No, it is still choice. You might not like the new price, but there it is, make your decision.
Nintendo gets picked on too. There's no love here for the Virtual Boy. Everyone admits the problems that the original GBA had.
Comparing this mini GBA to a new version of Word from MS is sort of a silly analogy. Nintendo is giving you a brand new piece of hardware for your money, and it doesn't break compatibility with the old one. Some people might value the smaller form, some might not. Why are you so pissy about it?
Nintendo has its fanboys just like every other system. Go read the threads about the other systems. Sony and MS get ripped apart in some posts, and held up as gods in others. Nintendo isn't any different in that regard.
Just to counter your anecdotal evidence, I've got all three of the current systems in my house, and the Gamecube gets the most play by far. Even though I do a large portion of my gaming at my girlfriend's house on her gamecube.
And for the Love of God, would you people stop picking on Mario. Yes, there's dozens and dozens of games with Mario in them. But amongst those games, there's dozens and dozens of entirely different types of gameplay, all of consistently high quality, and tied together by an extremely creative and fun universe that Nintendo has cultivated over more than 20 years. Their franchises are not only a financial powerhouse, they're also a springboard from which lots of fun games have developed. What's the problem with that?
I agree. Let Nintendo play their own game, and if that interests you, great, if not, you've got two other consoles to choose from. There is, however, a large bunch of people who own gamecubes and even prefer them over the other current consoles. And we're happy to see Nintendo taking a different stance on the future of gaming, and we aren't ready to dismiss them just yet.
You don't have to be number one in sales to make a good product. You don't have to own a market to make good games. And anyone already making any big decisions or declarations about a bunch of consoles that are still months away from release should probably calm down. Although I will go on record and say that the new Xbox is ugly. The Revolution prototype didn't do anything for me either.
A lot. I don't think the average consumer has a memory of such things going back more than a couple years.
Besides, I don't think many of them care much about the difference between pumping out flat triangles as fast as you can vs. rendering a textures and lighting while also calculating physics and AI. They just want which ever system they pick to have the highest sounding numbers possible, so they can justify the $400 they spent on it.
You're right! Choice is bad! Nintendo should only produce one type of GBA, in one color, and we should all thank them for it! How dare they take something that's been entirely successful for them and give us consumers more choice?! Who are they trying to fool!?
Nintendo's biggest problem is that they're the one making most of their big games. And they can only make so many. People whining about the use of their franchises haven't played any of the new games. The GC metroid games are nothing like the metroid games of old. There are a bunch of Mario games, but they're all very different. Super Smash Bros != Super Mario Sunshine != Mario Kart != Mario Tennis != Paper Mario. Zelda has a decent variety as well.
There's some common characters between the Gamecube's flagship games, but not in the gameplay. Look at the PS2's flagship titles; Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Gran Turismo. Then the Xbox has the Halo's, KOTOR, etc. A majority of their big games are series as well, but ones that are often even more repetitive in gameplay. It's just hidden somewhat by the bigger mass of other titles released for those systems.
Nintendo's franchises are one of their greatest assets, and they're very skilled at using them to make fun games. And I hope they continue with it.
It's a cool, but definitely overrated feature. In this case, however, its extra important, because MS is really racing to get the Xbox360 out before everyone else. The first to market strategy only works if people actually buy your console. And they won't buy it if the games aren't there. Backwards compatibility can't make up for a complete lack of games, but it can help someone justify a purchase a little more, and every bit helps.
While the PS3 doesn't look like a game system all that much, just as a plain 'ol aesthetic object, I like it better than the new Xbox. When the first images of the xbox360s front leaked out, they looked to me like someone had seen it, and then done a quick mock up of it in illustrator or something. It just looked amateurish. But the actual console looks just like it.
It's actually typical MS design. They try a lot of neat things, but they either forget or screw up that last bit of polish. Of course, until I see one firsthand, I'll reserve any final judgement on any of the three systems. First impressions of the Revolution; It's nice enough, but not exciting or compelling. *shrug*
except people aren't that smart. They'll go to their doctors and demand these treatments. That's why there's so many commercials for different prescription meds nowadays. People see these cures for all their ails advertised on TV, and get pissy when the doctor tries to give them reasons why they shouldn't try them. Or they may even go find a different doctor who will write the prescription.
I agree with you. When I get sick, I'll let the doctor tell me what's best. I might research it some just to have a better idea how it all works. Not many people are as smart as they think they are. It's often easy to convince yourself that you know what's best for you, but in a case like medication or treatments, your doctor probably knows more. If you think he doesn't, you could cause yourself some problems. This website makes it easier for people to think they're more capable of making these judgments then they really are.
