, where we should be free to explore ideas openly, turn into: “You are either with me, or against me. Choose.”
So, like the subject says, I surrender. In this context, it seems that it doesn’t matter who is right or who is wrong — or even if ANYone is.
Sergio: Me too, but actually I changed my mind when I read totally bogus news from CNet and other sources. It seems that nobody uses their logic, they just make claims and never back up, and usually I am seeing in the story itself that the claims are bogus.
It is rare we agree in other threads 🙂 Looks like we are the same. I don’t disagree with what Microsoft does, on the business point of view, but I would give up Windows for linux anyday if I could. (But normally Linux makes me experiment which makes me screw things up).
> Opera is relatively unknown. But Netscape isn’t. Do a
> survey, Netscape can still be remembered by a lot of
> people. All the people that I survey that know Netscape
> had something negative to say. But of course, Malaysia
> and the place you are living is completely different.
Netscape at one point had an 80% market share within the PC webbrowser market, so it is natural that many people know this browser. However Netscape once was the best browser solution available for the PC. Many people were also complaining about earlier versions of IE.
> Could a car shop be allowed to remove tires and add a
> third party one? NO!
1) There is no car monopoly.
2) I was NOT talking about distributers.
3) A car manufacturer shouldn’t have to buy tires, windows, seats, etc bundled with the engine. (This is a much better parallel compared to what is currently happening within the computing industry)
> Let’s just have a small kernel and some tools, and let
> everything else be supplied by third parties.
As I stated many times before, I am 100% for bundling software with computers. Although IMO Microsft should only deal with the OS and they should not be allowed to try to dominate 3rd party markets. Filesystems, GUI, notepad or scandisk are all very standard OS components. Webbrowsers, media players and Office software are independent multi-billion dollar markets.
> Right, let’s force Linux to be for-pay only.
Why?
> Holy moly. So people aren’t allowed to make a certain
> amount of money.
Sure they are, but as they already are a *monopoly* in one market segment they shouldn’t be allowed to expand their monopoly to other markets.
> Microsoft is smart, they know that they can’t be relying
> on one market to survive.
LOL do you really think their operating system monopoly is NOT enough for them to survive??
> That is completely fair in my view. This is what WalMart
> did, and now it is the biggest retailer on earth, bring
> in more money than any chain of stores.
> What you are suggesting is that we revert to the 18th
> century Paternal system from Europe, where the goverment
> sets the price.
No, I am just for a competitive market. I don’t want a sole life goods distributer, just like I dislike the anti-competitive nature within the OS and webbrowser markets. I want choice, diversaty and competition with regard to commercial quality computing software.
> IBM planed to make PCs something like Apple’s Macs
> (closed hardware) with OS/2. If weren’t for Microsoft,
> we all need to use IBM-branded machines.
If Microsoft gets the chance they would like to do the same as well. Actually the xBox is a perfect example already.
> tell me NOW, what Amigas could do that PCs couldn’t?
At the time of introduction alot. AmigaOS 1.0 (1985) was a 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking OS and even Windows 3.11 (1994) was merely a 16-bit single tasking OS.
All Amigas had genlockable graphics which means you can easily combine computer graphics with movies. For example when I bought my 7 Mhz A2000 during the late eighties and I used to draw animations. After they were completed I used them with home made video, or I could easily add something like sub-titles. (A good example for this kind of Amiga uses can be seen in the Disney animation movie Dinosaur which was animated with the usage of classic Amigas.)
Also I didn’t have to wait for the OS when it was busy formatting a diskette while for example drawing in deluxe paint. In fact I often played some music in the background. Now try doing that with MSDOS or MacOS at the time.
Amigas were also very flexable with their resolutions and color depths. I was always able to use standard TV modes perfectly. This and things like Autoconfig (better plug&play) and a multitasking GUI was being hyped within the PC market more than a decade later.
Currently I still prefer lots of things about the way AmigaOS handles things: great multitasking between independent screens, low-bloat and efficient design, completely modular and a completely customizable Graphic User Interface.
> I’m using this very famous example: 3D graphics. Apple
> only have one or two 3D designing software. It doesn’t
> have 3dsmax used by a lot of gaming companies. In other
> words, unless you are making a movie, your only choice
> is Windows NT workstations. I could give a lot more
> examples, but there is a 8000 char limit.
A very weak example indeed as you don’t prove at all that MacOS X would be incompetent to accomplish your needs as well. You are only confirming the dominant position Windows takes within the market.
Yes I completely agree with you. I beleive it would be a sad and unexciting world if everyone would agree with eachother all of the time. It is sad however to see that people cannot accept other people’s opinions without using abusive language.
Actually Opera and many embedded browsers are faster than IE.
The problems with Opera, by my family
– Uses too much screen real estate
– Couldn’t access many web sites that could be accessed in Netscape and IE
– Complicated
Not only that, Opera is only a niche player, targeting Net savvy geeks.
They are simply expanding their browser monopoly and making IE even more monopölistic by doing this. When all the competion is destroyed MacOS fans will get in real problems if Microsoft at one point decides not to support MacOS anymore, and I believe this will happen eventually when Micrsoft’s monopoly expansion isn’t stopped somehow.
1) Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, even with that double standard laws you so eagerly support (Antitrust)
2) It all depends on Apple. Microsoft is NOT going to support Mac OS if it doesn’t return direct profits to them, which is via Office. They aren’t going to support IE on mac if Apple starts promoting another browser and bashes IE (like Sun did).
