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The Cost of Bug Fixes
Well, I try to avoid posting MS stories unless they're kinda
large, but about 50 people have submitted a CNet story that
proclaims that MS might be charging as much as
$89 for a Service Patch to
Windows 98. I guess I'd try to come up with an appropriately
witty comment, but I'm at a loss for words here.
Update: 04/07 03:27 by CT : apparently Cnet is screwed up a bit here, and
CNN has a more accurate
story. Read it.
umm.. apple charges for upgrades but not bug fixes. They never charge for *.*.X changes (where the third decimal changes), they didn't charge for the 8.0->8.1 upgrade (which contained not just bug fixes but an overhaul of the Virtual Memory system). they are expected not to charge for the 8.5->8.6 upgrade, which contains bug fixes and, among other things, a _different nanokernel_ (making it probably a more drastic change than win95-> win98)
/. account, but can't remember the password
what's more they tend to give serious discounts on upgrades to people who have upgraded within the last couple months. For instance when 8.0 came out they gave everyone who had bought 7.6 in the previous couple months a copy of 8.0 for the price of shipping. That sort of thing.
--an AC who has a
Why do you need Win95 for assembly? DOS I can see, but Win95 has no advantages over Linux when it comes to assembly programming, AFAIK. If you want Intel syntax, there is NASM.
My wife bought Office 97 on the Student-Teacher License scheme (about 75% off) for school use (she's a teacher), which, in the UK, is done by ordering a form to fill in, and then the product is sent later after the form has been validated.
The form (about four sheets of A4 and a very thin leaflet) needed collection from a courier's warehouse as it was packed in stout cardboard in a Win95-box-sized-box.
The CD turned up (eventually - but that's another story) by dropping though our letterbox one morning between two thin sheets of cardboard in a standard jewel case.
Go figure...
Mark.
and at the end of the process, the newsgroups were *filled* with people trying to tell M$ about bugs that had been reported, but not fixed and thier response was basically "screw it, it's RTM time (release to manufacturing)". The bugs are still there and I imagine that is what this joke is about!
They only made IE free to kill Netscape. So if Netscape dies, you bet they will slowly start charging for IE.
As long as Netscape has the market share lead (or a significant market share) IE will not survive if it's not free.
Also, it is not necessary to get either one. Most of the stuff in the SP are already available free from the M$98 update website. The only thing they are charging for is something called Internet Connection Sharing that makes sharing across network/internet easier.
I am not pro-M$, but you have to get the facts straight.
is Micro$oft's own arrogance. This is just further proof. They've been shooting themselves in the foot so much lately, their trigger finger must be getting tired.
M$ also owns hotmail, which keeps track of every link you click on in an email. That's right, it patches up all URLs it sees so they are redirected through hotmail's server, and any link you follow from their, ad infinitum... can you say "I love Big Brother!" Better start practicing...
Please tell me that this is just another April Fools' joke that /. let slip by...
This is an April Fools joke I hope. It's gotta be. Even Billy Borg wouldn't have the balls to charge for a bug fix. Enough with MS and their crap. Linux here I come!..oh wait, what about my precious games? No more Half-Life or racing sims? OK, MS License Violation, here I come! I refuse to pay for a service pack. I wonder if MS is an investor in Circuit City.
There already paying Sun for the servers that hotmail runs on... yeah, they tried to switch to NT, but it just couldn't handle the load, so they went back to using Unix. M$ seem to have no trouble with paying for Unix for their own use, when they want an OS that actually works...
I live in a rural community and sense I am the only computer geek around, I help a lot of people set up thier Windows stuff. Their stupidity never ceases to amaze me. As long as incredibly stupid people try to use computers, Microsoft will have a market. And these people will blindly pay for the upgrade because they think that the pricetag reflects the value of it. Sometimes I look at Linux and can't imagine why it hasn't broken into the desktop market, and then I help an unusually stupid person get a shortcut icon back on the desktop (they were worried about it). Then I realize that these people will never understand even the most basic concepts of Linux, DOS is foreign to them. All that they know is the click and drool interface of Windows. They are oblivious to the existance of any other OS. If I mention Linux to any of the people in my Hometown, they just say 'huh?' There is nothing that the DOJ can do about M$. There will continue to be stupid people who can only figure out to use Windows, and they will pay whatever Microsoft charges.
Just my $.02
--Pyro
Microsoft's biggest cash cow has always been fed from the 'versions' trough. Microsoft loves to release buggy software then charge for the update. They have been doing it since DOS.
What scares me is how they break a promise without a hint of apology. "Oh, well..." Maybe Gates needed another carribean island or something, maybe that explains the price.
Of course, you all know that all us little CD-burner-monkeys and warez makers will hack it immediately. So I'm not overly emotional about an update, even if I did use their OS.
Problem is, for every one person who refuses
to be taken advantage of by microsoft, there
are ten people who will stand in line to
get the shaft. This gives MS positive reinforcement to continue giving people the shaft.
In the end it's gonna be the stupid people
who will inherit the earth. And they will be
satisfied to live in the shattered remains of
the of the world they destroyed. Part of
the reason being that a hunter/gatherer does
have to think very much.
...this quote that resides upon my office wall:
"There is hardly anything in the world that some
man cannot make a little worse and sell a little
cheaper and the people who consider price only
are this man's lawful prey."
- John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Which is precisely how I feel about Microsoft and
the misguided souls who think Microsoft is the
be-all and end-all of computing.
And now the OS is including IPMasquerading (or a proxy..same difference).
Another "Hey look! Let's steal that idea and make it part of the OS" from Microsoft.
actually if his net worth is $40B and your net worth is $250k, then it is like donating $3,125. Of course this is assuming your net worth is $250,000.
James AHH I FORGOT MY SLASHDOT PASSWORD
Doesn't the following seem very Gates-oid?
You will obey me while I lead you
Eat the garbage that I feed you
Till the day that I don't need you
Don't run for help, no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
You have been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold
Most of Gates' so called philanthropy is in the form of software give aways to libraries. This will ultimately help to strengthen his monopoly. Hardly philanthropy in my book.
First M$ releases Win98 with IE4, and then tells you that you can uninstall IE, but Windows might get even more unstable.
Second M$ releases IE5 which states it can coexist with IE4, IMHO that sounds like M$ still can't get IE4 off without meltdown.
Third M$ releases a new Windows 98 with IE5 instead of 4, that sounds like the only way to get 4 outta there was to rewrite 98. I wish someone with M$ would confirm that one.
I hate to see the day where the emacs is so tightly integrated in the linux kernal that you can't build a system without it... But that's lunacy.
This probably doesn't affect many slashdotters, but there seems to be something strange about the way that Internet Explorer 5.0 shows ( or doesn't show ) symbols. Even when visiting Mic rosoft's Unicode Named Entities for HTML page, Internet Explorer 5.0 doesn't show all symbols correctly. When you go to the spe cial symbols page, it asks if it may download an on-demand font. After which it still doesn't display all symbols. Netscape and IE 4.0 displays things correctly. This behaviour was first noticed at the Open Source Hardware site: base3.org - which uses many symbols to convey trinary equations and circuit diagrams. So, what's up with IE 5.0?
Wow, it's possible to share a dialup between several home machines? Well I'll be damned... MS invents such nifty stuff... oh, wait... my bad... IP Masq has been here since the stone age...
It is a misconception that "monopoly" implies complete absence of alternatives. As far as antitrust laws are concerned, it just means market domination to the point where a company can behave AS IF there were no alternatives. In the desktop market MS clearly has a monopoly by this standard. It would not affect MS' business practices one bit if Linux, OS2, BeOS, and Apple all disappeared - none of these "competing" products have the slightest impact on MS' desktop products, because all of MS' customers are effectively "locked in" for a variety of reasons (mostly OEM agreements, compatibility with applications, and consumer ignorance).
I agree that MS does not have either an absolute monopoly or a functional monopoly in the server market.
M$ actually purchased the technology behind NAT1000, which was a pretty solid Winblows Network Address Translator for connection sharing, and incorporated this into their ICS thingie. I'm sure they probably managed to screw it up though.
That's pretty true, unfortunately.....and since market share would be controlled by the idiots, software companies will continue to develop software that runs on MS.
I personally never event considered upgrading to Win98.....yes, I'm a 95 user and no, I haven't made the leap to Linux yet. But I can tell you right now that my next box will be.......between the errors I get on my 95 box at work (MEMORY LEAKS!), and IE4 crapping out at home (and taking Win Explorer with it), no way in hell would I pay a dime for the "privilege" to have an MSOS on my box.
I hope more apps get ported to Linux. I'd love to have a box at work running Linux to develop on (stable), and then a shytbox running MS Win-whatever for viewing Word docs or running MS-specific apps. That way, all the crap associated with Windows -- macro virii, spontaneous OS explosions, etc -- would stay on the box.
