"Mark R. Myers" wrote:

> Because then we wouldn't all be cheerleaders for Microsoft.
> Unlike some, I don't see Microsoft as the "evil empire."
> I see Bill Gates as probably one of Harvard Business School's brightest
> dropouts.
> Let us face it, in the early days of Micorsoft, he pulled some pretty good
> moves, capitalized on others mistakes (IBM), and gave the public what it
> needed--a GUI to run on an IBM-compatible machine.
> I remember the early days (even before DOS became synonymous with just one
> OS, rather than being short of the Disk Operating System). My first IBM
> compatible PC was a Zenith EZ-PC with 16 shades of gray, CGA-compatible
> monitor. The biggest hard drive you could get in a computer was 20MB, and
> they were HUGE (those good old, MFM drives).
> The EZ had 2 720KB 3.5" floppy drives. You would have to put the DOS boot
> disk in one, and your program in the other. Q&A Write (a good word processor
> at the time), fit easily onto 1 720K floppy, with a little room to spare.
> Then I upgraded to Professional Write and had to use both floppy drives for
> the one program.
> The EZ came with 512KB of RAM, and right away I bought the only expansion
> possible for it. That big box on the back gave it 640KB total RAM, a 1200
> baud modem, and a serial port.
> This was 1988 (so long ago). My wife would not TOUCH the thing. She could
> not understand DOS, or swapping floppies, or anything like that. Once I set
> Q&A up for her because she needed to write a paper.
> Now, thanks to Win3.1, & Win95, and computers as a whole getting better, she
> now teaches basic computing and software packages at our company (Win95,
> SAP, Siebel, Lotus Notes (ugh), Office97). Why did she learn it? Because it
> was graphical and it made sense to her.
> There were 100s of millions of people like her.
> Because these people started buying computers because computers became
> easier, prices started to drop dramatically.
> So, in a way, we can thank Bill Gates. Why? Partially because of his
> products, the price of PCs has plummeted.
> I know that if life would have been different, and any one of us would have
> grown up to be Bill Gates, we wouldn't trade places with any one of us, even
> for a second.
> Do I like Microsoft business practices? No. Do I like some of their
> products? Yes.
> IMHO, I think what should be done is that MS's OS division should be
> separated from the rest of the company. The OS division should openly share
> any new API's or innovations in both current and upcoming OSes with other
> vendors--whether they be Microsoft Software Division, IBM-Lotus, Corel,
> Caldera, whoever. I think that would be fair. That would more level the
> playing field. Then a small company would have the same knowledge of the
> API's and the OS as Microsoft Software Division would. Whether they take
> advantage of that knowledge, is up to them.
> That is what I think should be done with Microsoft. And, BTW, I corrected
> the spelling in the subject line.
> Mark

/flame
Right -- And Hitler built the autobahns
flame/