MicroShaft Is a Monopoly

[Barney]

For all of those who think MS is not a monopoly, and has been looking out for them, the consumer:

Q.What did Windoze 95 cost when it came out? What does it cost now?

A. The same.

Who but a monopoly has that kind of pricing power in the computer industry? MS has wielded their power to our disadvantage, and they deserve to get smacked.

Someone on another forum put it very well :"We support a race to the top of the hill, but the person who gets there first cannot be allowed to roll boulders down on top of the others."

Barney

[Buuri]

And we on the Matrox forums care because..?

For all those "MS in a monopoly" whiners, I have to say that make your own OS and start to sell it! Then you can price it the way you want.
What should MS do then? Stop making operating systems because they have no heavy competition? Or give it out for free? What please tell!

_
B

[Barney]

You should care because MS has stifled and strongarmed competition, giving US fewer choices. It's one thing for them to protect their vested interests. It's a whole other thing to deliberately undermine other products.

Who knows how many fewer video problems and API's we would be discussing today if MS had not been allowed to run roughshod on programmers with potentially better ideas?? Look what AMD and their partners have been able to do for gamers with MS and Intel up their collective backsides. Think where we could be if the playing field had been level.

Also, I don't doubt for a minute, that if a G400 MAX cost $250 FOUR YEARS from now, that you wouldn't be telling Matrox to kiss off. If Matrox isn't competitive, they die. If MS isn't competitive, we still line up to buy Windoze 2002.

This affects you, and all Matrox users. That's why you should care. But I guess it's easier to just be a smartass.

Barney

[Himself]

I don't really think it's about cost so much as being stuck with an inferior product. Ask anyone who has ever used AmigaOS if Windows is perfect. If you start off with MSDOS as a base for your OS you know how it will turn out. There is so much legacy and accumulated crap in Windows it's not funny, it's one big make work project to keep MS in business, that's about it.

[Alfie]

Let's all switch to Linux,it's free!
Then we can start a whole new forum.
How do I configure anything with this operating system?
This action will definitely teach Microsoft a lesson.
The very nerve of them to charge so much money on a product that without would render our computers as a pile of useless junk.
It is true that windows has plenty of shortcomings,msdos based,limited irq's,etc.
Let's all figure out a new os,shall we?
And let's make sure it's bug free.
Perfection! Now all techs will be out of work,not!
Furthermore what about Matrox, heck!They want more than $200.00 for a g400 max.
I say we start an outcry we want free OS's and free maxes.
Furthermore for evey problem a Matrox user has an automatic rebate of $20.00
Let's not stop there how about soundblaster,any problems?No problem,free soundcard.
Get real,Microsoft's business practices suck,but people should open their eyes and see this is a way for the DOJ and states to get money,worked on tabacco,why not Microsoft?They have plenty of it.
Do you hear an outcry against Intel?Perhaps they are next.
If you honestly believe the hype about protecting the consumer,perhaps you are living in a blissful state!

[space7]

Microsoft gonna louse his Monopoly in the future. Ther are a Marx philosophie that say "The beger you are from the toper you will foll". Linux is the arme that gonna kill Microsoft but not now because Linux is not a very youser frendly OS.

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Sorry for my English.
A G400 in a new G4 have wing's

[Barney]

IMHO, I believe that many people are missing the key point. MS has harassed and harangued and muscled and threatened their competitors. This keeps us, the consumers, from ever getting to make a choice in the first place.

I say more power to Bill Gates and Microshaft IF they can win in the marketplace. That doesn't mean stop the other guy before he can come to market. It means let the competition present their product and let the market decide who makes the better product. Nothing has to be given away -- people will pay (and, in most cases, pay well) for a superior product. Why do you think we're on this website???

Bill Gates is not on the hotseat just because the DOJ doesn't like him. Antitrust laws are sometimes contradictory, but they have their basis in protecting honest competition and consumers. MS has not played fair, and that is painfully obvious.

Barney

[Chris Blake]

So MS is a monoploy, so f**ing what?!!!!

As usual the American legal system has wasted an awful lot of time and money to prove that the sky is blue. Perhaps if they concentrated their efforts on something that actually mattered the world would be a better place.

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Chris Blake

Epox MVP3G5, K6III450, 192Mb RAM, G400Max DH, SBLive! Value and whole load of other stuff

[Nuno]

Hey Himself, AmigaOS Rocks! I loved the "guru meditation" mombo jambo But why can´t I remember installing AmigaOS countless times?

[everettes]

Just my view:

1) GTE is my phone company. I have no choice.
2) VA power is my electric company. I have no choice.
3) The county supplies my water. I have no choice.
4) Microsoft is a tough business opponent. I can buy Linux (in a 100 flavors), BeOS, Mac, OS at a retail store, online, from computer manufacturers and at computer shows.
5) When the DOJ broke AT&T, customer service went down and prices went up.
6) I feel sorry for IBM, DOJ tied them in court long enough for their business to plummet.
7) There are ALOT of business that have, or wish they had transacted business just like MS.
8) Business isn't church, it's Darwin. Only the strongest, smartest, and most willing to adapt survive.
9) Microsoft used every weapon in it's arsenal to protect itself. Some view that as EVIL. I view that as business.
10) As a friend of mine in the UK said: "You Americans are fools, you are taking a company [MS] that is your best global performer,that is driving the industry, and is the envy of other countries and corporations, and bringing it to it's knees."

