Posted on 11/18/2002 6:13:09 AM PST by MadIvan
Damn right. Memo to all you marxist lurkers at FR:
1) Microsoft is traded on NASDAQ as MSFT. Pick up the phone and become one of its owners:1) ScotTrade2) If you just can't stomach Microsoft's products, well, there's a world of competition to choose from:
2) etrade
3) Ameritrade
4) Charles Schwab
5) Merrill-Lynch
6) ad nauseum...1) NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP/MAC OSX
2) Red Hat
3) FreeBSD
4) OpenBSD
5) NetBSD
6) Solaris
7) ad nauseum...
"Nothing in the world can take place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
Off the top of your head, do you know a source for that quote?
The Quotable Calvin Coolidge: Sensible Words for a New Century
Regards, Ivan
I don't necessarily want to disagree with what you've said. No marketplace seems to move as quickly and as ruthlessly as does the IT sector. On the other hand, you're making the assumption that just because free alternatives exist, people will choose to use them. This may not be the case, either now, or in the foreseeable future. I'll give you a few examples.
If you fall ill with some life-threatening illness, you can check into the local emergency room, and expect a bill of tens of thousands of dollars, or you can go online, research some folk medicines, find a recipe for an herbal remedy, go outside, pick the herbs from your garden, bring them in, and simmer them on your stovetop, all for free. Which option would you choose?
If you want to build your dream house, you can call up the local contractors, have them bid on the project, and pay one of them to build it for you, or, you can spend every weekend from now until the end of eternity hauling wood from Home Depot to your construction site so that you can build it, for free, for yourself.
People bitch and moan about Microsoft products, but the simple fact of the matter is that those products are used BECAUSE THEY ADD VALUE. Gnome & KDE can't hold a candle to the W2K/XP interfaces. There isn't a spreadsheet in the world with the ease of use of Excel. Outlook [despite its past security problems] is the best scheduler in the business. Period.
People are willing to pay extra for quality. The challenge for Microsoft [and Sun, and IBM, and HPQ, and all the old-timers] is to make sure that the quality of their products justifies the pricetags. I think they call it building a better mousetrap...
Slick,
I am not going to argue, value add people will pay for. The question, and more to the point issue, I am raising is that the value add that MS will give, will continue to deminish. Right now there in my oppinion or only a few true open source projects that are doing it right and well, those center around 2 major products, APACHE/JAKARTA which are phenomenal, and Unix derivatives (FreeBSD, LINUX etc..) Now certainly there are more opensource products out there databases, EJB containers etc etc..
The point I am making is not that MS has a value add, the point is, what value add will they be giving in the future? Products like Word, and the rest of Office, really are not adding new features that have any impact or that are driving most people to upgrade. So you have relatively static products, that are not driving user upgrades. When you have that type of situation, the value add becomes less and less over time.
Once you no longer have product driving use through advancement you must fall back on compatibility (file format).. right now MS has this, the question though is if the product is stable/static can it continue to expect to stay the defacto? Remember, there once was a product called Word Perfect and it was the defacto standard... MS leveraged its OS monopoly with a concerted effort against WordPerfect to change that. Don't think MS is immune from that happening, just because they have the OS.
So, you have software mainly being supported now, not by its own features, but by the OS tie (IE upgrade of Office happens not from a need for new features, but because new OS is out...)... And most OS sales are from hardware upgrade not out of need either (because OS is not advancing huge features driving upgrade, and machines are replaced on lease every 2-3 years or less)... So you have this whole thing essentially dependent on the hardware cycle upgrade, not on their own individual merits. Now since machines are faster and faster, and quite frankly are far more powerful than most business users will ever tap, even at the low end these days, will that cycle continue ad infinum?
If it does, MS is fine, because it can continue to make high margins on new computers being sold, however if it doesn't and MS needs to sell upgrades on their own.... it starts to come apart. Think about it, why do I as a business need to buy the new Office XXXX or windows YYYY? what I have works fine.. so I don't.... there is no compelling reason to upgrade. If there is no real compelling reason to upgrade, then any competitor, opensource or otherwise is going to gain ground during such times.... So your value add becomes less over time, not greater. Right now and quite frankly for average user, a good while MS has had no compelling upgrade argument, and continues to rely more and more on the upgrade cycle.