The CNN article mentions that this is the new feature which people actually have to pay for. Of course, you can get this for free with Linux, but it requires more steps to configure. If I could program worth a damn, I'd write a script to remedy the situation....
what does shelling out money for the upgrade cd have to do with getting anything but service packs free. this appears to be an upsoming offering of "new" products. as in the past, MS plans to offer service packs free - but why should people get more for nothing.
microsoft has made enemies by doing something that everyone wants to do - make more money. the fury over microsoft makes me feel like we are moving into a society similar to what ayn rand wrote about. I am glad ms can bring more innovation and software to my computer
Well, you've retreated back from any reasonable position. No one would challenge that 95/98 are the dominant OSs for Intel. That wasn't ever the original argument. The argument was that MS does not have a monopoly. The world doesn't have a knife to its throat forcing it to use Intel chips.
Linux has 17% of the server OS market. Its growth is significant.
The iMac is the best selling home PC. This means it sells more than any single 95/98 based PC.
However you construe these facts, at the very least you can conclude that consumers have a choice and they are exercising it.
Please don't paint yourself into a corner any further with a silly response - its embarassing.
Cassius (from home)
I agree with you almost 100%.
However, it is unfair to say that it was Microsoft was the company that started this...
The underlying problem is that the quality of most software produced to date has been imperfect. There are of course many reasons for this, the main one is that software is extremely complex. I think that the real problem is the users.
A long time ago users should have demanded perfection from their software. Not that the software needs to have every feature under the sun, or be the fastest or anything, but that the supplied code should do what it does perfectly. If the software didn't, than the user should have stood for nothing less than a full refund.
I imagine that this situation would have slowed the progress of the computer industry, since many products end their lifecycles before all of their bugs are eleminated, but I think that in the long run it would have produced better results...
This whole situation almost brings bile into my throat. I'm disgusted that I work in an industry in which most products are defective, and it's accepted by the entire user community. I'm disgusted that if I was to open a business to create only 100% bug free code that my company would die because we would take longer than our competitors and cost more (since the users wouldn't give a rats ass about the quality). Damn! What a sorry state of affairs. Maybe it's time to change industries...go get an arts degree, maybe open a coffee shop and join the idiot masses, yeah, ignorance is bliss...
Your attitude is EXACTLY why Linux will never be a success in the high volume, consumer-centric (i.e. "real") world. Just because somebody doesn't understand the intricacies of how to use a PC doesn't make them a lower life form (or you a higher one). Microsoft understands that making and continually improving a product that 95% of the purchasing public like will make them billions and billions of dollars. Windows will continue to evolve and get easier to use. The people you are running down will be using it in their TV, VCR and other consumer appliances within the next few years. The chances of Linux being on those devices in the same timeframe is virtually zero until you and people who think like you do understand that it's all about being customer-focused. The "stupid people" don't need 100% uptime, improved speed and all the other benefits that Linux supposedly delivers. They want "easy" not "compile your own kernel". Do I hear the real world intruding ? ......
Okay, if you have looked at all the graphs of OS use, tell us what Microsoft's competition is on Intel PCs in the home. Or on Intel PC desktops in corporate use?
Lets see. Linux? Hardly. BeOS? Again, I really don't think so. OS/2? Whatever. Where's the so-called competition?
People who insist that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly are just fooling themselves to believe whatever comes out of Microsoft's mouth. The fact of the matter, Microsoft soft wields tremendous market power. Regardless of whether Microsoft has a literal monopoly, they are abusing their market power to the detriment of society. That is why they must be stopped. The reason people say that Microsoft is a monopoly, is because it's alot easier to say than "The wield near-monopoly market power." (Like the whole Linux, GNU/Linux thing).
Even AT&T had competition, as did standard oil, and they were monopolies by every sense of the word.
Yes, they are monopolists in their own little world. And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you. So no, they cannot change prices at will.
The fact of the matter is, if Microsoft decided to charge $200 for the upgrade, most people would pay for it rather than explore alternatives, simply because there aren't really any alternatives.
You present an argument, but you have yet to back it up with solid facts. Other than saying "that applies to micrsoft too" please tell me how. Microsoft does not have much, if any at all, competition in the intel desktop market. PLEASE tell me where they're competition is, I would like to be enlightened. If you can't point to specific examples, then perhaps it's time you rethink your argument.
Linux is the fastest growing server OS because there are so few installations. If you add a few more, *poof* you have 100% growth, or even more! Growth has nothing to do with market share or market power. Besides, you say yourself server OS. The market that Microsoft has a monopoly is the intel desktop PC, which sadly, Macintosh doesn't compete in either.
Try again?
Good thing I haven't downgraded my game machine from '95 OSR2 yet...
Ohhh it'll remove IE4 alright... and install IE5! (insert appropriate sound effect here) ;) Then there always is that 98lite thing.. wish i still had the URL.
It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
Look on the bright side, they're probably saving up for when they lose the DOJ trial. :-)
We gotta look at the big picture here. The more money BG makes now, the more he can give away later. Hopefully, the service pack will break Office and they can charge for an upgrade for that too. He just wants to be assured a top spot in the Guinness Book of Records for greatest philanthropist.
This is of course, sarcasm.
same hardware, is what I think the original poster was implying.
..." does not suffice to recommend new purchase of hardware!
"[P]assable (not preferrable) alternative
They'll get away with it and make a ton of cash. Same deal with Win95 SE...er Win98. By the time they're through it'll be called Windows 99 so the MS-Lemmings will think they're getting something significant. And they will keep doing this over and over.
Don't despair. This is a good thing...everytime they pull this stunt, they piss off a few more people who begin looking elsewhere.
Their day of reckoning is coming, and foolishness like this only accelerates their demise. So please MS...keep doing this and raking in the bucks...'cuz soon its going to sneak up and bite you in the ass.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Posted by JoeyRamone:
:). Or else Bill should have to dig in his pockets, but that hurts.
I wonder why MS keeps insisting on diggging holes for itself. I know, they can't afford the anti-trust case against them anymore, they have to
Ah, what a wonderful world it could be...at least if the world would be running on Linux.
Posted by JoeyRamone:
Well they've paid for Hotmail and that's still running on a Unix-based system. It makes you wonder, nah.
Posted by idisasm:
If you think paying for bug fixes is bad, you haven't seen anything, yet. There were articles during the trial which revealed that MS's plan is to try to move Windoze licensing to a subscription based model. Since too many people refuse to buy upgrades, the solution is to make them pay more than once for the same software by having the license expire.
This is merely a first attempt at moving toward that goal.
--
Don't fear the penguin.
They only made IE free to kill Netscape. So if Netscape dies, you bet they will slowly start charging for IE.
They already are charging for IE, if you really want to look at it that way. You can get an IE 4.0/5.0 cd for cash, and you can get Win98, which comes with IE 4, for a good 89 bucks.
IE, download wise, is something like 60 megs now. I have a relative who was asking me about it, had no idea how long 60 megs would take to download. She thought it would take an hour on her 33.6k modem, and I couldn't help but LMAO (the mactarnahan's stout didn't help).
She is probably going to go out and purchase Win98-2, because she wants IE 5 and doesn't want to download it. That's where they make their money.
-Erik-
Well, I'll admit that while KDE is not quite as easy to use as Windows 9x, it is a great step forward. This most recent pricing fiasco may be just what KDE/Gnome/etc need to push their way into the desktop mark and make linux a legitimate desktop OS for John Q. Public.
I personally refuse to pay to FIX an OS that Microsoft and Dell FORCED me to buy with the equipment I purchased.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I guess MS can get away with this, since their software has no warranty. So much for the theory of suing MS if something goes wrong.
TedC
Check out this ZDNet story:, 1014301,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153
The bug fixes will be free, in the form of SP1, downloadable from the MS site. In addition to that, there will be multiple versions of the newer Win98 (with new features), including a nominally-priced upgrade for people who paid the full retail price already for W98.
The $89 price willl be for a new full retail install, it looks like.
I'm no lackey, but it doesn't look as bad as it looks.
Not that I care much, since I don't run MS oses at home, but I have another point here that might put this in perspective. I have an old Sun box running 4.1.4. It works. Period. It does, day in and day out, just what I've configed it for, nothing more, nothing less. The only down times have been protracted power-outages or a kernel recompile for a patch. Now, in about 7-8 months, this box will be usless. Why? SunOS 4.1.4 is not y2k compliant w/o a patch. The patch is offered by Sun, for a hefty price. This is the base os I'm talking about, not some apps. I think Sun should offer the patch for free, but that ain't gonna happen. The cost? $1,295.00. The hardware is okay according to Sun's y2k page. Now, I talked to Sun about this, and what I got was a service contract that would put me on a path to Solaris 2.x. All this for $3,060.00 per annum. Thing is, that is overkill.. It's not what I want.
