[Leica] Microsoft

[Frank Dernie <FrankDernie@compuserve.com>]

I am bemused by the strong feelings expressed on the LUG re Microsoft.
Microsoft are an excellent marketing company. They have made themselves
massively rich by convincing their market to buy their products and to
continue to buy frequent updates. Intel have been able to rachet uptheir
business in parallel.

They have been able to do this in many ways.
1. most potential users are technophobes so are easy to sucker out of their
money in a covincing and plausible way.
2. Members of the legislature know little about technology they seem to
believe most of what they are told by people who are much smarter than they
are.
3. Computers have been for some years plenty powerful enough for the huge
majority of uses they are put to. This is bad for business. By introducing
new software incorporating new feature which may or may not be necessary to
most users but which is so much slower than existing versions and using
files which can not be read by old versions of the software consumers are
persuaded to spend money consistently on upgrades, first software then
hardware and so on. Smart marketing.
4. The technology can offer far more than 95% of users need so it really is
not difficult to impress most punters.
5. They are fast off the mark in reacting to demand or reacting to
competitors, they have so much money that they are usually unbeatable here.

My only disappointment is that whilst the computers we have are great they
could be better if the business was less profit motivated, but thats the
world we live in and its bad to knock the people best at it. OTOH if the
powers that be had seen what was coming we may have had competition in the
computer business which would have been good for us consumers. If the car
industry had developed the way the personal computer market has we may have
had:
Cars supplied without engine, 90 % made by microsoft but able to use
engines made by Toshiba, h-p, Dell etc.
Impossible to repair any car more than 2 years old.
All cars develop from a single seat to having 40 seats and 40 ton load
capacity and everything else anybody ever wants so one product iis suitable
for every road user, regardless whether they need it or not.
Over the same period a new more powerful engine has to be bought to achieve
the same performanc as before.
The car would crash for no apparent reason a couple of times a day, nobody
would be surprised or care.
The steering would sieze upfrom time to time for no apparent reason, no
explanation, no obligation to resolve the problem ( that bug willbe fixed
on the next version of the  car,  sir, and it wwwill be amphibious too -
but youwill need a new engine to fully exploit the performance)

etc etc
Cheers Frank