All I am saying is that Microsoft shouldn’t be allowed to expand further into totally different market segments because they already have a huge monopoly in one segment, and they can use this to gain an anti-competitive advantage in different markets.
Your arguement is based on *how rich Microsoft is* and not *how much power it could use with its current monopoly*. Because if the latter is correct, many companies, including Apple, should be barred from entering new markets.
As for XBOX is concern, it is impossible for it to be a monopoly. A dominant player, maybe. But certainly not a monopoly. Like I said, Microsoft knows good economics, they know putting all eggs in one basket is very dangerous.
If this would be allowed to continue then Microsoft could eventually own everything computing related and in a way they could even laregely own the internet.
Nope, this is impossible. Take web servers for example. Microsoft spends more money on Win NT than any other Linux company, yet Windows NT is shrinking in market share, while Linux is gaining market share quickly.
Take Palm for another example, while Compaq may be gaining ground, Palm was smart enough to reverse the cycle and allow Palm to grow by allowing third party IHVs make Palm-compatible PDAs.
It all depends on the competence of the current market leader vs. Microsoft. You don’t have to be rich to win – Microsoft proved that when it kicked Apple and IBM in the crouch.
Actually this is why German and other European consumers benefit. Many European consumers actually prefer smaller individual supermarkets.
Do you have proof that EU customers prefer smaller individual supermarkets?
Also people can more easily start a new independent supermarket when they want to do this, contributing to a more competitive climate. (i.e. by providing unique services, (all McDonalds and large supermarkets chains are roughly all the same))
Supermarkets can still improve to have unique services. Take Malaysia for example, where big hypermarkets start dominating Klang Valley’s (Kuala Lumpur) retail business. There are many supermarkets still surviving, and in fact thriving although these hypermarkets exist. Why? They provide unique services.
While, yes, there are many that bankrupted, but the ones that survive are stronger than ever (Darwin’s Theory of Naturnal Selection works wonders here…).
No, because they offer a good (often even superior) product.
Having a superior product means nothing. Take Be for example. technically, it is the most superior OS of its time. yet little people used it. Why? Couldn’t get their work done. Why? No apps, no drivers. Why? Be Inc. didn’t want to target smaller niches first, instead wanted to compete head to head with Apple and MS.
Keep this is mind when you are selling something, “Why would they buy my product? Would it make them more productive? Would that be worth the amount of money and time spend?”
Then the US goverment would actually contribute to creating a competitive global computing market instead of even worsening the current computing climate.
Without the DOJ’s help, the world is already changing that way. Look at Linux, for example. Gaining market share in emerging markets because of its price.
You don’t need the DOJ’s help to compete with microsoft – that is, if you are competent.
But another important aspect of their success is the abuse of their market position and a US goverment which does nothing to intervene.
Yes, I see having one of the biggest courtcase of the century, that also causes Microsoft’s stock price to go down (even if Microsoft gets more profitable). “Nothing to intervene” it seems.
Actually this is a very stupid example. A memory manager is part of the OS just like the mouse pointer you are using.
Actually in the 50s, memory managers are normally provided by third parties, just like mouse pointers (window managers and graphics server).
Actually I have been saying this ever since Microsoft massively entered the webbrowser, office and gaming markets.
Microsoft entered the office market without DOS monopoly (in fact, IIRC, early versions of Office ran on Mac OS). It was the first suite of Office applications ever made. The gaming market on the other hand was dominated by Microsoft because DirectX was one of the first of its kind. OpenGL was not made for games, and the same with what IBM created.
Microsoft was in fact the first company to merge gaming consoles and workstations.
I have always stated by doing this they are competing against their own oldtime allies who helped them by making MSDOS and Windows a success.
Like?
Because it can easily be a healthy 3rd dominated market segment, there is no need for Microsoft here. Webbrowsers are external applications just like word processors.
Web browsers aren’t considered as external applications anymore, on Windows. Why? Third party developers are now able to use some DLLs previously they have to pay a fortune to get or spend countless months recreating.
Graphics and GUIs were once not considered part of OS, want that to be remove from the OS?
Java actually is a market wide adopted standard.
No, it isn’t. It isn’t pushed by ANY international standards body, and until recently, Sun was the only one that decided the evolution of Java.
Netscape at one point had an 80% market share within the PC webbrowser market, so it is natural that many people know this browser. However Netscape once was the best browser solution available for the PC. Many people were also complaining about earlier versions of IE.
Notice during this period of time, most people, if not all, who use Internet and Windows only use IE to download Netscape. Pre-4.0, I wonder who could live with IE. But when IE 4.0 was released, and Communicator 4.0 was released, Netscape dropped the ball. Why? Its previous programming practices got to them, forcing them to start a four year rewrite that only ended months ago.
2) I was NOT talking about distributers.
OEMs are distributors of Windows.
Filesystems, GUI, notepad or scandisk are all very standard OS components
Once upon a time, GUIs weren’t a standard part of OSes, and a huge amount of complaints when people like Apple integrated it into the OS. Once upon a time, notepad wasn’t a part of an OS, it is normally supplied by third party applications. The same goes for scandisk.
Following your logic, these stuff shouldn’t have been integrated into the OS years ago.
Why?
You were complaining on how Microsoft got a huge market share in the browser market by having a free product.