MS's knows this, they know they have a problem, if they didn't they wouldn't be trying so hard to find a market for their goods outside of their core, but thusfar have been unable to, because unlike the OS/Office world, they don't have that monopoly to leverage.. So far nothing outside of that core area has been successful. And their core is not going away today, but it is not going to be what it has been in the past.
No is required to use electricity or water either. Those are both highly regulated monopolies with a set rate of return on capital. They are monopolies because they both have a high barrier to entry and competition can not take place. With microsoft there is also a high barrier to entry and competition can not take place here either. Fact is, you would pay three times as much for your water and electricity if they were not regulated.
I'm not sure if it still is, but the most profitable division within Microsoft (by # of employees) for a while was was group that makes Microsoft Mice, Joysticks, and Keyboards.
There was something like 20 employees in the division and it was responsible for millions in hardware sales.
Bill wasn't giving anything to Logitech :)
If MSFT rests on its laurels, it's doomed. If it continues to innovate, and continues to offer value, it'll be fine.
Will .NET kick J2EE's ass, or will it be a failure? Will the new file-system-as-relational-database be a bust, or will it be the greatest thing since sliced bread? Will the tablet PC revolutionize the way we work, or will it be another Apple Newton?
Only time will tell...
RE: "Last time I checked, this was America and no one was REQUIRED to buy a computer and BUY MS.":
Up until not long ago, if you purchased a PC from Compaq / Dell / Gateway, you were indeed required to buy an MS O/S. You are correct in saying that you were not required to buy the computer, however.....
While we are at it let's complain about the price of a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Does any socialist out there think corporations or owners of businesses should sell things at cost? Where would government get it's revenue? They charge whatever the market will bear and more power to them.
In computers, people play with Microsoft because they have to. In other areas, everybody's doing their best to make sure they don't have to play with Microsoft.
Darn right. I have an x-box, it is awesome, obviously much superior over other systems, especially with the lead game Halo. Plus, X-box is going to be played over the 'net.
In the next couple of years, Nintendo and Sony will probably fall behind Microsoft.
Remember guys, Netscape was the dominant browser. Look at Netscape today. Almost no one uses it.
M$ makes 78% profit margin on office products with 80% + marketshare.
M$ loses money in markets where it does not have monopoly powers thus must perpetuate monopoly to remain profitable
M$ was found liable for using anticompetitive tactics that inhibited competitors from entering in the ludicrous marketplace
Bottom line, consumers have less choice, less innovation, and higher prices
If you expect me to believe that any one company can create a product that fullfills everyones needs all the time at the lowest possible price without any competition from the goodness of their hearts, I will have to point you to the fact that M$ appearently looses in every market they have genuine competition in. I am afraid the boys in Redmond seemingly cannot fullfill your promise of the best functionality for the lowest price in every arena.
This is a blow to us who believe that M$ uses their OS monopoly to force their inferior products on end users; Even with their 90% + OS marketshare they still cannot force their other offerings profitable.
If they wouldn't change the fundamentals with every release they'd not spend even that much.
Last time I checked, this was America and no one was REQUIRED to buy a computer and BUY MS.
If you want to be able to communicate with the majority of the world, you have to. Microsoft patents its file formats. Yes kids, that means that if it really wanted to it could keep people from being able to make compatable products for free. If you don't believe that people should be allowed to do so then bow out, you're a statist fsck and your opinion is neither wanted nor is it revelent.
Like I said before, if you just can't stomach Microsoft's products, there's a world of competition to choose from:
1) NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP/MAC OSXIs Solaris a fraud? Is Linus Thorvalds a poseur? Is Theo de Raadt a script kiddie? Do none of these operating systems provide genuine competition?
2) Red Hat
3) FreeBSD
4) OpenBSD
5) NetBSD
6) Solaris
7) ad nauseum...
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