PROBLEMS WITH MICROSOFT XP?

April 12, 2002 | EggsAckley

[Quix]

THANKS FOR THE LINK.

BLESSINGS,

[Justa]

Tcp/ip should work as a workgroup protocol when Netbeui is removed. Try using the advice here, substituting XP for W98.

[AFreeBird]

Nope, you sound like the kid who got an F on our microsoft paper for my anti-trust class. Learn before you make asinine comments.

Class?

Microsft's reasons for writing IE had nothing to do with their desire to not be blamed for misbehaving software from third party developers and had evertything to do with Bill playing catchup on the WWW after initally dismissing it because he wanted to promote a closed proprietary MSN as an alternative to CIS and AOL.

And if M$ were truly concerned about their image as a stable platform, they would have made more of an effort to put out stable platforms to begin with. Their desire to churn out software no matter its maturity, to stay ahead of the competition, has done more damage to their reputations, and increase people's frustrations, than some other third party developers.

[Festa]

Netscape built a web browser. The web browser had some problems with Windows. Gates builds his own web browser to solve problem. In the end, Gates browser compete with Netscape. This is not illegal in any form.

Got it

[Big Steve]

Building your own is a great idea, but you better know exactly what you are looking for and what you want out of your homemade computer or you will have problems putting it together and making it work.

[Big Steve]

I still love Netscape, but I was getting frustrated by it crashing too many times. IE hasn't crashed once. so maybe I'll stick to IE for awhile.

[Big Steve]

In PC World magazine of October 2001, the best store to get a computer is Gateway Country. If there is one nearby where you live, you ought to check it out. If not, try purchasing a Dell computer online. Just a thought.

[AFreeBird]

Netscape built a web browser. The web browser had some problems with Windows. Gates builds his own web browser to solve problem. In the end, Gates browser compete with Netscape. Th is is not illegal in any form.

Got it

Sheesh... Look kid, I've been working in IT for quite some time. I was there working with the systems and reading the trades when all this stuff happened.

Here's some brief histories for you from various sources.

* Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina from the NCSA released the first version of Mosaic for X-Windows on Unix computers in February, 1993. A version for the Macintosh was developed by Aleks Totic and released a few months later, making Mosaic the first browser with cross-platform support. Mosaic introduced support for sound, video clips, forms support, bookmarks, and history files, and quickly became the most popular non-commercial web browser. In August, 1994, NCSA assigned commercial rights to Mosaic to Spyglass, Inc., which subsequently licensed the technology to several other companies, including Microsoft for use in Internet Explorer. The NCSA stopped developing Mosaic in January 1997. source

... Interestingly, Microsoft, by far the dominant developer of operating systems and software, has chosen to license the critical browsing technology needed for its new network from Spyglass. Similarly, Delphi, one of the largest Internet access providers and a subsidiary of News Corp., also chose to license interface software instead of developing it internally. These companies are gaining time to market for the capture of first-time subscribers, but they may be forfeiting the opportunity to lock in those subscribers by not using truly innovative and differentiable interfaces. Only time will tell, but these licensing decisions demonstrate the felt urgency to reach the market quickly. Microsoft's decision may have been a defensive move to counter Netscape, whose rapid emergence in the marketplace may foretell its future as the Microsoft (i.e. systems software standard) of the Information Superhighway. Looking ahead to the increasing importance of transactions to online services, both Microsoft and Netscape have forged alliances with credit card services--Visa and MasterCard, respectively--in order to gain access to their card holders.source

So, If as you say, Micro$oft invented IE to counter unstable Netscape code, why did they license that very code for their first IE?

More...
... But that would be better than the way it's being bundled,because if you're going to bundle it, you're guaranteeing a significant advantage. Within six months they'll have more subscribers to their service than all of the three existing guys ( AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy ) together, would be my guess..."

America Online and Netscape are dicussing an alliance aimed at furthering their lead over Microsoft." - The WALL STREET JOURNAL, January 22, 1996, p.1

Microsoft Seeking to Derail AOL Talks With Netscape ... is trying to persuade AOL to license Microsoft Internet Software instead. The WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 7, 1996, p.A3

Internet control battle heats up: Microsoft teams up with America Online. Intensifying its dogfight with Netscape Communications, Microsoft ... announced a broad pact with America Online to promote each other's products. SBee News Services, Sbee March 13 , p.D1

Okay, so why did AOL make the deal with Microsoft? Because AOL wanted to keep their pre-loaded software on OEM machines. A deal made between AOL and the OEM's. Microsoft was promoting it's new MSN (Microsoft Network) to compete with CIS,AOL & Prodigy and was including it with their then new Windows 95. Microsoft using its postition, was going to force the OEM's to end that deal with AOL.