Sure they are, but as they already are a *monopoly* in one market segment they shouldn’t be allowed to expand their monopoly to other markets.
How is XBOX expanding Microsoft’s dying monopoly with Windows?
You aren’t making any sense here….
LOL do you really think their operating system monopoly is NOT enough for them to survive??
Novell had that ideology just before they fell.
Linux for example rapidly took a lot of Windows NT market share in the server market (along with taking market share from UNIX), and all indicators show the desktop is the next target.
No, I am just for a competitive market. I don’t want a sole life goods distributer, just like I dislike the anti-competitive nature within the OS and webbrowser markets. I want choice, diversaty and competition with regard to commercial quality computing software.
It isn’t like Windows and IE isn’t the only choice. I use Linux (except for the past few weeks). I use Opera. From http://capitalism.org/faq/antitrust.htm
“No one has a right to buy whatever they wish, one only has the right to buy what others choose to sell to them. The terms of any trade must be agreeable to the buyer and the seller, or a sale does not take place. If you don’t like Microsoft’s terms, then you are free to go somewhere else (like I did when I bought an Apple Macintosh and a UNIX server).”
If Microsoft gets the chance they would like to do the same as well. Actually the xBox is a perfect example already.
Like I said before, unless the government bans all other kinds of gaming consoles that supplies niches, or Microsoft takes on the herculean task of trying to buy off all those companies, it is impossible to have a gaming consoler *monopoly*.
At the time of introduction alot. AmigaOS 1.0 (1985) was a 32-bit pre-emptive multitasking OS and even Windows 3.11 (1994) was merely a 16-bit single tasking OS.
I’m talking about Amiga OS 4 and Windows XP. (Read my words carefully next time). I bet you can’t even come up with one.
A very weak example indeed as you don’t prove at all that MacOS X would be incompetent to accomplish your needs as well. You are only confirming the dominant position Windows takes within the market.
I’m conforming a niche Windows had supplied to. Mac OS X doesn’t have any thing like DirectX, except maybe SDL. There isn’t a market big enough to question a port for 3dsmax.
The same applies to Apple. People who don’t use Mac OS for print houses are either poor or stupid. Why? Apple owns that niche, and nobody was able to get the niche away from Apple (and I’m judging, nobody tried). Why is that so? All the apps available on Mac OS are availble on Windows. Well, firstly, it has native CMYK support. Secondly, there are many third party Mac OS-only filters.
I could give another example of UNIX and datacenters, but I’m lazy :-).
People don’t care whether Microsoft killed competitors by using bulldozers and ramming through their offices, or hiring hitmans to kill all their staff, or hire a workforce of child slaves. They care about their work. If no other OS provides the amount of productivity available on their OS, there is no reason to switch.
> Not only that, Opera is only a niche player, targeting
> Net savvy geeks.
Everything could change if there was to be a competitive desktop webbrowser market again. If money could be made to serve the needs of enough consumers like you and me, you can rest assured that 3rd party developers will invest a considerable amount of man hours and other development costs.
> 1) Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, even with that double
> standard laws you so eagerly support (Antitrust)
I never said that having a monopoly is illegal. I think US laws and the US goverment are incompetent to handle this properly, this because of conflicting interests. If Microsoft was a European company I believe the US would wage trade wars and other economic sanctions for a competitive market to return within the computing industry.
> 2) It all depends on Apple. Microsoft is NOT going to
> support Mac OS if it doesn’t return direct profits to
> them, which is via Office. They aren’t going to support
> IE on mac if Apple starts promoting another browser and
> bashes IE (like Sun did).
With this comment you support my earlier point I was making. It is in Apple’s best interest to stay away from becoming dependent on Microsoft in the long run. If Apple does something Microsoft doesn’t like they can simply pull the plug and as a result Apple and their consumers will hurt.
> Your arguement is based on *how rich Microsoft is* and
> not *how much power it could use with its current
> monopoly*. Because if the latter is correct, many
> companies, including Apple, should be barred from
> entering new markets.
You are incorrect I am basing all my arguments on the fact that microsoft currently already has two monopolies within two different market segements, and with one being the direct result of the other monopoly.
Philips and Sony are pretty rich as well, but they don’t have billion dollars worth monopolies. So IMO there is no problem with Sony expanding their business to the console industry.
However with regard to Microsoft nobody can currently challenge their operating system and webbrowser monopoly. So IMO they should not be allowed to dictate and abuse their market position (i.e. pressuring Gateway with regard to developing Amigas or others who dealt with Be Inc in the past) nor enter totally new markets.
> Nope, this is impossible. Take web servers for example.
> Microsoft spends more money on Win NT than any other
> Linux company, yet Windows NT is shrinking in market
> share, while Linux is gaining market share quickly.
No this would eventually be possible. The way Microsoft is currently behaving and their position was thought to be impossible many years ago as well. Everything is possible if you don’t setup proper limits.
> Take Palm for another example, while Compaq may be
> gaining ground, Palm was smart enough to reverse the
> cycle and allow Palm to grow by allowing third party
> IHVs make Palm-compatible PDAs.
Palm doesn’t have a monopoly within the embedded market, like the Microsoft has a monopoly within the desktop OS market. In fact I believe Palm will soon get enormous competition.
>> Many European consumers actually prefer smaller
>> individual supermarkets.
> Do you have proof that EU customers prefer smaller
> individual supermarkets?