[Marshmallowman]

were you around when windows first came out?.
It was a complete lump of %$%^%. But enough retards bought because it was the "standard" PC OS. So MS improves it by coping a lot of the functionallity out of apples gui(not enough to legaly enable apple to pull there court case off). Then they do a complete copy (apple has already blown its bolt on the first legal case).
At the time apple/amiga/atari all had better more efficient and easeir to use gui's ( but not a single standard, and all the managers buy PC's with windows, because they r thick)
Most of the user interface improvements for windows 95's are derived from X-windows type stuff (context menus...etc).
Windows is the standard OS because the people who make the decisons buy it to keep compatible, not because it is better.
Things like trying to hijack JAVA (THE OS independant programming language) to produce the windows only variant are very obvious attemts to maintain their monopoly.
Microshafts completely unethical business practices help to keep them their, That and an excessively large legal budget.
Personally I think the latest crop of linux 6.x distribution has the ease of use that could enable it to be a genuine alternative.
(its reliability and functionality has been their for years)
But I am not holding my breath.

In My Humble Opinion

[pheel]

Barney, barney barney....

Microsoft won the marketplace.
I'm truly sorry very few people know the command 'ls -ltr' vs. a right click, guess 'ease of use' vs 'stability' is a battle with a known outcome..

I'm not sorry about this though:

Capitalism won..

The best company (of multiple non-idylic choices) has been chosen.

Now, Capitalism can kick in again and chose a new winner-as soon as someone develops and sells better or more popular software.....
But the courts can make that happen sooner, by making the underdogs providing non-compatible software the ONLY choices.

Think about it...



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There can be only one, and I ain't him-and campers suck

[pheel]

P.S.

everettes rox, read his posts

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There can be only one, and I ain't him-and campers suck

[MattTr]

I agree with the so what that Microsoft is a monopoly. If Microsoft is broken up then the computer market will slide back, not progress.
Microsoft may not have the best operating system, but it is a known standard. Direct-X has now become the source of choice for game programmers, and all cards (especially the G-400) support it. If there were not a standard then you would have to decide on a card based on what games you wanted.
Besides, card makers have a tough enough time developing one set of drivers for Windows. Can you imagine having to develop for 5-10 different operating systems?
This goes for all hardware. Instead of having a Real good Driver for Windows, we would have 5-10 half assed drivers for all operating systems.

[Tessen]

Maybe I'm completely missing the boat here because I'm not a programmer, but I feel the end effect of Microsoft's strategies is that the consumer has won.

All right, before you laugh me out of this thread, hear me out. My first computer was an Atari 400 with a whopping 16K RAM and a 600 bps cassette recorder as the storage device (and pretty darned expensive for a student, let me tell you!). At the time, Windows was (I believe) just a fledgling version 1.01, there was the Apple II, Sinclair, Texas Instruments, IBM, TRS-80, VIC-20 (Commodore 64 came a bit later), and probably a number of other less well known microcomputers. The point is, each had its own operating system, hardware, etc. Programs written for one system would absolutely not work on another (you couldn't even get an Atari floppy disk drive to read an Apple disk).

Let us suppose that Microsoft had never existed (or had existed in a kinder, gentler incarnation). Do you suppose for one minute that at this point in time, that ANYTHING would be standardized (okay, maybe ASCII)? Computer companies as a rule did not get along. Try and use an AtariDOS diskette in an Apple II drive (I dare ya!) or program a TRS-80 from Sinclair source code. Hell, even AtariBASIC and Commodore 64's Basic were different enough that both required some major tweaking to get a program to run on both systems. Does anyone think for one minute that a "superior" operating system would have been able to shine through, to which everyone would have said, "Ah! Company X has produced something with great features; let us emulate them in our next release so we shall be compatible!" Not bloody likely. And if we would have a dozen or so "popular" operating systems and hardware configurations today, hands up how many people would think software wouldn't be double or triple the price (or completely unavailable for the system you were unlucky enough to have picked) because the programmers would have to do extra duty to make applications and games compatible with a mosaic of OS's? HOW MANY MORE Y2K PROBLEMS WOULD WE HAVE RIGHT NOW?

Microsoft, by its tactics to become number one, have (by design or by accident) more or less unified programming architecture. Best of all, my older programs can still run on the new machine (gee, I couldn't say the same for either my Atari 8-bit or my Amiga software 2 years after I originally bought those machines).

The point is, Microsoft has shaped the computer world we have today. Small comfort to those who were bought out/squashed in the process, granted. But is it a bad thing overall? Would Linux be in the position it is right now if Microsoft were a small (or non-existent) player? Would there be an operating system serving as the "benchmark" beyond which others try to excel, or would there simply be a hodge-podge mess of operating systems, all incompatible with each other because no one wants to pay royalties?

In closing, I would like to paraphrase some words of Richard Garriott, founder of Origin Systems and patriarch of the 20-year old Ultima series of computer games. When interviewed on the newest Ultima game and asked about the Direct 3D support, he said it was frustrating because while D3D has a set of standardized calls and utilities, no 3D card responds the same way as another. Hence, more overhead in the program, more work for the programmers, more costs to cover. A lack of standardization for graphics cards can be frustrating. A lack of standardization in operation systems can be a nightmare, for the programmer and for the consumer.

....Tessen....
(who really has no idea how this topic relates to Matrox hardware)