Now, I could slap RH Sparclinux on this puppy, but that is not my decision to make. I can't use the free Solaris 'cause this is for business use. My point is that I should not have to go through an upgrade/replacement because the os is doing just fine as it is. Am I pissed? You bet.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Other people's businesses.
I see this as a business opportunity. The forward looking company will realise that by stepping off of the MS treadmill and installing ANY competing OS (Linux, *BSD, BEOS, etc), they can operate at lower margins than the competition which routinely looses productivity and shells out cash for bug fixes that introduce as many bugs as they fix.
For small businesess, standardizing on MS can cost enough to make the difference between a small profit and going into the red. While Linux and co. may be more difficult for a novice user, at least the problems CAN be overcome. With MS, the novice buys it on the promise that it's so simple their parakeet can use it, and ends up with a killer bug that nobody can fix for them at any price.
There will be no charge for 8.5>8.6. If you want to get a CD with the 8.6 update on it, they will charge, though....big deal.
BTW: The new 8.6 nanokernel is a BIG improvement! It supports REAL preemptive multitasking and a better memory manager called Guard Pages. Not as good as Linux or MacOS X Server, but much better. Also there is REAL SMP. My friend loaded beta4 on a 9500 with a dual 604 @ 200MHz and the speed is 60% faster overall. That means no more MP-enabled apps are needed to take advatage of dual processors. In fact up to 64 processors are supported (theoretically) although the most ever tested in beta was 12 (604e). I am using 8.6b4 and have yet to crash my system under 8.6 (in 2 months.)
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
It's far easier to forgive your enemy after you get even with him.
This is the kind of crap that's going to kill M$.
Not technical superiority, I dare say that's been tried. When customers perceive that they're being gouged, simply because they have no choice of where to go, they do begin to get a little pissed off.
In practical terms what does it mean? We'll probably see slightly higher sales for Apple, coming mostly from the point and drool crowd. Be may see a little more action from media types (not sure about this), and free OS's will probably get a boost from fed-up users who consider themselves technically proficient.
The sad part is, all of the migration will probably be too small to be noticed, except by the gaining communities.
At least until the next bug fix.
Apple charge for upgrades. So do Oracle, Sybase, IBM and almost every other company.
And the article didn't say the 'service pack' wasn't free - it says the upgrade wan't free.
claiming the SP isn't free is hysterical scaremongering.
Didn't he say a while ago that nobody ever upgrades to fix bugs, but only because they want new features? Man, the arrogance of that guy never ceases to amaze me.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I saved $90 by not buying W98, now I can save $83 by not buying W98StepUp and going straight for RH 6.0 from cheap bytes.
I'm just rolling in the dough!
As that Neal Stephenson essay pointed out, Microsoft are not there to serve customers. Bill Gates job is to please the share-holders.
If they don't manage to sell *something* new this year -- since we all know that Win2K is going to be delayed -- there's going to be a lot of annoyed share-holders.
How about this for a conspiracy theory:
Windows 2000/NT 5.0 whatever the hell they decide to call it will cost you $0.00 to upgrade.. yup that's as in:
MS: See we have a "FREE" OS too!
Then charge $89.95 for your first bug fix 19.95 for each additional one. Sounds like a plan to me!
-Ex-Nt-User
Just because there are alternatives does NOT mean that they are not a monopoly. Look at the law! There have been cases where a company with only 70% of the market were judged as a monopoly. It's not as black and white as you think.
And the way the DOJ/MS case is going, I expect our courts to agree with me as well.
--
Timur Tabi
Remove "nospam_" from email address
Believe it or not, this will work for Microsoft. Sure those of us here will not settle for such a thing; could you imagine if you had to pay $89 to upgrade from Debian 2.0 to 2.1 or RH 5.0 to 5.1, much less kernel versions.
However here is why Microsoft will make this work. Becuase many many businesses use almost exclusive Win98 networks with a spattering of WinNT and Win95. The techs at these places usually hate having to deal with the BSODs and lockups that 98 creates. Therefore they will be able to convince the people with the money to upgrade the systems to "increase productivity".
In addition to this, Microsoft also will force PC OEMS into upgrading their licenses to ship the Win98-2ed, if they don't then they will be selling an "inferior product". Many times this leaves businesses with copies of Win98 that are never really used.
What makes the situation even worse is suppose you have a computer that has Win3.1 on it right and just suppose you can actually upgrade it to Win98 (I've seen places where they have pII-300's doing win3.1). You can't use the copy of 98 from the old computer! Why? Because they upgrade license agreements are written in such a way that all of the software must be installed on that machine. As a result there are some machines, my parents included that to use win98 must be upgraded in this order: Dos 5.0, Dos 6.2, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98-2ed. Thats an awful lot of time wasted because of poor licensing, but I guess thats the power of a monopoly now isn't it?
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
May the Source be with us.
heh heh heh...
Police State UK - news and
Where do you live?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
According to US antitrust law, more than 50% marketshare in a given market is sufficient to call a company a monopoly. Standard Oil was broken up when it had only about 50-60% market share.
Reason being is that you don't need 100% market share to be capable of bending the market to your will.
Rockefeller had exclusive agreements with railroads so S.O. got a kickback even when it was his competitor's oil that was being transported, just like Microsoft gets paid by OEM's even if a PC is sold with a competing OS, or with no OS at all. 50% market share is more than ample power to negotiate such agreements, because the monopoly can easily kill the OEM or the railroad by refusing to do business with them.
So to say that MS (or Intel, or IBM) is not a monopoly is merely quibbling over semantics and dictionary definitions. Antitrust law exists to protect against anticompetitive exclusive agreements.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
If they tried anything like that they would have a massive revolt on their hands. They're already having enough trouble convincing companies to switch from Win3.1, Win95, Office95, etc. to the latest versions. Even the staunchest Microsoft supporters have a hard time seeing the advantages in switching unless there's a compelling reason (Y2K, for example, or the latest Big Thing). If Microsoft started forcing companies to pay on a subscription basis (or even worse, forced them to install regular updates that hit them in TCO and lost employee productivity), companies will simply stick with whatever the latest version of Windows they have and look for an alternative doublequick.
That isn't to say that Microsoft wouldn't love to do that, but the smart move is to get offices to upgrade by (a) purchasing new equipment from OEMs and/or (b) bundling "upgrades" with new software.
-----
What I don't understand is where all the money for the Win98 update is going to do any good. Is Microsoft going to use the money to spyglass more companies so they can add more features and increase the bug pool? Is there a feature/bug list that they give out with the 98 update?
Micro$oft must be paying their idiot lawyers a hefty sum. What kind of lucrative company charges people for their own mistakes? Ninety bucks for BUG fixes. BUG FIXES. Not only has M$ screwed their customers for years with shoddy products, but now they're screwing the same people again by expecting them to pay for bug fixes; Micro$oft's own damn fault. Like hell I'd ever pay for bug fixes. For that bread, I could buy 45 Linux CDs from cheapbytes.
When will BG be assassinated?
Just cuz the computer press denounces it(perhaps for fear of losing micro$oft ad money?) doesn't mean it's not a viable alternative to windows. After all, if it wasn't useable, you wouldn't see things like:
A quick look at the Large OS/2 Customers List shows a lot of banks. Banks can't afford for their systems to be down as customers tend to get rather irate if they cannot access their money.
As far as updates, IBM is still releasing free fixpacks for Warp 4.0 as well as 3.0(released in 94). If you'd rather not download the fixpacks, OS/2 Super Site offers them burned on a CD for about $15. Current device drivers can be found at IBM's online Device Driver Pack. In the past 30 days 2 new drivers have been added and 264 drivers have been updated.
For typical office needs, Staroffice can handle current MS office documents and is available for OS/2, Linux, and even Windows.
OS/2 even provides for a Y2K compliant Windows 3 environment.
What other everyday needs do you have? Perhaps people can send you suggested replacements. For a ready made list of comparable applications for OS/2, check The OS/2 Alternative site.