I and my family do, for example, or can’t I be counted as a consumer? I also know the shops owners prefer to stay independent as well.
> There are many supermarkets still surviving, and in fact
> thriving although these hypermarkets exist. Why? They
> provide unique services.
Exactly my point! I *want* them to survive and even thrive! I don’t want to be left with only one foods distributer just like I don’t want to be left with a monopolistic desktop operating system or webbrowser.
> Without the DOJ’s help, the world is already changing
> that way. Look at Linux, for example. Gaining market
> share in emerging markets because of its price.
Yes the rise of Linux is mainly the result of Microsoft’s abusive postition within the computing industry. However due to its nature it isn’t a highly profitable commercial market at all.
> You don’t need the DOJ’s help to compete with microsoft
> that is, if you are competent.
What do you mean by competent? If Microsoft would decide to develop an application to rival Adobe’s popular Photoshop software and started bundling it with Windows, Adobe (a very competent company) will hurt significantly and lose to this new product regardless if it is slightly inferior or not.
You may wonder why it is that Micrsoft isn’t doing that already considering their track record? IMO this is due to the fact that Adobe helped the Macintosh to stay in business. Microsoft wants people to move from the Macintosh to Windows. I believe that when Apple is absolutely no player anymore they may start to rival Adobe as well, if nobody finally stops them.
> Microsoft was in fact the first company to merge gaming
> consoles and workstations.
You are forgetting the Amiga. Its gaming capabilities (OCS chipset form 1985) were around 7 years ahead compared to competitors and they were used as unmissable workstations by wellknown companies like NASA and Disney.
>> I have always stated by doing this they are competing >> against their own oldtime allies who helped them by
>> making MSDOS and Windows a success.
> Like?
You can name loads of products or software developers here. From Word Perfect to Lotus 1.2.3, from Infogrames to Micropose, from Corel to Netscape.
> Web browsers aren’t considered as external applications
> anymore, on Windows. Why?
They are, only Microsoft considers it be an OS component.
> Graphics and GUIs were once not considered part of OS,
> want that to be remove from the OS?
No, only with MSDOS/Unix they didn’t come as standard. With MacOS, Xerox and Amiga systems it did. IMO there has to be a barrier where the OS ends and where the 3rd party market start.
> No, it isn’t. It isn’t pushed by ANY international
> standards body, and until recently, Sun was the only one
> that decided the evolution of Java.
It is a market wide adopted standard because there are millions of Java developers and millions of devices and computers supporting Java (not only Windows).
Everything could change if there was to be a competitive desktop webbrowser market again. If money could be made to serve the needs of enough consumers like you and me, you can rest assured that 3rd party developers will invest a considerable amount of man hours and other development costs.
Opera, like I said, is a niche player. It could compete really well if it stop targeting *one* niche. Opera is only good for a some people. For others, it is too complicated, and others ugly.
I think US laws and the US goverment are incompetent to handle this properly, this because of conflicting interests. If Microsoft was a European company I believe the US would wage trade wars and other economic sanctions for a competitive market to return within the computing industry.
This I agree with you. I think the government should treat all companies equally, irrepesctive of their market position, their nationality etc. The US government is adopting a protectivism model – and that’s not good.
With this comment you support my earlier point I was making. It is in Apple’s best interest to stay away from becoming dependent on Microsoft in the long run. If Apple does something Microsoft doesn’t like they can simply pull the plug and as a result Apple and their consumers will hurt.
Unlike what you think, Apple isn’t dependant on Microsoft, which explains why Apple never did anything to stop Microsoft-Apple relationships to sour, by lack of promoting OS X among current OS 9 users and the Switch campaign.
Why? THEY AREN’T DEPENDANT ON MICROSOFT! Apple is a niche player. Do you think print houses would drop OS X and switch to PCs if they can’t get Office? Do you think scientist would start using PCs if they can’t use IE? NO!
Apple is a very smart company, it manages to *own* the customer. Their target market knows they are more productive on Mac OS. 4 years ago, Apple may have been dependant on Microsoft, but the very fact they aren’t pushing to renew the deal between the companies, and sour relationships with some issues shows that they aren’t dependant on Microsoft.
You are incorrect I am basing all my arguments on the fact that microsoft currently already has two monopolies within two different market segements, and with one being the direct result of the other monopoly.
Legally, Microsoft have a monopoly in ONE market, the Intel/x86 desktop market. Becuase it has a near 100% market share in the USA. It doesn’t have a monopoly in any other markets.
Secondly, XBOX is NOT leveraging Windows’ monopoly. Why? Microsoft is not using Windows to get the XBOX market acceptance, and also XBOX does nothing to sustain Windows’ monopoly.
However with regard to Microsoft nobody can currently challenge their operating system and webbrowser monopoly.
Think again. Linux is getting more and more common in places like India, China, Venezuala etc. It is also getting more common in some Fortune 500 companies. Also, Mozilla is gaining ground in these emerging markets mainly because it is the best browser on Linux now.
So IMO they should not be allowed to dictate and abuse their market position (i.e. pressuring Gateway with regard to developing Amigas or others who dealt with Be Inc in the past) nor enter totally new markets.
Microsoft gave Gateway a choice: Amiga or Windows. Gateway choosed Windows, which is IMHO the best choice they ever made. Why? Amiga is old technology, has not be maintained for a long time.
