Re: Cost of the M$ monopoly-$10BIllion/year.

Mayor of R'lyeh wrote
(in article <cdbfe1plkfkdnepekk7pdvvgga27gg6ifk@xxxxxxx>):

> On 27 Jul 2005 07:17:05 -0700, imouttahere@xxxxxxx chose to bless us
> with the following wisdom:
>
>> Mayor of R'lyeh wrote:
>>> I don't really care how Microsoft does their internal financials. All
>>> I care about is that they are part of the process that provides me
>>> with a soution to my needs/wants at a price I want to pay.
>>
>> Funny, they don't do that for me. IE6 is a dinosaur,
>
> And yet it remains the most popular web browser by far. It must be
> doing something right.

No, it does a lot wrong, but it has a lot of momentum, thanks to
the typical set of Microsoft proprietary extensions to industry
standards so that some websites only work well with it, forcing
people into their web. Big surprise there. They are finally
making a move to IE7, to try and catch up slightly with the
competition, now that they are losing market share, and
surprisingly quickly.

> Its not like there's anything stopping anyone
> from installing Firefox or Opera, etc and using thyem if the dislike
> IE6.

Sure there is. Lots of web applications require it, which
forces some people into it. The most obvious example of this is
the Windows Update feature, which only works with IE. Now they
have the extra "advantage" whatever bullshit, which you also
have to complete prior to using that, which collects who knows
what about your machine and sends it up to MS and its inherently
insecure web servers. Terrifying.

> You exaggerate greatly. While it has been a while since there was a
> major release there's not much need for one AFAICT. What exactly is it
> that you think Windows should be doing now that its not?

Fixing security bugs, making it impossible for "spyware" to
silently install itself, (i.e. do something simple like
requiring a password to install an executable for crying out
loud, like other platforms could do 20+ years ago).

> Their office suite rocks and is the standard by which other office
> suites are judged.

That's true, for now. It will be interesting to see how long
that will continue. If IBM and Sun got along better, it would
be interesting to see what could be done to remedy that.

> I know plenty of people who literally kill anyone
> who took away their Excel.

You know too many people that play with less than a full deck.

>> I don't deny Apple's machines have been priced much higher than eg.
>> Dell in many cases. When they move to x86 we'll be able to see how much
>> to the bullshit reason above you charge and how much was the due to the
>> price penalty of having to go to 2nd-banana suppliers for their CPUs
>> and motherboards, not to mention develop their own motherboard
>> chipsets.
>
> I don't think anyone but you would label IBM a second banana supplier.

In the processor world, I think it's appropriate. In most other
computer items it is not.

> 'State of the art' being flash and fluff largely.

I think you are right there. I'd much rather see performance
advancements than 'flash' advancements.

> What a lot of you guys keep forgetting is that the OS counts for very
> little. Its all about the apps.

That should be true. In the Windows world, it is not, and may
never be true. MS incompetence forces end users to know much
too much about the OS and its operation.


.

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