You're part of the problem if you just let micro$oft keep screwing you over.
or
they are just confusing people with names so people think about "why not windows 99? why not windows 98.1?" not about "is it upgrade? is it patch? why does it cost 89$?"
hany
regular users just pay attention to "brought to you by microsoft"
do anyone saw SUN logo on hotmail?
hany
for me, monopoly is when i have no choice but buy one think otherwise others wont accept me
so try to send for example StarrOffice document (in native S.O. format) to someone else and see how they will be hot to talk with you; try to use pine and try to explain others that HTMLed or WORDed emails are causing you problems; try to buy some cool hardware and then ask vendor to provide you with driver for some other OS than windows; try to explain to your boss that when you say "i need computer" you do not mean "i need PC with windows"; etc., etc., etc.
for me, that's monopoly
and that's why i also consider this patch pricing as extortion; and extortion is bad even (or also?) in democracy
hany
i also hope, that mr. gates considered threat of macro-viruses (i.e. lack of usefull protection againts such intruders) in office family as "essential bug" which affects "significant number of users"; i'm not affected, i just want that poor common users not to risk heart attacks, head-aches, ... for those things
hany
and the biggest problem is, that people do not realize they are underestimating others (and overestimating themselves :)
hany
this whole thing with charged bug-fix is like buying a car with airbag and then after (maybe successfuly) using it for year you "can" buy and "upgrade" of your car which fixes airbags (it do not works this whole year) and makes your car burn +1 liter per kilometer just to makes you think this "upgrade" is improvement and you need it and it is OK to pay for it
what a pitty that car comes with some warranty so you can get fixed airbag for free and you do not have to buy new engine to get airbag fixed
hany
|Seriously, though... this feature is something
|I've managed to use to convince a friend or two
|to install Linux with. Very smart
|for MS to do this.
My wonderings are:
* Do all the client boxes have to be Win98?
* How well does the MS solution work? Better than Wingate and/or Linux's IP Masq? At any rate, people selling Windows IP Masq solutions are now going to be in a world of hurt, even if they *do* work better than this new 98 feature.
* Does anyone else get the screaming heebie jeebies at the idea of a Windows 98 box as a firewall?
-- Rick
>>If they didn't have monopoly status
>>Arrghh! Why do people insist on treating this as if it were settled and byond debate?
Because it is settled and beyond debate. Glad to help.
In the end, they screw themselves; people will look for (and find) better alternatives.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Do you think $500M is big money for Gates? Give me a break! It's probably less then 50 bucks for me.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
"The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now."
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Incredulous. Im getting so sick of MS's crap. When they f*ck up, I don't want to have pay to fix their mistakes.
I fail to see why there can't be a warranty on software...
I mean if you let your horde of trained mammals loose, I'm sure one can _prove_, using elementary mathematics, whether a given program is bug-free or not.
Of course as the codebase gets bigger and bigger, this requires more of an effort, but that's what QA is for, isn't it?
So how come the software companies can have no warranty at all, and noone's complaining???
Heck, even I could sell you WinExtra++ 53.953 for only $500. What? You got an empty floppy disk? Sorry, read my disclaimer and non-warranty fine print...
Guikachu: Resource editor for PalmOS developers
Regards,
Regards,
-scott
Wait until they announce the Plus pack (to be released same day) which contains some "groovy extra features" (aka better User Interface to key functionality, such as scripting for dial-up networking).
I always thought these were the real rip-off, but no-one ever remembers to factor in these costs.
MS started charging for IE in the same way about a year ago, you got "IE Basic" for free, but they released an "IE Plus Pack" (I forget the exact name, Gold Edition or something) for about $80 that added not very much, but gave you a nice box.
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
is that most people underestimates the ingenuity of geuine idiots :)
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
This should be in the "It's Funny. Laugh." catagory.
pronoblem
Excuse my terrible spelling.
pronoblem
1. How did you manage to get an osr2 upgrade cd. There weren't any upgrade cds to go from a previous version to osr2. There was just an oem osr2 cd that had the full os on it to install on a clean hard drive.
2. Why did you have to repartition to install it? Win95 didn't support FAT32 until osr2.5. All it would require is at least deleting some program directories and at most a reformat.
3. Who'd you find dumb enough to pay you $340 to install win95 on something? I'd sure as hell like to find some people like that.
4. You indicate that upgrading to win98 takes 4 hours. Since when? On average, it takes me 20-30 minutes to install it. Even installing from disks wouldn't take 4 hours.
5. I'm asuming that the refusal parts after win98 means you didn't install 98 on the computer. So, why did you include the cost of win98 installation in your tco?
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
where is it?
Or would it be switch and bait? M$ is working to get everyone all worked up so we'll be all happy when they announce their subscription program and the associated *savings*. What they really want is an annual fee from all of us to cover their *development* costs.
Ever heard of the (sic) Open License?
Ever since I first installed IE and noticed it was Free I have been sure that it wouldn't be free forever. I never thought that MS would stoop so low as to charge for service packs. Maybe they didn't anticipate netscape lasting as long as it has, and to compensate for their inability to kill their browser competion they decided to charge for service packs instead. Dosn't matter much to me now since I use Linux now.
After all, wasn't Windows 98 itself just an $89 bug fix?
Anyway, there are no bugs in any Microsoft products, just "issues".
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
No significant number of users want any bugs in Microsoft products fixed.
He based this on the fact that a low percentage of people call the tech support numbers and say "hey, I found a bug!" Of course ignoring the fact that most MS users are not technical enough to know when they've found a bug, they assume that they themselves are doing something wrong.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Sometimes it's referred to as StepUp and sometimes SetUp, which makes it look like it's 2 different products. Either there ARE 2 different products or the author was too lazy to even do a cursory proofread of his material.
This is fantastic news. The more MS screw over their customers, the more they will run into the arms of alternate OS's like Linux.
:-)
Way to go MS, keep it up
Macka
Also, the economic definition of a monopoly is that it can raise prices at will
So could any RDBMS vendor - the cost of switching systems is so prohibitive, most users would gladly pay $100 more than switch, even if the cost was unjustifiable.
So does that mean that Informix and Sybase are both monopolists?
Your rules don't apply to software, where any installed software has a stickiness, especially if apps have been built around it.
Example:A RDBMS vendor who has 1% market share can change prices at will for a present customer that has built a number of apps based on that RDBMS - the customer simply cannot afford to reeengineer the code. So could any vendor. So are they all monopolisits?
I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
But then virtually every software platform vendor is a monopolist. At best, you need some new rules to govern platform builders (OSs, RDBMSs, etc.). Calling each one a monopoly isn't going to be very constructive in the long run.
And no, they can't raise prices at will. There will be a point that it will be cheaper to rewrite everything over the long term than to stick with a vendor that is gouging you
This applies to Microsoft too though, blowing your argument. Really, most serious data wharehouses are more closely tied to their RDBMS than their OS.
Oracle users, for example, can move between HPUX and Solaris and still use OCI. Moving away from Oracle would be far more costly than switching OSs.
They have to give away service packs for OS/2 - no one would buy them.
you're being dense.
linux is the fastest growing server OS right now.
the biggest selling home pc is the iMac.
how much more obvious do you need it?
If they didn't have monopoly status
Arrghh! Why do people insist on treating this as if it were settled and byond debate?
Microsoft is NOT A MONOPOLY. Look at any graph of OS use - Microsoft has competition in every segment. In the server OS segment it wasn't even the fastest growing product this year.
Microsoft abuses contracts, attempts to impose its will where it shouldn't and uses some questionable bundling practices. But these are NOT tantamount to a monopoly.
Please people, we just make ourselves look silly when we believe our own BS and throw around terms like this as if they were resolved historical facts.
Okay, okay. I used to think that Justice needed something better to do than try to break up a company like Microsoft.
.x releases that mainly contain bug fixes (and charge for them)?
Then how about Oracle, IBM, Sybase, Sun, Informix, etc. who release
I just wish there was some *usuable* competitive OS
If you don't want to use Linux, the MacOS is a passable (not preferrable) alternative to win95/98.
You're free to be as stupid as you want to be.
.x versions of software that mainly contain fixes, and charge for it.
Really. If Microsoft can get people to fall for it, then why not?
Honestly folks, every piece of software is a fix, upgrade, or amendment to something that has come before, so I don't really see a logical reason why a pricetag can't be put on the upgrade.
There were no claims that the original piece of software was defect free, and no one is claiming that users must purchase the upgrade.
I fervently disagree that the government must "do" something about this as other knee-jerk responses above have stated. Software vendors do this all the time. Database vendors, for example, typically roll out
This really isn't that abnormal.
Other companies do not enjoy Microsoft's unique position. Microsoft can and do use its Office monopoly to force users to upgrade the OS.
Usually, Office bugs are far more important to day-to-day users than Windows bugs (see Melissa).
It always worked like this. They will release the Win98 upgrade now. Some months after that an Office upgrade will come out, but this upgrade will only work with the Win98 upgrade in place.
Other companies usually can not use this kind of tatic because they only cover a segment of the market. If I use Oracle, I can keep using it without problems if the bugs corrected by a given upgrade are irrelevant to me.
In short, saying that you have to buy the Win98-2 upgrade to have a current Windows setup is like saying that you have to go to the store and buy the latest boxed version of Red Hat (approx $45) every time a new kernel or other major feature is available.
Okay, okay. I used to think that Justice needed something better to do than try to break up a company like Microsoft.
However, I would prefer its put out of business. Any company as stupid as this, meaning lets show what a monopoly can do while we're in a trial about acting like one, does not deserve to be in business.