No this would eventually be possible. The way Microsoft is currently behaving and their position was thought to be impossible many years ago as well.i]
I’m glad you see my point. Linux didn’t need no fucking help from the DOJ to gain market share. They don’t need it.
[i]Palm doesn’t have a monopoly within the embedded market, like the Microsoft has a monopoly within the desktop OS market. In fact I believe Palm will soon get enormous competition.
1) Palm ONCE have a close monopoly with PDA market, whom its only major competitor was having a minor amount of market share.
2) Palm sustained its business even with a superior product on the market. With OS 5 and eventually, OS 6, I’m confident with Palm winning back lost market share.
I and my family do, for example, or can’t I be counted as a consumer? I also know the shops owners prefer to stay independent as well.
My entire family in the UK don’t, most of the time. They normally go places like Tesco.
Exactly my point! I *want* them to survive and even thrive! I don’t want to be left with only one foods distributer just like I don’t want to be left with a monopolistic desktop operating system or webbrowser.
No, your point was that to have control on hypermarkets entering the market and have special protection for small stores. Without protection, small businesses managed to thrive. Many of them expanded.
Yes the rise of Linux is mainly the result of Microsoft’s abusive postition within the computing industry.
The rise of Linux is caused by its price. I never said Linux was a profitable business.
What do you mean by competent? If Microsoft would decide to develop an application to rival Adobe’s popular Photoshop software and started bundling it with Windows, Adobe (a very competent company) will hurt significantly and lose to this new product regardless if it is slightly inferior or not.
1) Most of Photoshop customers are at mac OS.
2) Microsoft done this once, with consumer video editing software. Yet, third party solutions still thrive (companies like Dell bundle them with certain models, Sony use their own in VAOIs) because of Windows Movie Maker’s inferiority.
Microsoft wants people to move from the Macintosh to Windows.
If that is true, why doesn’t Microsoft inetgrate native CMYK support?
You are forgetting the Amiga. Its gaming capabilities (OCS chipset form 1985) were around 7 years ahead compared to competitors
These were 2D games, not 3D games like Quake or Half-Life. Plus, Amiga died not because it wasn’t good at competition, but rather two fat greedy owners of Commodore.
You can name loads of products or software developers here. From Word Perfect to Lotus 1.2.3, from Infogrames to Micropose, from Corel to Netscape.
Word Perfect was practically killed by Word. Not by Windows. Lotus 1-2-3 because of its copyright-protection and lack of an GUI died to Excel. Corel didn’t go down because of Microsoft. It tried to capitalize of hypes like Linux and Java, and failed missearable. In fact, if weren’t for MS, they would be dead. Netscape dropped the ball with NS 4.
IMO there has to be a barrier where the OS ends and where the 3rd party market start.
You can’t have a cut and close barrier – it is impossible. Stuff once non-standard becomes standard.
It is a market wide adopted standard because there are millions of Java developers and millions of devices and computers supporting Java (not only Windows).
It is still not an standard. It may be a de facto standard in certain markets but certainly not a standard. Microsof is developing .NET as a competiting standard, and the last I checked, they have the right to do so. Besides, I don’t get your point at all.
> But when IE 4.0 was released, and Communicator 4.0 was
> released, Netscape dropped the ball. Why?
Because IE became an acceptable solution (not yet superior by far, but only acceptable nevertheless) and was bundled with Windows and Microsoft started to pressure OEMs not to pre-install Netscape onto their systems.
> OEMs are distributors of Windows.
Companies like Compaq and Gateway are first and foremost computer manufacturers. They are far better comparable to Mercedes, Toyota and the likes, not to an individual shop owner.
> Once upon a time, GUIs weren’t a standard part of OSes,
> and a huge amount of complaints when people like Apple
> integrated it into the OS. Once upon a time, notepad
> wasn’t a part of an OS, it is normally supplied by third
> party applications. The same goes for scandisk.
The complaints weren’t because of there being a healthy 3rd party GUI market. The complaints were more with regard to fear for Graphical User Environments. Most of such people initially stayed with Unix and MSDOS until they finally understood they were wrong to be conservative. They often used stupid remarks like “GUIs are good for people who can’t type” and the like.
> Following your logic, these stuff shouldn’t have been
> integrated into the OS years ago.
No there wasn’t a billion dollar worth notepad market and this can easily been seen as essential standard OS components. With regard to webbrowsers it is a completely different story.
> You were complaining on how Microsoft got a huge market
> share in the browser market by having a free product.
I am complaining that they have entered yet another 3rd party market segment and used their operating system monopoly to gain an anti-competitive advantage.
> How is XBOX expanding Microsoft’s dying monopoly with
> Windows?
Their monopoly isn’t dying at all. In fact it is expanding, I believe you completely fail to see that most linux users are Windows users as well.
Regarding the xBox I was pointing out that Microsoft is entering yet another 3rd party market segment, this after monopolizing two other market segments already. Expanding Microsoft’s influence further is extremely bad for the entire global computing industry.
> It isn’t like Windows and IE isn’t the only choice.
I am not saying that at all, but there currently isn’t a commercially competitive dektop and webbrowser market mainly because of Microsoft’s business tatics and policies.
Imagine if some company would have an almost complete foods monopoly except for bread and water. Yes, you would have an alternative. But would you be pleased with only bread and water?
(Regarding the following part you were quoting a totally irrelevant part, so here are the complete relevant parts)
You wrote:
>>> IBM planed to make PCs something like Apple’s Macs
>>> (closed hardware) with OS/2. If weren’t for Microsoft,
>>> we all need to use IBM-branded machines.