Okay, So why would Microsoft make such a deal when they had their own fledgling MSN to promote and having a competitor's software pre-installed on new systems would seem to allow consumer's to choose something else? Answer: It was more important to them to have IE out there, and the deal with AOL forced IE down every AOL users throats, whether they wanted it or not.

Got it?

Go back to class kid, and try to stay awake. And if your misinformation was actually gleened from that class, I suggest you get your money back.

[dalebert]

Thanks for the info.

[Festa]

If you are advocating that Microsoft be forbidden from entering into a contract to save time and money then you are gravely mistaken. My anti trust teacher Dr. Stephan Walters is a well known and extremely well respected economist. These are not crack-pot theories, but rather capitalism. If you have an opposition to capitalism then just say it.

[Arthalion]

How long have you been running Dell servers? We don't rely on Dell servers because our experience shows that they tend to lose their reliability after 2-3 years...and since we run our datacenter with five year replacement cycles, that's just not acceptable.

FYI: In our datacenter, we log every reboot, lockup, hardware failure, and equipment replacement for every server, and we have computerized service logs dating back to 1986. We've run a limited number of Dell servers since 1991, and relied primarily on HP since 1988 (the old Burroughs mainframe was junked in 1983 in favor of an IBM client/server solution, which in turn was scrapped in 1988 because of IBM's astronomical prices in the late 1980's). Anyway, having these computerized maintenance logs allows me to punch up some interesting, and informative, numbers.

By the 24th month of use (24/7 uptimes under constant load), 11% of our Dell servers have experienced hardware related failures. Our HP servers, in the same period, experienced a 9% failure rate. Not much difference? Read on. By the 30th month of use, the failure rate for our Dell servers climbs to 17%...a 6% climb in as many months. Our HP's, in contrast, only increased 1% to a 10% failure rate. By the 36 month mark, our hardware related failure rate for Dell servers climbs to 24%...nearly 1 in 4 of our Dell servers has suffered a hardware failure by the three year mark. Our HP's have incremented up to 11% by this point. By the four year mark, our Dell servers have reached a whopping 39% hardware related failure rate, while our HP's are still sitting at a fairly comfortable 18%. By the time we reach the five year replacement point, 52% of our Dell servers have suffered a hardware related failure, whereas only 25% of our HP's have experienced the same types of problems.

No marketing claims here, no fancy spin, just real world server performance measured over a 14 year period. I've excluded software issues, viruses, power problems, planned maintenance, and "unknowns", leaving only actual failures of computer hardware. My numbers CLEARLY show that HP servers are historically more reliable than Dell servers. The Dell's seem to do pretty good for the first couple years but they don't seem to be built for the long haul. In an environment like ours, long term reliability is actually more important than short term performance.

I'm not saying that Dell servers are bad, just that they aren't as reliable as HP. We've still got a bunch of PowerEdge 4200's and 4400's running as "less-than-critical" departmental servers, and we run PowerEdge 6650's for our media servers because they outperform the HP's in the same price range, but we accept the fact that the 4x00's crash more often, and we replace the media servers on a two year cycle. Dell servers do a great job for the price, as long as the datacenter admins are willing to accept a greater overall TCO and steeper maintenance costs.

[AFreeBird]

First off, my reply was aimed at your assertion that Micro$oft created IE to counter unstable software which I believe I have shown not to be true.

Secondly, why should Micro$oft have been allowed to force the OEM's into negating their contract and dropping AOL software? AOL had made a contract with the OEM's directly to promote its product and M$ came in and was going to use its power to force them to drop it, unless AOL made a deal with M$ to push IE. Are you telling me that the OEM's and thrid parties cannot enter into contracts unless approved by Bill???

Did you know that at one time M$ forced OEMs to pay M$ a fee for the OS even if the OS was not installed or sold on a system, just because someone would install an OS, probably Windoze?

And lastly, I just love it when people pull out the old "your against capitalism" line when arguing against a company that behaves in a monoplistic and predatory way. Being a monopoly is not a crime per se, but acting like one is. And Micro$oft has been shown to act in such a way.

[Festa]

Lay out your case against microsoft. I am extremely interested in hearing it.