So now I have to PAY to get the fixes that were promised in the MS literature when I paid to get my 98 fixes to 95!
Screw them.
They're screwing us.
I just wish there was some *usuable* competitive OS. (Be and Linux just don't work for everyday needs I have)
.
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
So, I won't get nuked 90 bucks if I need the fixes or "working versions" of promised features in 98 (like USB modems)
I do not see why owners of 98 should pay for more than shipping/manufacturing of the CDs. Furthermore whats the point of Windows Update? Gather marketing information?
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
I wonder if this "commercial" sale of a bug release is a simple attempt to fatten the bottom-line pending a financial settlement with Justice and the states?
Y'know - a last ditch effort to make some hard cash.
. * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
From what I had previously read Steve Balmer (sp?) wants to make MSoft's products more stable and consumer friendly. He was talking about making quality a high proirity to boost consumer's confidence. This new policy of charging for bug fixes flies totally in the opposite direction? As usual end users are left screwed by Microsoft. And on another note, where do they get off charging beta-testers for the opportunity to find Microsoft's bugs?
bug fixes will be available online (free) as part of a service pack for Win 98. They'll be charging for the Win 98 SE, but you can still get the service pack separately.
Leilah
~ Leilah
What is it other than bug fixes and a few "features" added on top of it, like IE5.0 and "better usb support," which screams big fix. And yes you can upgrade it. Just replace the appropriate dll's, reg-keys, etc. and your laughing. It's how they upgrade windows with office and visual studio releases. I've fought with it more than once.
********************************************
Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
I seem to remember reading about a patch on Sun's web site. You might want to search a bit more before giving up.
...
Do you know what components of the system actually fail in the year 2000? I thought Sun, as well as every other Unix in existance, had the year 2038 problem to contend with, but was 2000-safe.
Finally, to put this in some perspective, you've gotten a lot of life out of that old Sun. I have a 1994 Sun SPARC with SunOS that's still running strong. Fortunately, I can upgrade to the free Solaris because it's a personal box. If I were you, I'd probably do the same. If my experience is any guide, Sun won't care.
My experience? I ran a free download of the Netscape Commerce Server (back when it was a $ 5,000 product) for over a year for my personal web site. Nobody at Netscape ever asked me for a dime. They probably took one look at the site, realized there was no way in heck this guy was going to come up with $ 5,000, and left me alone. I strongly suspect that would apply to a small business as well; they'd rather have you run the product illegally than stop using Sun hardware.
Still, you should buy a new Sun anyway. I probably would, at their new prices, but I love the SGI Irix operating system, and used SGIs are so cheap nowadays
D
----
My employer is faced with the same ugly dilemma. We are also making awful, contorted product release and pricing decisions based on idiotic accounting BS. My very limited understanding of the new rules goes something like:
- Company ABC spends a year and $10M developing the next release, Rn, of their cash cow product BigBucks2000
- The schedule gets grim, so they cut feature Y from the product a few months before FCS and redirect the Y team to get the release out.
- A month later, they have bugs that need to be fixed in the field, so they spend $.1M fixing them and release an update, Rn.1
- Feature Y is now complete and ready to include in the update.
At this point they are caught on the horns of an accounting rule. If they add Y to Rn.1, the accountants will claim the Rn.1 is different from the original Rn. If it is ruled a different product, and they do not charge for it, all $10M of the R&D expenses for Rn must be booked against the one month where Rn was sold. The $.1M R&D expenses associated with Rn.1 would be booked against Rn.1 revenue. If they charge for Rn.1, they can continue spreading the Rn R&D expenses over the full selling cycle of Rn & Rn.1 while booking the update expenses against the selling cycle of Rn.1. If they charge, their books look good. If they don't, they crater the first quarter and their stock tanks. I tried to dig up URLs on this stuff, but so far I've come up empty.Its all BS. MS customers are about to get screwed by it. But the problem is not specific to MS and may not be entirely MS's fault. Like I said, we have chosen to withhold enhancements from updates, charge separately for new stuff, or only ship new stuff to subscription customers based on this FASB idiocy. Perhaps MS could have made different product packaging and delivery choices that would have given the W98 customers free bug fixes. But my guess is that would have distorted IE5 and the tight coupling of W98 & IE in ways that were just too painful.
Its bad enough that public corporations live and die based on quarterly results and market expectations. Compound this with bean counting straight jackets and the result is that software consumers are getting screwed for no good reason.
Ok, i'm still trying to find the first bug in Q2, the only reasons i ever got the patches was so i could play on other servers.
There were mostly just gameplay issues, although there were a few rare serious bugs. One cute one, fire up the power armour with 50+ cells, start firing the BFG and have someone smack you around... You'll be able to fire with less than 50 cells...
Very interesting - where did you buy 95 OSR2? It wasn't for sale to the public.
(The "O" is OEM.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Thanks for debunking this, Mr. Objectivty. Microsoft has *never* charged for a service pack (except for Win98, which is essentially as service pack!), so the news would be suprising, if true.
Microsoft is probably trying to avoid the Win95 fiasco, where the retail upgrade version didn't change one iota in 3 years, while they had slipstreamed in several "OEM Service Releases" onto new computers that had things like USB support. This made it troublesome for small shops and individuals to get all the bug fixes.
Note that big site licenced corporations DON'T PAY for upgrades at all from Microsoft. They get their stuff on a subscription basis.
So now you go to the store and buy Win98-SR1 instead of Win98. Big f*ing deal - think RedHat 5.1 -> 5.2. Yet there's 100s of posts bemoaning the horrors of this action from people who supposedly aren't Microsoft customers.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There's a different mind set at work here than unix admins probably have. When Sun came out with Solaris 7, production administrators did not run out to CompUSA to stand in line. No, they carefully examined the fix lists, contacted their other vendors, ran a test machine and so on.
People who run out and buy the latest Microsoft product are kinda like people who trade in their 1997 Mustang for a 1999, becuase there were cosmetic changes. They don't care about techncial improvements or bug fixes, they just want the latest and greatest.
Of course these people don't call in with Bugs. Do you think they would actually go through the systematic routine to try to reproduce a bug? On the other hand, corporate IS departments do report bugs to Microsoft -- their just not very receptive, so I doubt the bug reporting from the technically adept customers is as good as it could be.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It is a free country and everything you said is true.
However, what makes me frustrated is that every wierd thing MS has ever done suddenly becomes the norm. Users just eventually accept that this is the way things are supposed to be. MS has been moving towards a subscription based pricing model for a long time and I only see this as another step towards that goal.
re:Databases. In the cases of Oracle, Sybase, etc... their software is fairly specific. The chances of having a seriously fatal bug are fairly rare, and if you are a large enough customer they will usually send you patches anyway. Charging for an upgrade makes a little more sense in this case. Many customers won't upgrade and others will. It just depends on how it affects the bottom line. Some deals like these are still done on a handshake. It is viewed like an almost custom "service" in that case. For a service, you expect to keep paying.
In the case of Windows, this is a little more intangible. A user will upgrade because there is a momentum that has been created. There is almost no relationship between cost and revenue other than a manufactured marketing message. MS is trying to make people think of the OS as a service. This is a little scary.
It is a free country and if they can get away with it then fine. I again have to wonder how far their cockiness will take them.
The fact that they've been promissing a free upgrade only to turn around and charge for it is also a little frustrating. I know at least a few people that only upgrade to Win98 because they knew a patch was forthcoming. The worst part is that they now just shrug and say, "Oh well." This means that this idea is already starting to feel normal to some people.
If they didn't have monopoly status, then I'm sure none of use would care at all. It is, after all, a free country. I can say, though, that it would be more fun to watch if I wasn't sitting right smack in the middle of it.
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
Whereas it wasn't as obvious with Windows 4.1^H^H^H98, it is now pretty obvious here where their pricing model is going. To some of us this comes as no big surprise because we've been saying it all along. To others of us we don't care anyway because we never paid for an MS OS anyway. (And no, I'm not referring to pirating.) This is bound to surprise at least a few MS advocates in the world.
I just have to wonder if their cockiness will eventually be their downfall or will it just continue to work in their favor because they are who they are.
Conspiracy theorists will of course say that this is just an excuse to obtain peoples' personal information since it looks like Win 98.1 can only be bought through their web site. This means that they will be able to associate your name, address, and credit card number to your system GUID. Theoretically, they could also use this information to build a huge database of any web sites you've visited that use Link Exchange (since they own that too). Is MS going to become the largest marketer of personal data?
Realists know that this probably isn't going to happen. An NT server could never handle the data load we are talking about. I seriously doubt that MS would actually pay Sun Microsystems money for one of their huge data mining machines. Imagining the internal psychological struggle that Bill must be going through on that one is sort of funny.
Anyway, I don't want this to turn into a Jon Katz article so I'll stop now while I'm ahead.