I wrote the followin in reply:
>> If Microsoft gets the chance they would like to do the
>> same as well. Actually the xBox is a perfect example
>> already.
Your follow-up relpy was
> Like I said before, unless the government bans all other
> kinds of gaming consoles that supplies niches, or
> Microsoft takes on the herculean task of trying to buy
> off all those companies, it is impossible to have a
> gaming consoler *monopoly*.
With regard to IBM in your first section, no you would have had alternatives like Amiga, Atari, Amstad, Apple, BeBox, DraCo’s etc.
And with regard to needing a IBM branded box for IBM compatible software, Microsoft would love to be a sole PC clone manufacturer as well. I was pointing out the xBox becuase that already is a standard PC with Windows with Microsoft being the manufacturer.
I wasn’t stating Microsoft has a console market monopoly. Earlier I was pointing out that Micrsoft already has two monopolized market segments and are even moving into more market segment like the games console market. This is very bad for a competitive computing industry.
>>> tell me NOW, what Amigas could do that PCs couldn’t?
>> At the time of introduction alot.
<snip>
> I’m talking about Amiga OS 4 and Windows XP. (Read my
> words carefully next time). I bet you can’t even come up
> with one.
You didn’t ask the question that clear at all! And actually I already answered your question as well with regard to what advantages AmigaOS will still offer today.
“Currently I still prefer lots of things about the way AmigaOS handles things: great multitasking between independent screens, low-bloat and efficient design, completely modular and a completely customizable Graphic User Interface.”
Of course by AmigaOS4 being a new OS there will initially be a lack of software (however using that as an excuse why AmigaOS could be considered worthless and inferior would be foolish as this counts for any new operating system and is nothing unique to Amiga), but potentially AmigaOS4.x can handle every piece of 3rd software just as well as Windows or maybe even better due to a more efficient and flexable OS design.
> I’m conforming a niche Windows had supplied to.
But nothing a Mac or Amiga couldn’t do technicly as well. The original Amiga at its time could do endless things which were technicly impossible to accomplish on rival platforms of the time.
> People don’t care whether Microsoft killed competitors
> by using bulldozers and ramming through their offices,
> or hiring hitmans to kill all their staff, or hire a
> workforce of child slaves.
Luckily it isn’t that bad and even the US goverment would intervene. And if you consider me being a person then there is at least one who would do care.
> They care about their work.
You mean to say everyone except me is selfish? I know that isn’t true.
> If no other OS provides the amount of productivity
> available on their OS, there is no reason to switch.
Agreed with regard to most ordinary consumers. It’s very good to end this discussion with an agreement, don’t you agree.
So you are away for about a day – and see what happened!? Nobody discusses the article. It has become a Microsoft flame fest. Something that’s in style, politically correct nowadays.
To Rob, the guy who surrendered: I am not surprised that these “discussions” degenerate so much. If there is one single person supporting or just accepting what Microsoft does – even if it is only a single action of their many daily business decisions – a whole slew of anti-MS people are coming along and bash one to death.
Whatever happened to independent thought and acceptance of opinions of others? I do not know.
What’s really ironic is the fact that many MS bashers accuse MS of exactly what they are doing themselves. Let us use MS products if we want to. It seems that the current consensus is that “people who use MS are stupid” because they are supporting a monopoly. I can speak only for myself. I do like MS products. They are the most user-friendly and affordable in the world. I decide to use MS using my own free will. There is no monopoly forcing me to use them. The only force that makes me use them is the lack of any alternative. And why is there no alternative? Because the competition just sucks. Corel has had some interesting products, but they are experts in killing off good software. The same applie to Netscape. It is really sad.
So, all I am saying is: let me use MS products because I want to. I don’t tell you not to use whatever else you can use (Apple stuff, GNU stuff, OSS stuff, whatever).
> even if it is only a single action of their many daily
> business decisions – a whole slew of anti-MS people are
> coming along and bash one to death.
Microsoft as a commercial company has the smartest management team I know. So without a doubt they are doing many things very right! Some people say that doing something criminal is only against the law when you are being caught.
The current abusive monopoly position of Microsoft isn’t in my opinion only their own fault. IMO it is the fault of the US goverment, they need to make sure companies don’t participate in illegal activities. WorldCom and the whole list of US companies who have misled their investors for billions of dollars is just another example where IMO the US goverment has sadly failed.
IMO commercial companies can be compared to children, children seek the limits of what can be considered right or wrong. If you don’t set proper boundaries and punish them for doing bad things, they will abusive this and use this to their own advantage. IMO the same goes for most commercial companies.
Personally I have actually praised Microsoft for their unbelievable good marketing approach. This was even the case when they were selling something enormously inferior as MSDOS. IMO if someone can sell ice to eskimos it must be Microsoft!
> Whatever happened to independent thought and acceptance
> of opinions of others? I do not know.
Yes this is very sad, it’s not like abusive language would change people’s minds. Maybe however their ordinary life isn’t that good and therefor the need to cool themselves down a little by doing this. Regardless I don’t like it.
> Let us use MS products if we want to.
Or if we need to.
> It seems that the current consensus is that “people who
> use MS are stupid” because they are supporting a
> monopoly.
That would be strange as around 90% of all computer users use Microsoft powered products. So I don’t think a majority could ever think that way.
