Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/20

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Win 95 to 98 my final word
From: "Kotsinadelis, Peter (Peter)" <peterk@lucent.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 09:40:10 -0800

Frank Dernie wrote:

	On the cost side there is a parallel with Leica. People for whom
quality is
	the most important factor did not choose the PC. For those for whom
only
	the short term bottom line counted (and could not measure the
indirect
	effects thereon) PCs were chosen, hence industry and computer
illiterates
	dictated the future of computers. Bill Gates jumped onto the right
	bandwagon and did a superb marketing job. PCs are pretty good
nowadays. In
	the beginning they were DIRE.

BULLS--T!!!  Stop the labeling.  IBM PCs were not for computer illiterates
as in the early days they required a lot of tweaking to use, especially on
LANs.  The MACs were for the novices or as you refer to them "illiterates."
Apple did have a great system (copied from Xerox PARC GUI designs), but
their protectionist attitude is ewhat really killed them.  The reason the
PCs flourished was the open system philosophy. Companies like Intel, AST,
and others could make functional circuit cards  for the systems.  With Apple
it was all under control by Apple.  Granted, Bill Gates was smart, perhaps
smarter than Jobs for he succeeded where Jobs failed (twice if you consider
NeXT). The rest is history. 

	For those where quality comes first I think a Mac or Leica are
mandatory.
	Where budget is a limitation, and pretty good is good enough, a PC ,
Canon,
	Nikon, Olympus, minolta etc will get you most of the way there most
of the
	time.

While I agree about Leica, that is like saying the only good car to drive is
a BMW.  Well, I am sure our German members may agree with that, but Leica
and BMW are not the end all to everything.  Somtimes we get so myopic on
this group its sickening.  People think its budget that sway people from
buying Leica. Well its not!!!!  There are many reasons to use another
camera.  Sometimes you need a larger negative, sometimes you need an SLR and
one with autofocus.  As someone said "If yo have only a hammer, everything
looks like nails"  I just happen to think that you need a Hammer,
screwdriver and other tools if you want to do more than snapshots, which if
you look back in history, was the original intent of the Leica, and for that
matter the Rolleiflex too!