-Paul (pspeed@progeeks.com)
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
Check the latest article on PCWeek on this topic. Betanews.com got it real wrong when they orignally posted their article, CNet picked up their story. In summary, MS is going to send you a StepUp CD, which does not cost $89, and will only be available for order from their website. They haven't mentioned price, but the PCWeek article said it would be signifacntly less then the $89. The retail Win98 SE will simply replace the Win98 out in the channel at the same price of $89, like RedHat 5.2 replaced 5.1 and 5.0 in the retail channel at $49 or $50. Also, PCWeek states MS is going to post an SP1 on their website, but it will not have any new features, unlike like the StepUp CD. Thanks.
Anyone who thinks that this is the ultimate fix for their OS doesn't realise that they perpetuate the need for consumers to buy and accept their products. They are ever vigilant about producing new bugs with each distribution. The consumer not only bends over and takes it but asks for more when they discover that M$ makes the word processor that best supports the bugs in their faulty OS.
I hope the DOJ and the states involved don't settle for anything less than prohibiting M$ from using CPU's or source code or anything of a cmomputer nature. The mindless MS users have paid enough let the deprogramming begin.
Actually win98 wasn't even totally y2k compliant. I remember that there was a downloadable patch to fix that about a few months ago.
As far as the question to why pepole upgraded to 98 from 95. I believe it was because of the 'upgraded' abilities such as 'speed' (fat 32) which I don't really see, and more hardware support (which I do see [usb]) But actually most of this stuff was in my original release of win95 that I had (ver. b)
Be prepared, the next OS will be out soon win2001..what you think they will actually have it ready by 2000? yea...sure! =-] then be ready for another upgrade (i could pretty much guarentee this!)...and so on and so on unto infinity...
-- LINUS TORVALDS, (cnn): Because their operating systems (Windows) really suck.
Don't the windoz dronez ever get a feeling of being cheated?
Now running linux don't just make me feel god, smart, attractive and all of that.
Now running linux make me feel almost rich to.
Just another arrogant linux user.
Linux, coming to a desktop near you!
Didn't microsoft charge for win98? That was mostly bugfixes to win95. Why shouldn't they charge for more bug fixes.
--
The Debian Linux Windows 98 Upgrade (apt-get install real-operating-system) is free of charge, fixes more bugs than Microsoft's, and uninstalls IE 4.0.
Microsoft are really quite greedy buggers - I remember quitely fondly how they forbid UK magazines from distributing Service Pack 4 and the Office 97 Service Pack 2 fixes. Microsoft UK seemed quite pleased to do it, but their US counterparts said no. :(
Who else would think of paying $89 just for a series of bug fixes - Microsoft. No wonder more and more people around here are going down the Linux/FreeBSD route with the arrogant and greedy approach Microsoft have to business.
I see Microsoft digging their own grave very soon unless they start taking a more nicer attitude to fixing bugs that their own programmers have probably (note probably doesn't necessarily mean that it's MS programmer's fault - but I would bet the majority of these fixes are) arsed up in the first place.
Wow if that is true that one wil have to pay fpor service packs then that will become an even more expensive operating system.. will people go for that ?
is this a joke? .. for there sake I hope so...
hell ther OS is not worth $89, let alone a sevice pack.... just another reason to keep using Linux.....
guess there not trying to woo anyone ther way.. they must think that they are the only solution...
Only 'flamers' flame!
So MS wants to move to subscription-based pricing? That's fine. This is (supposed to be) a competitive, open industry. But I think not. Instead, they'll have a faux-subscription model with paid updates every year.
Let's all suppose that MS is limited by regular economic laws for a minute and say that they can only charge what the market will bear. Let's also say that they thought about this before arriving at the prices for their Operating Systems.
Price for Windows 95: $89 (9/95)
Price for Windows 98: $89 (11/98)
Price for Windows 98 update: under $89 (6/99)
As PC Week says, the update for Win98 users will be substantially less than $89. What does that mean? We'll estimate it at half that, or about $45.
Assuming that the Win98 SE is the first rollout of their new pricing model, and assuming it's this year's only update, this means MS means to charge about $45 a year to use their OS. This compares to $89 for three years of using Win95.
But wait, they just charged $89 for Win98 last year, too! Since they deliver a new OS every three years or so, we'll assume that they'll continue to do this and charge about the same for it.
Will consumers really pay $89 every three years for a new OS, plus $45 a year for updates? I know I sure wouldn't! That's quite steep indeed!
Or maybe this is MS' way of getting more money out of the vast majority of people who get their Windows from an OEM with a computer purchase.
This makes much more sense. Assume that they give away windows for free (which they don't) and then charge $45 per year for updates. Over the three-year lifespan of a machine, this is almost $150, or a 50% increase on the price of Windows!
I always believed that the secret to MS' success was piracy. They turned a blind eye on pirates
in order to gain market share. This has worked
incredibly well for more than 10 years.
If they used subscription pricing, they would have to try to crack down on Pirates. If instead they invent a new update to charge for every year, they can let the pirates work and cement their market share, and still get a little money back... Would they really kill their golden goose by moving to a subscription model? I think not.
Stephen
So why did people upgrade to windows 98?
They believed it will be y2k tolerant.
what they got is nothing except being forced to use IE4.
Yet again, they continue to amaze me.
They call it "second edition" when it's not even a bugfix.
what it does? this time it forces IE5!
(yet again making people think it is y2k tolerant)
people pay MORE MONEY to get LESS CHOICE.
they expect people to pay by an interval of 1 year.
"Just rent the goddamn thing!!!!"
but, they're shooting into they're own ass.
people will think: "If I have to upgrade (and obviously i do, since MS is admitting that windows98 is incomplete) I'll just upgrade to Linux, or BeOS!"
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Your argument would be true if they had actually gone to the trouble of fixing these bugs in the first place, but they didnt!
I can imagine a conversation at Microsoft right now:
employee 1: "So, are we going to fix XXnastyBug?"
employee 2: "Ok, let's go"
gates: "STOP! Let's save some bugs for windows 98.3"
Think about it.
they have thousands of employees and billions of dollars.
they can afford to fix all these bugs IF THEY WANT.
are they fixing them?
do they care?
they get more money for upgrades,
and spend less for debugging.
btw,
the goverment didt care that win98 is just a bugfix,
they cared that it bundled internet explorer.
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Do you want to see the preview of windows2001? (codename neptune)
very close to ms-bob? (toaster-os thingy).
try to view it on john dvorak column on pc magazine. (now zdnet)
quite funny.
click here
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
MS has proven again and again and again that people dont want software that's bug free, they want buzzword compliant feature piles. Personally, it doesn't make any sense to me, but it never ceases to amaze me how fast the community embraces a new feature locking themselves into using otherwise crappy or buggy software. By far the worst products from MS are their OS's and their Office suite (strangely enough their best selling products as well), They're slow, buggy, unreliable, and inconsistent, yet people still buy the stuff. I hear of a lot of great ideas for future MS software but when it comes down to it, people dont want great ideas they want great marketing. MS knows this, and their packaging, marketing, and programming reflect it.
I wish I knew why.
-Rich
And it's apparently worth 90 bucks, since masq--er, ICS--is one of the few new features not available for download.
The funny thing is, every mention of Internet Connection Sharing I've seen only says it can be used with a dialup. It'll probably cost another $89 for the upgrade that works with cable, *DSL, or any other dual NIC config (ie, real ip masquerading).
I hope sincerely that Microsoft try and charge for every piece of software, every patch and every upgrade they produce.
Sooner or later computers users around the world will get the message.
Martin Brooks / Slayer99 #linux / UIN 2178117
It seems to me that any self respecting company would fix their own screw-ups for free. Doesn't the consumer deserve at least that much?
Thats what their outrageous licensing fees are for....$$$$$$$.
Your rules don't apply to software, where any installed software has a stickiness, especially if apps have been built around it.
They apply in spades, look at the utility companies. I cannot run phone or power or lines to my house because it would be too expensive. And once I have cable, I will not switch companies and pay the installation charge again, so there is an inherent stickiness.
Does this mean that utility and cable companies are not monopolies? I think the courts have ruled that because of the "stickiness" they MUST be treated as monopolies.
I don't think you do need new rules related to the monopolistic qualities. Anti-competitive behavior is well defined and deals more with company behavior than product nature.
We need significantly changed rules on software in general, because patent and copyright law don't seem to capture the nature of the beast. But that is orthogonal to the monopoly argument.
I also don't mean to imply that the government should break up all monopolies. Microsoft has lately been showing signs of the arrogance and misteps that eventually bring down all monopolies. There is no need to help them. On the other hand, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and smells like a duck, call it a duck.
Are you looking at percentage growth? That is a misleading figure. If only one person uses my server, and another uses it next year, I have 100% growth. Whoopee. 12% growth for NT amounts to a HUGE number of new machines running NT.
