Re: www.microsoft.com sure needs a lot of silicon

• joseph

On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Erik Funkenbusch wrote:

> Tracy R. Reed wrote in article <5jpd3o$ao7$2_at_hole.sdsu.edu>...
> >Srinivas Thimmiah (tsreddy_at_netcom.com) wrote:
 ...
> Oh give me a break. OS/2 was out in full force prior to Windows 3.0's
> introduction. OS/2 had the lead, why couldn't they keep it?

They did keep the lead over windows NT and have maintained that lead to the present time. There are millions more OS/2 installs than WinNT.

> It wasn't as
> if everyone just jumped on Windows 3.0 the second it was released.

FALSE. Win3.0 was shipped in the monopolisitic and anti-competitive preload agreements that the DOJ stopped. Everyone was given Win3.0 with their PC because the COST OF DOS with Win3.0 was LESS than just shipping DOS.
>It
> wasn't until 3.1 came out that any real applications started to hit the
> market (almost 2 years later and just prior to the release of OS/2 2.0).

FALSE. It tooks years after 1992 for Win3.1 specific applications to arrive. Great applications like AMI PRO were a 3.0 application. ( I even found the win386 version of AMI PRO useful as a WYSIWYG application). Functional and powerfull apps arrived for win3.0 and most of these powerful apps were compatible with 3.0 long after win3.1 shiped. Win3.1 was characterized, correctly, as a bug fix release.

> In other words, there *WAS* an alternative before Windows became a
> standard, but most people didn't want it.

FALSE. You choose to agrue a story that has absolutly no basis in reality. You ignore the DOJ and ETC's analysis that MS's monopoly power was derived from their per-processor DOS/Win3.x prelaoding agreements. These monopolistic liscense were called illegal and had MS not agreed to stop them, the DOJ and ETC were ready to go to court to punish MS.

These facts are common knowledge and rountinely covered by the mass media. Choosing to fabricate an alternate reality where MS wins by virtue of ethical means is counter-productive. You need to know when to stop fighting a lost battle and stop pissing people off for the sake of your ego.

If you deny the obvious, then your opinions and arguments about the present are suspect.

> Better does not equal successful. I won't start another Beta vs. VHS
> argument but it's been proven.

You apparently decided to start the argument by repeating the myth that inferior technology wins. It does if the monopoly owns the inferior technology.

Factually the only big winners MS has are the ones they preload. Office and Win95.

WinNT is still second class to OS/2 in marketshare. It gets great press coverage for it's small unserbase and I suspect it will surpass OS/2 when MS preloads NT in place of Win95. Received on Sun Apr 27 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT