[Revel]

Microsoft did not write the original Dos. They purchased at some rediculous price from someone else. They got the idea for windows from someone else too. They stole most of the good features in IE from Netscape. So Microsoft is known for not having original ideas.

[reagandemo]

"Microsoft did not write the original Dos. They purchased at some rediculous price from someone else." True but did you know that when Bill Gates sold it to IBM he did not own it?

[djf]

In 1982 I saw a machine that had most of the components of Windoze 3.1

A "Lisa" by Apple/McIntosh

[birbear]

Microsoft did not write the original Dos. They purchased at some rediculous price from someone else. They got the idea for windows from someone else too. They stole most of the good features in IE from Netscape. So Microsoft is known for not having original ideas.

Microsoft (and Bill Gates) didn't make their money by being innovators. They made their money in the marketing of the product.

Which is true with a lot of major companies and industries. Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile -- he made the automobile affordable. Walt Disney didn't invent the idea of the theme park (or cartoons) he made them enjoyable for the mass markets.

In a nutshell that's what Gates and Co. have done. They didn't invent DOS, Windows,PC media, word processing, game systems, et al. But they brought all of those pieces of technology to the masses at an affordable price. That's where their innovation lies.

[Moonman62]

Microsoft did not write the original Dos. They purchased at some rediculous price from someone else. They got the idea for windows from someone else too. They stole most of the good features in IE from Netscape. So Microsoft is known for not having original ideas.

Maybe so, but the one good thing Microsoft did was establish fairly open software and hardware standards that allowed for explosive growth of the PC market, which eventually led to the internet market. As a comparison look at what IBM did with the PS/2 and Microchannel. Or Apple if you like.