A higher percentage growth can still take a long time to overcome overwhelming odds. If Linux and Windows keep the same growth rate, it will take about 20 years for Linux to surpass Windows. How many people actually believe that today's growth rates will be the same in two years?
Also, the economic definition of a monopoly is that it can raise prices at will. Ignoring the 90% market share, MS has demonstrated that they can charge whatever they want to hardware manufacturers and large corporations. At least end users are showing some sense with slow adoption.
What, pray tell, would be their competition for end-user desktop OS? BeOS maybe? Or perhaps you are still a GEM user?
It's not the price for upgrading that suprises me, but the price for bug fixes.
However, what I find MOST troubling is that most of those who purchase software (in the windows realm) aren't the least bit suprised when it has bugs in it. Or to find out that tech support can't help them because there's not a fix for it. They may be a little miffed, but they just accept it even though there is *rarely* a money-back guarantee.
I mean COME ON! I don't expect a $1 razor to be defective, but I'll return it if it is and get a new one that *works* or get my money back. Isn't facinating how a most of the software vendors for windoze put disclaimers on there software that states there is no guarantee with this software at all what-so-ever? Isn't it more amazing that those users just sit and take it?
Micro$oft has really poisoned the water of expectation that their customers have for the platform and the software that runs on it.
Well, how about this...
Doh!
Why does it not surprise me that M$ still tries to screw the rest of the world. Maybe they figure since they're "willfully" splitting up into seperate divisions, that they are now allowed to freely screw with the rest of the world. Grrrrrrrrrrr!
- You are correct about the OSR2 CD not being an "upgrade." I was not clear in my use of the word, and yes, it is an OEM CD. I had to "upgrade" to OSR2, as will be explained in item #2.
- The "new" hard disk was originally sold with Win95 pre-installed, however, because of some undocumented detail which I no longer remember, the motherboard required OSR2 to function correctly. I had alreadly reloaded my data directories, etc. into secondary partitions. OSR2 refused to install to anything other than a completely unformatted, unpartitioned drive. This requirement was also not documented, by the way. Which is why it took way too long to accomplish. M$ poor phone support wasn't any help either.
- You missed my point. My time as a programmer bills out at $85 an hour and up. Which means that I could have earned $340. during the amount of time I spent dinking around with buggy old Win95 and buggy new Win95.
- Again you're right -- clean installs are much faster. That said, every time I've been involved with a major Win9X or NT upgrade at a client site I feel damn lucky to get the first one done in under 4 hours because of way too many poorly documented and often stupid changes between versions, without giving us power users / developers / installers an opportunity to select what we want. At least in Win3.X M$ gave us more choices during installation.
- I included win98 in my TCO because based on prior experience, I would expect similar worst case time scenarios to take place.
Which is why, in my book, Linux still wins....Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Win95 OSR2: $89 Install: $340.
Win98 $89 + $340? (refused to install it)
Win98 $89 + $340? (will not install it)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) --not counting down time in the mean time due to OS bugs-- estimated at $1287* for one year. Who says Windows is not abusing their near monopoly? DOJ, are you listening?
Cost of Linux, including latest bug fixes: $60.
Time to Install, including Backup: 4 hrs $340
TCO = $400.00. For those purists, yes, I will have to spend additional time once the 2.2X kernels are fully incorporated into an RH release.
My point?? Linux Wins!!!
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Secondarily, most corporations have SLA's (service level agreements) with Oracle covering upgrades, etc. The TCO for an Oracle database is usually spread across many, many users, vs. M$ which has a high TCO on every machine. [think: vulnerability due to Word Macro Virii, downtime on NT servers, etc.]
So if a corporation with 1,000 deskktops connected to the database paid $89 for every machine upgraded to Win98-Second Edition, plus the time to perform the upgrade, we're talking potentially many hundreds of thousands of dollars additional cost here, without (IMHO) a fully spec'd out list of improvements and bug fixes.
Thanks but no thanks. Up with Linux!
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I'm an NT\Exchange Admin and I called our MS Rep today about this. He informed me that:
1-There will be a bug fix Service Pack released for Win98 this quarter and it will be free.
2-The version referred to on CNet is a '.x' version upgrade that will include the bug fixes and some additional functionality.
FYI, -Brian
id released patch after patch for Quake II until they squashed every bug they could find, to the point where the user community actually started complaining there were too many free fixes and enhancements. Something tells me we'll be less inclined to take that for granted now. I am becoming less tolerant of MS system/application practices every day. As soon as Q3 is out I'll likely get rid of 95 completely.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
IBM has released 40 fixpacks for Warp 3.0 and 10 for Warp 4.0. I have also used Visualage for C++ and IBM never charge me for upgrades on that either. From my experience with IBM they do not charge for bug fixes and often they incorporate new features with these fix packs.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
It is not very complicated to understand. They just want to make more money.
Over the years, it seems that no one has ever stopped buying from them no matter what they did. Why would they change now ? You don't know, maybe some bugs where kept in the software and the fixes where already working.
They just might have planned to sale the bug fixes in the future. This is exactly the king of behavior that would not happen if Microsoft had enough competition (but we are not competititive enough yet...).
Papi
- Chernobyl used windows
First we all complained when MS charged for beta copies of Win95. Now we're complaining about MS charging for bug fixes. This is getting utterly ridiculous, not to mention very expensive. But to a large degree, I'm not sure that all of this is Bill's fault. My understanding is that patches/service packs/fixes are to FIX EXISTING BUGS THAT WERE MISSED DURING TESTING. These, I think we all agree, need to be free...the user purchased the software in good faith that it would work properly. I work in QA...I understand that bugs will be missed, but it is the RESPONSIBILITY of a company to fix them when possible. Upgrades, OTOH, are to ADD NEW FEATURES. I can understand charging users for this. Problem is, where do you draw the line between the two? What if you say, "Well, we know it's a bug, but we'll just fix it in the next version." Sometimes that's legitimate...you can't go around supporting old software forever. Sometimes a customer just needs to bite the bullet and upgrade. (Do we really need patches for DOS 3.1 anymore?) This is one reason I'm a proponent of free/open source software...it avoids a lot (but not all--how many binaries out there are still being compiled for linux's a.out) of this problem. Perhaps, for commercial software, we need a new scheme, like licenses that last for a period of time. Windows 98,99,2000--supported until 2001, all upgrades free till then. Seems to me that the real issue here is where you draw the lines between upgrade and bug fix, supported and obsolete.
Here it is. Works really well, too.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Uh....maybe click on the link?
Or if that is impossible for some unfathomable reason, it can also be had at w w w . 9 8 l i t e . n e t
Only without all the spaces, of course.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Windows 98: Still the best damn $90 solitaire game money can buy.
"There are no cool guys in musicals." -- Coach McGuirk
Windows 98 Second Edition is due in the fall.
Let's see, W'98(2) -- is that what they've been talking about when they've been saying "Windows 2000"?
Put another way, it will cost as much to upgrade from the current version of Windows 98 to the fixed version of Windows 98 as it will to go from Windows 95 to Windows 98.
Windows 98: A bug-fixxin bargin at only $188!
(That's an exclamation point at the end of the previous line, not the symbol for factorial. I thought I had better clarify it.)
In many cases, bug fixes are posted for free by software companies.
In many cases, people give their whole damn product away for free. But Bill's is still well behind on that road.
Windows 98 Setup has grown from a collection of bug fixes and application updates to include Internet Explorer 5 and other features
Ummm, wait a minute there. I thought the original W'98 was a collection of bug fixes, updates, and a new integrated Explorer. Wouldn't it have been better PR to call this W'99 ?
Or should we say, the've hardly wiped Netscape's blood off their hands, and now they're back to charging for the browser that's supposed to be an integral part of the OS?
Thank you, Linus, oh, thank you!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
That a lot of money for a service pack!!!!!!!!!
Ok.. The 98 upgrade cost $89 when it came out.. What's up with $89 price tag on Win9X stuff, isn't that went 3.0 came out,1989?
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
If anyone is dumb enough to pay for Windows in the first place, then they deserve to pay for the bug fixes too.
:)
Why would you pay for crap like win95 or win98 if a writeable CD only costs a couple bucks?
BTW, if anyone at all is considering the IE5 browser, DON'T! When it crashes, it takes down the whole bloody system - so much for 'integration'!
Sorry for the rant...
There's probably more steps but it's easy enough to do. Armed with the ip-masq howto you can't go wrong. A script would be cool but I think anyone that's going to setup ipmasq to begin with can probably figure it out from the documentation. I had my kernel compiled and masquerade setup within minutes. Did it all the same day I setup my home LAN, my first-ever attempt at networking. Setting up the Linux box was easier than configuring the networking configs on a windows machine, and took less time as well, counting the time it took to compile 2.0.36.
