I need to get this off my chest. Perhaps Microsoft SHOULD b

[Guest]

My apologies for posting a topic not related to applications under Windows 2000 or NT4. But this is something that I am truly interested in finding other opinions on.

 

Microsoft has come under a lot of fire lately for taking business actions that hinder other companies from competing. This is true mainly for the operating system family of software products.

 

Imagine for a minute, a world with 20 or so companies producing operating systems. This would be a nightmare! Compatability problems would abound, and security would be impossible to maintain.

 

I understand the antitrust laws and their purpose, and I also agree they are needed. However, in certain areas of business, I think exceptions should be made. Take water and electricity for example. For the most part, water and electric companies are monopolies, and they SHOULD be. Imagine if there was competition among companies like this!

 

The same is true for Microsoft. We should be thanking Microsoft and Bill Gates for creating a world where businesses can be more profitable, people can keep in touch easier, and life is more productive. If Microsoft did not win the court case brought against them by Apple in the 80's, can you imagine the world today? Personal computers would cost thousands more, and more importantly, there would be no internet (at least not one like we are use to).

 

So in conclusion, perhaps it should be recognized that Microsoft should be given exclusive rights to produce the one and only family of operating systems. This only makes sense! What do you think?

[LM 0]

I don't think it's really necessary (or a good idea) for there to be a software/OS monopoly, far more importent is having a set of standards; one format for documents, one format for zip files, etc...then users could use whatever they want, Linux, Windows, Mac, anything, I think that would be a better alternative to MS monopoly

[jonny 0]

Plus if your a monopoly theres no competition. Hence microshaft can overprice their os's. But ms isnt the worst of tyrants.

[EM 0]

Monopoly that it may be, Microsoft has done much good for personal computing. I would agree with LM, standards are a must for the hardware side. However, running games and other apps on differing OS's may be nearly impossible. I would have to say that most software developers are too cheap (chicken) to support any other OS than the most popular (ie: Microsoft). Take OS/2 for example. I used it for over 2 years during the reign of Windows 3.0/3.1. It ran all my DOS programs and all my Windows apps and didn't crash nearly as much as Windows on top of DOS. Yet software developers insist on only writing for what they have decided is the "best" OS. It is all in marketing, just like the Beta vs. VHS thing a number of years ago. Other OS's may be technically better but Microsoft has better marketing people. Just my 2 cents.

 

Ed

[Wintermute 0]

I think the thing thats important, and the reason I believe these antitrust cases should be thrown out, is WHY Microsoft's OS is the most popular. Its not due to unfair business practices or some underhanded tactics, but because the simple fact is that Microsoft Windows is the best overall OS created to date. While OS's such as Linux, FreeBSD or Sun may be the best choice for admins looking for the ultimate stability, Windows offers the best combination of features for the average computer user.

 

I think we can all agree that there's plenty of room for improvement, but so far no other company has presented such a powerful and easy-to-use OS as Windows. Until someone does the government should keep their corrupt hands out of computer world. If they spent a little more time fixing real problems we'd be a lot better off. Well, there's my 2 cents.

[Tim Bazzinett 0]

Microsoft should be a monopoly? You mean overprice their products so high you have no where else to go. That is the way of business. And you know Bill Gates just wants your money. It is sad that the industry standard has chosen to be MS. But you have to have it with Office 97 to have some sort of standard of passing information or business documents. I truly like MS win95 just for compatibilty of my games. Win 2k offers offers almost the same compatibility, even though most manufacturers have sh***y drivers for it. But now that I have used Linux for a while now, I kind of like it. It is free (remember IE4.0 to kill netscape), and many programs have been written for it. Hardly ever crashes. I can see it in the future as a successful competitor to MS (like a thorn in the side like competitor, not on a equal level).

 

But with linux and the new BeOS being released as free, it is good for the pricing of MS products. Hopefully, we should see their prices come down. In the meantime, give these free OS's a try. If you have some spare room on a hard drive, use it for these operating systems. It is you people saying "hey, this new OS is good and stable and it is free", that will ring in the ears of MS. If you continually choose MS like the blue people in the Apple commercial of 1984, you can expect to pay $600 for a speadsheet program. Or pirate it. Which brings me to another point about piracy: One hundred billion dollars and he is saying the he is losing money because of piracy. Wahhhhhhh, big baby. 99.9999% of us will never see a billion in our wallets, let alone $100,000,000,000