> I can speak only for myself. I do like MS products.
I see room for endless improvements and much more efficient software designs but regardless I do use Microsoft as there are many great 3rd party software titles being developed for the OS.
> They are the most user-friendly and affordable in the
> world.
Yes currently WindowsXP offers the most satisfactory solution for the average user.
> There is no monopoly forcing me to use them.
A little more room for competition would give all of us many more options however. IMO currently Apple Macintosh is the second best choice for ordinary consumers, but I prefer WindowsXP because it offers me better 3rd party solutions I like to use. And IMO MacOS X is just as bloated and ineffcient as Windows, so for me that’s not a reason to migrate neither.
> Because the competition just sucks.
No, I believe there are many *great* 3rd party software developers who could easily create something far more efficient than Windows given a decent chance. Same goes with regard to webbrowsers and other software.
> So, all I am saying is: let me use MS products because I
> want to.
If anyone does attack you for using Windows just state that you are one of 90% of all computer users and that should silence them.
re Mike:
“Internet Explorer has a huge well paid development, marketing and support team behind it. It is 100% a commercially developed product. Just name *one* other product you think is free for which this would also be the case! The fact is that every Windows costumer, be it individuals or OEMs are also paying for Internet Explorer when they are buying Windows. ”
This is funny but you don’t even think about Sun’s Java. Sun’s Java is free, and it has the same exact support behind it. I mean is Java free, yes. So is Internet Explorer. I don’t know what else to say, the truth is there and extremely obvious. Is Redhat gives away the OS Linux, yes. Can you say that Redhat sells the Linux, no, but it has its own developers working on it. But the OS is free. When you say Redhat Linux is not free, you are making fun of yourself. You can download Linux from their site. Is mysql free, yes. But they have developers behind it, a company named after it. They are making money out of that database, but the database itself is free.
The reason why you are saying Internet Explorer is not free, is that you hate Microsoft so much that you are ready say anything against Microsoft. You don’t care much about the truth. If you say that Internet Explorer is not free, you think that people will think that they should better not use Internet Explorer and hate Microsoft more.
“Actually Opera and many embedded browsers are faster than IE. ”
I have Opera, but the reason it is claimed to be faster is mostly related with lack of some features. It doesn’t show every page the right way. I think lynx is the fastest browser actually, not Opera in this regard.
“As I said before Micrsoft isn’t doing this because of goodwill for MacOS users. They are simply expanding their browser monopoly and making IE even more monopölistic by doing this. When all the competion is destroyed MacOS fans will get in real problems if Microsoft at one point decides not to support MacOS anymore, and I believe this will happen eventually when Micrsoft’s monopoly expansion isn’t stopped somehow. ”
Sure Opera is doing everything in goodwill but not actually for making money. If Apple makes business with some another company, how will you guarantee that that company will also stay with Mac OS all the time. This doesn’t make any sense at all. What you are saying is that, you see someone but you don’t want to talk to her/him, because maybe he/she is a killer. Sure if I was apple’s CEO I would hesitate to do business with Microsoft, but the problem is that Apple doesn’t have much choice, because of their own decisions developers don’t want to develop for Apple. Furthermore, it is stupid as a business point of view to say something like maybe microsoft will crush us. You don’t know that, you just make it up. Of course if it becomes unprofitable they will not support MacOS anymore, and that will not be Microsoft’s fault.
“No, because they offer a good (often even superior) product. Commercial success should not always go to an established monopoly by standard.”
Yes, they offer a good product and even superior product and these stupid consumers still go and buy from the bigger market chains. Oh those stupid people, they just don’t get it. They had to buy from the smaller markets, because they offer better products, but they were not smart enough to understand that. When they make decisions these stupid consumers always make the wrong decision. Mike you are right at this point. Actually these bigger chains are so inefficient that, in the economics books they always say to be profitable as much as possible stay small, so that you can force your suppliers to give you superior products for less money. You are absolutely right at this point.
“That they were actually able to sell MSDOS products proves that point.”
Actually Microsoft brainwash people and that’s why they were able to sell.
)) I am one of those dumb people who used MSDOS instead of other more expensive operating systems. By the way I suggest you to read the history of the computers and you will see why MSDOS became such a success, and why IBM selected MSDOS. The price was the key point.
“Actually this is a very stupid example. A memory manager is part of the OS just like the mouse pointer you are using. . Such basic and small applications are easily deletable from the system”
This is funny, because the reason why you found the example stupid is that because after some years the memory manager, virtual memory stuff is accepted to be part of the operating system. But what you don’t think is that, this was not the case earlier and actually only after many number of years, it was well accepted to be part of the OS. Probably if you were living in the early days of the computer science, you are one of those people who could argue that memory manager can not be part of the OS, because it is not basic, and it was not basic. Considering notepad as basic is also very funny, it wasn’t the case once. Now believe it or not, in Windows, developers think browser support as somethinglike as fundemental as memory manager. Also there are java browser components, and guess what Sun also implemented its own in Swing. So you still think that browser is not important, and shouldn’t be part of the OS. Think think think!
“Actually I have been saying this ever since Microsoft massively entered the webbrowser, office and gaming markets. I have always stated by doing this they are competing against their own oldtime allies who helped them by making MSDOS and Windows a success.”
Actually this comment is just a claim, hype without any facts, but recently Watson (Apple is a developer friendly company) news reminded me that you don’t even consider what’s going on in the real world.