I learned alot about networking thanks to Linux and ipmasq in particular. Now if I could only get diald to compile... hehe. Guess it doesn't matter tho since i never drop carrier.
/usr/doc/HOWTO is your friend!
"Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows" --Patrick Reilly
It's not a patch, it's a new version....
I don't think you can patch windows 98 (like you patch WinNT), you're buying a new version of Windows98, and reinstalling it. It's like Win95 --> Win95 OSR2. You couldn't upgrade from one to the other, you have to get a copy of Windows 95 OSR2 and reinstall it.
It is maddening, but it is not a new practice from Microsoft. Would people feel better if the had called it something else than Windows 98... maybe Windows 99? maybe.
I agree with you - I am just saying, it's not considered as a patch. I know that most of us in here can make it work like an upgrade (by replacing DLLs etc). But it's not packaged as a patch and it doesn't install like a patch. Not like WinNT service packs work anyway. And they did the same with Win95.
I realize that's it complete bull, but that's how they do things... Don't like it anymore than you do.
What the hell are they thinking? I don't want to pay $10-$20 for some stupid bugfix disc when I already bought the software in the first place (I didn't, but my company did). This is fixing shit that was supposed to work in the first place. And I don't care if they say it's only for the cost of the media it comes on, that's bs. Everyone knows it costs less than a buck to make a cd. Way less for the pressed versions.
MS is a bunch of greedy bastards, but I guess they have to pay their lawyers somehow.
Maybe this stupid update will make my MPEG decoder on my thinkpad finally function under win98. DVD's are kinda jerky w/o it.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
People, there's a critical point being missed here. There's nothing wrong with having a monopoly. There IS something wrong with wielding massive market influence (like a monopoly) to try to force other competitors out of the market. It is also something wrong with using domination of one market (operating systems) to try to stifle competition in other markets (word processors). THAT is why Microsoft is wrong, and Oracle/Sybase/Apple/Be/Whoever are not (at least not in the same way).
Oracle's evil, but for a whole different set of reasons. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Hmm... works fine for me... must be something wrong on your end.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Re: Justice Dept.
What do people hate most about the Microsoft monopoly? Is it that we're forced to use their software, or that we're forced to be screwed by them making us use their BAD software and then pay $$$ for "upgrades"?
Which argument would you prefer (assuming Justice ain't going to do _exactly_ what we want):
"You've got a monopoly, so we're going to make a piss-poor effort to break it which will probably make you more powerful" OR "You've got a monopoly. That means that you've clobbered yourselves with the responsibility to respect your unwilling users."
(1) means Microsoft will get away with it whereas (2) means Microsoft might be allowed to continue the monopoly, but be expected to pass code audits, and to give their upgrades away for free. Oh, and suffer penalties for major problems... Hell, we might even *like* being ruled by Microsoft! Maybe a good heavy dose of accountability would make the situation a lot better.
Yeah, in principle, it would be better to have neither, but in the final analysis, isn't a kind and fair dictator better than a democratic but corrupt leader?
Cynical bastard that I am, I've come up with the perfect way for BillGatus of Borg to make even more money. Charging for bug fixes would be chump change compared to this.
Offer to sell licenses (at $69.95 a pop) to users who are already running pirated copies, while giving general license amnesty to anyone who takes them up on it. All they have to do is mail out pieces of paper.
Of course, that's just my cynicism rearing its ugly head.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
As one person said before, I can understand a charge for a maintenance release/upgrade of a major program such as Oracle, Sybase, and even major applications specific to an industry or custom programmed. But, often times, if you're a large enough sale/account, a representative from the company will come out and ISSUE the bugfix/update FOR YOU.
Microsoft is off base here. I doubt this will last long once the mainstream print and television media catches on.
I also find it quite humorous that not only are they fixing bugs with this "Second Edition", but they're "..adding new technologies and expanded driver support." I think the only driver that I use on my 95 system that *CAME* with 95 is the Microsoft Serial Mouse driver. I don't need to pay $89 to have MS download the latest driver(s) for me and then, as they like to say so much, 'seamlessly integrate'-it into the Windows Hardware list.
Sheesh.
-Chad
You would figure they would eventually learn right? I don't get it what are they thinking, I mean it is not like the Justice Dept needs any more ammo. Well if there is a strategy to this I don't get it.
Puzzled
Your a business not a student or and educational user, if you where either it would be basically free, but you are not. If your business requires you use Sun products then what you are paying is more then worth it period. I can understand that for a small business it may be expensive but you are a business none the less and therefore it is hard for me to have the same sympathy for you. If you are a small business you have other options and if it is not your choice but someone you work for then do you care, it is not your money anyway.
My $0.02
two computers can share the same internet connection? wow!
let us see, free operating systems have had this feature for how many years now? i think i know who is playing catch up.
Seriously, though... this feature is something I've managed to use to convince a friend or two to install Linux with. Very smart for MS to do this.
I just forsee a sea of "bullshit"-coughing penguins when MS tries to lay claim for inventing this technology... :)
I've worked with both NT and Linux web and file servers. When it came time to spend MY money setting up a server and workstations for MY business, the contest was pretty one-sided in favor of GNU/Linux. I got the NT-Spanking Server(TM) on a CD for less than a Win98 upgrade.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
think about it? i don't know a single person that went to a store and actually bought win98. the only installs of win98 that i have ever seen where preinstalls on a new system.
MS is probably trying to give win95 users a reason to shell out and "upgrade". thats why win98se will not only upgrade win98 but also older windows versions as well.
Don't forget MS doesn't have any new OS's coming out for a while. actually there isn't much of anything coming out for the consumer market from MS. they probably need to charge to make thier bottom line look good.
they may also be realizing to the os gravy train maybe coming to an end and therefor trying to squeeze as much out as possible.
any case i seriously doubt many people will run to upgrade. most home users i know are perfectly content with their win95 systems.
-kordic
OMFG! So I byt this new PC with 98 preloaded, (I still run it, BTW( then M$ says, "Screw you, Jack! You want a Windows that doesn't crash daily? I got yer bug fixes right here.
I'm at a loss for words...
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Thank you! I downloaded IE5 the day after it came out and uninstalled it two days later. Try it, if you open two windows and have two active links... bang! The whole bloody house comes down.
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Yes, and I can see them charging the same as for Win 98 shrink-wrapped, but how can they justify charging anything for the bug fix?
Look at it this way...
Win98 Upgrade = $89.00
Win98 SE = $89.00
Win 98 Upgrabe and SE CDROM = more than $89.00
How does this work again??
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Yeah that is true, but Microsoft propaganda stated about a year back that they were discontinuing the 9X line and were merging into 2000. We wouldn't have to buy another 9x. Bill Gates can't get his gem(more like a rock)operating system WinNT to support Plug and Play and whatnot without it turning into a crappy OS like the Win 9X legacy. So, in the meantime he's going to try to make more money until the year 2003 or so when we finally see this Emerald city at the end of the yellow brick road. Too bad the ruler is just a face on top of an 8-bit two bit operating system.
As long as there are new computer users out there who are ignorant of anything that has to do with a pc and just want to have their word proccessor, internet and solitaire, we are going to have Microsuck and Bill. Operators and hackers like the rest of us should be happy we have a choice in Linux, BEOS,etc. and enjoy our computers.
Madhatter --It's no wonderland out there.
Actually, he *is* starting to give away some of his ill-gotten gains.. one of his give-a-ways last year was $500M for childrens immunizations. He was a foundation set up specifically for this stuff - I think it's his wife that does a lot of the foundation management.
Microsoft sucks, Windows sucks, and Gates sucks too - but he *does* give away a LOT of money...
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Titanic Wrecking Crew
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There is no try at jedinite.com
I've looked at 98, If you have 95 OSR2 with USB support and have downloaded all the fixes posted for 95 and you loaded the active desktop with IE4, you ain't that far from 98. That is aside from the bug fixes they put in and a couple of gizmos nobody normally uses anyway. 98 is nothing but a scam anyway.
There's no compelling reason to move to 98 right now anyway. Even Microsoft Office 2000 is supposed to run on 95.
STFU & GBTW
I don't think this is a very big deal for people who use Linux. Regular users will be conserned. But does the service pack worth it? They could advertise it as a second version of W98 not as a fix to several previous bugs. I have never upgraded to W98 even though I got W98 for free working in retail. The only reason I still have W95 is because of my love to Unreal and VooDoo2 card and my Assembly class in college.
Back a few years, a friend of mine needed a bug fix update for VB - not even a major update. Not only was it *not* available to download, but in order for him to receive the update, he had to call in with a credit card and have it shipped, ultimately costing around $25. Seems to me.. you write a program, find a few bugs and fix those bugs.. shouldn't the patches be free? (Especially at the cost of VB!) I find it all ridiculious.. but not suprising.
Matt
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here