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The Secret Origin of Windows
harrymcc writes "Windows has been so dominant for so long that it's easy to forget Windows 1.0 was vaporware, mocked both outside and inside of Microsoft — and that its immediate successors were considered stopgaps until OS/2 was everywhere. Tandy Trower, the product manager who finally got Windows 1.0 out the door a quarter century ago, has written a memoir of the experience. (He thought being assigned the much-maligned project was Microsoft's fiendish way of trying to get rid of him.) The story involves such still-significant figures as Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, and Nathan Myhrvold; Trower left Microsoft only in November of 2009 after 28 years with the company."
vaporware it certainly was not. Did the subby not read the article?
Did you? Per the article, Windows 1.0 was several years late. During that considerable period, Windows was a product which had been announced but not delivered. Thus it was (past tense) vaporware.
Software should gain new features with each version. The addditional functionality of the OS should be a given over the years.
I'll give you that they aren't jacking the price of the Home version given the price in 1985, but have you seen their Enterprise Server pricing model?
Let's say you're a small business that needs 25 seats.
You pay for a server license for your domain controller, and a server license for a backup domain controller. Since you're a small shop, that is also the box you run Exchange off of. For both Windows Server and Exchange, you need CALs in addition to the server licenses.
Then each end user basically needs a SEPERATE client license from the CAL, since their individual desktop OSes need a license, and for email, they need Outlook licenses.
Shouldn't the server CAL effectively be the same thing as the client software license? They're double-dipping on what is already a very expensive license.
Home users pirate Windows en-masse, or get it pre-installed with their computer via a cheap OEM license bundled in. Microsoft makes their money on enterprise licensing, where they do jack their prices.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Actually what I was referring to was: Sub-Optimal Solutions. Up to the '90s it was a great matter of debate in economics. Many "learned" professors denied that it existed and that a market would always find the optimal solution. With the introduction of "lock-in" as a concept it is recognized that while markets will find optimal solutions they can become "stuck" with sub-optimal ones for a while. The time-scales are what matter, a market may view a few decades as a blip while to you and I that is quite a while.
Shh.