“Webbrowsers are external applications just like word processors.”
Don’t be funny! Check out thousands of applications which has builtin browser, and depend on the fact that Windows come with Internet Explorer. Remove IE from your machine, and you will see why you need it. By the way, you don’t have those nice applications in MacOS because it doesn’t have os level IE support.
“Java actually is a market wide adopted standard. By excluding Java from Windows would hurt many Java developers and would hurt a competitve market. However it is obivious that Sun doesn´t want Microsoft to alter Java so that many programs would solely run with Windows. ”
This is more funny. I am working on Java day and night. My job is to make it faster, better. I like Java, but there are no significant amount of client side applications. It is wide adopted standard, but Winamp is also very popular. So is Linux, many people use it. Java is nothing in the client side. It just has some meaning on the internet. I would like to see Java on the Windows, but what you don’t understand is that it is Sun which prevented Microsoft for distributing Java, not Microsoft. When Microsoft does something, even it is a good thing, people like you claim that is not sincere, when Microsoft doesn’t do that thing, people like you still complain that it is preventing competition. It is obvious that, this is not about doing any business or making any progress. It is like trying to make fun of a person. Do this, oh not don’t do that, you are not sincere, you are not honest, I know you will do some bad things in the future. It is like a hysteric behavior, no logic, no thinking. Plain stupid claims.
So overall I don’t think that Microsoft will ever loose in the courts, because in the courts they look at the facts, not some plain stupid claims.
rajan: Thanks for your posts, they were really very informative, and I learn from those posts too.
The reason I thought we are thinking the same is that it seems that your ideas are based on consistent view. I also like Linux and I do use it at work, and I like to play with it a lot. But I dont bash Microsoft day and night without any certain reason.
I don’t remember where we disagreed, but since many issues have different aspects, obviously there is not enough time to talk about all the aspects and what I think about all those aspects. So it may seem we disagree on one issue, but my understanding is that if we really discuss something, at the very end probably we will agree. Because your comments are based on logic.
Anyway, I think it is pointless to discuss this issue with someone who just makes any claims without any reasoning or logic behind it, so I stop here.
By the way, I agree with CDN.
The current abusive monopoly position of Microsoft isn’t in my opinion only their own fault. IMO it is the fault of the US goverment, they need to make sure companies don’t participate in illegal activities. WorldCom and the whole list of US companies who have misled their investors for billions of dollars is just another example where IMO the US goverment has sadly failed.
Well, if it is the US government’s fault then why not include all the other governments as well? What have they done for people in their country? It is the same all over the place.
> It seems that the current consensus is that “people who
> use MS are stupid” because they are supporting a
> monopoly.
That would be strange as around 90% of all computer users use Microsoft powered products. So I don’t think a majority could ever think that way.
Maybe I should have said the consensus among the MS bashing crowd. It seems you have to join a camp for whatever reason. Sometimes I wish I could be as blind as some of these people. It must be nice to live in a world where everything is either black or white.
> I can speak only for myself. I do like MS products.
I see room for endless improvements and much more efficient software designs but regardless I do use Microsoft as there are many great 3rd party software titles being developed for the OS.
Of course, there is always room for improvement. By saying I like MS products I am not saying I don’t like anything else. There are a lot of very good products out there. It is not like nobody can survive on the Windows platform. The opposite is quite true. MS would die sooner or later without the support of all the programmers and companies that produce interesting software for Windows.
> There is no monopoly forcing me to use them.
A little more room for competition would give all of us many more options however. IMO currently Apple Macintosh is the second best choice for ordinary consumers, but I prefer WindowsXP because it offers me better 3rd party solutions I like to use. And IMO MacOS X is just as bloated and ineffcient as Windows, so for me that’s not a reason to migrate neither.
Sure, it would be nice to have some competition. In my opinion they all failed. If even a company the size of IBM cannot come up with something, then you know how incompetent most companies are. I used OS/2 from 2.0 on. I paid for a few programs, but IBM only tried to kill OS/2. I also tried some of the other OSs.
> Because the competition just sucks.
No, I believe there are many *great* 3rd party software developers who could easily create something far more efficient than Windows given a decent chance. Same goes with regard to webbrowsers and other software.
I still believe the competition needs to improve their offerings. I used WordPerfect, for example, it just couldn’t come close to Word. It was buggy and unstable as hell. I used Netscape, Mozilla and Opera, but I always came back to IE because of one reason: speed. Yeah, Opera and Mozilla load pages fast, but one area where they all lack is going back and forth between pages. IE is the most efficient one in this regard. I just hate to press the back button and have to wait until the other browsers download all the stuff again – or whatever they do to make me wait.
> So, all I am saying is: let me use MS products because I
> want to.
If anyone does attack you for using Windows just state that you are one of 90% of all computer users and that should silence them.
That won’t silence them. They have to go on with their agenda to convert the masses. I have tried hard and long but to me there is nothing out there that matches Windows right now. I’d switch in a day. I don’t need much. Linux users can say whatever they want, but the quality and fit-and-finish is just not there.
BTW, this whole thread has deviated so much from the article in question. I guess this is indication enough of how much people just like to bash Microsoft and its users.
As I have pointed out above, the Enterprise Agreement offers only Windows upgrades. A company has to decide what they need. If they opt for upgrades, that’s what they get. Hence, they have to buy machines with Windows already installed. I don’t see a reason for the big outcry…