Yeah, I always figured that, if nothing else, the machines would've built some massive orbiting solar collectors and then transferred the energy back down to earth. Or some heavy duty geothermal stuff. I'm not sure what was supposed to have powered zion, or all those hover ships, but it seems to me that the humans had access to some significant power generation.
They're not making a big deal about it, they both just mentioned it. Both of them took crap about the design of thier current consoles. The X-box for taking up an excessive amount of space, and the gamecube for looking sort of toy-ish.
Exactly. TigerDirect is just SOL. Tiger is a generic word. Saying you deserve the higher google rankings for that just because you had it once in the past is not a good argument.
And the google ranking doesn't make that much sense. If I was just looking for any ol computer selling website, I wouldn't put tiger in as my query. I'd put Computer Sales, or something to that effect. If I'm looking for TigerDirect specifically, I might put tiger, and then go through the results till I find what I'm looking for. Apple's tiger might make that take a few seconds longer, but it won't mislead me.
I don't just put random words into google, and buy random stuff from whatever companies come up. And I doubt anyone else does either. If that's how commerce worked, then maybe TigerDirect would have a better complaint.
Well, the experience was pretty much all fun for me. I wasn't really working, I was just there to look around. So that was good times. The negative parts are the fact that I was only 16 (and looked maybe 13), so I didn't get much respect or attention from most of the people working there. In fact, there were rules against people my age being there, but some lying and portraying me as a programming child prodigy who was the only one able to explain some new technology got me in. But still, it was apparent that I wasn't making decisions for any companies, so people paid me little attention. Noone was shmoozing me, which was nice, but if they're not shmoozing, they've got no real reason to show you anything. I had also been through a bit of a family problem that caused me to become very anti-social, so I didn't make much of an effort to get anything out of the whole thing except for some visuals.
I'd love the chance to go again, as an adult this time. Not being the only little kid there would give me a bit more confidence, and I'd be much more vocal and talkative. Plus I'd probably remember a whole lot more of it. My memories of nine years ago are sparse and hazy. I was definitely overwhelmed.
Aside from that, I live in New Orleans, so I'd probably scoff at the LA heat;)
Oh, no doubt. I'll take our government over any of the others out there. But lately it seems like we've got what we have despite the government, not thanks to them.
Even if we had the most benevolent, fair, and just government imaginable, there are still plenty of facets of life and society that we'd be better off without them getting involved in.
I know how fortunate I am to be a citizen of the US. There are millions of people in other countries who would love to get in here. But the fact that our problems are fewer and less severe doesn't mean that we should ignore them.
Apple bought out the contracts that they had with the clone manufactures. They didn't just stop sending them copies of the MacOS and pretend like nothing happened.
The whole Mac clones thing was a fiasco, and neither Apple nor the clones companies acted very well. I'm not going to apologize for anything Apple did.
But I still think the magnitude of between those issues is notable. Apple killing the cloning just made Macs more expensive. Apple is a very small percentage of the computer market. MS dictated the course of over 90% of the market, and arguably held back the growth and variation in the "computer industry" in some very significant ways.
Apple has done it before. They did it with Panther and Jaguar. When they first announced Tiger, they referred to it as Tiger, they had big banners that said Tiger, etc. If TigerDirect was truly taking this seriously as a real threat to their trademark value, they would've done enough research to find this out (it wouldn't have been hard). They were just looking for some easy money.
I was lucky enough to attend the '96 E3, even though I was only 16 at the time. It was almost overwhelming, cause I'd never been to any sort of trade show, and E3 just felt huge.
My most vivid memory of it is the setup Nintendo had for the N64. They had some Mario and Wario puppets that you could talk to, and they'd argue back and forth, and sing Beatles' songs.
I also remember they had a big star wars set up to go along with one of the launch titles. I was checking out one of the full size Storm trooper mannequins, taking a close look at the details of his uniform. When he revealed himself as a real person by gently shoving me with his weapon and telling me to "move along citizen", it scared the hell out of me. But yeah, good times.
Yeah, there's so much in common with this Tiger case and what happened to kleenex. A made up word used as a brand name for a product becomes a common term sometimes used for all similar products. Sucks for Kleenex.
A company that has an already common word as part of their company name is upset because another company uses the same already common word as part of the name of one of their products. Oh God, the world is coming to an end! Between Tiger Direct, OS 10.4 Tiger, the approximately 6 bazillion sports teams named the Tigers, a dominate golfer named Tiger, oh and some stupid animal using the name too...I don't think I can function anymore, my brain is overloaded!
Besides. Apple announced their product as Tiger a long time ago. Then TigerDirect decides to make a big deal of it right before it's about to ship? The timing seems awfully suspect to me. Must be because I'm an Apple simpleton.
You're still missing the point. Apple can put whatever they want on their computers when they sell them. Microsoft can put whatever they want on their computers. Of course, MS doesn't sell computers. So instead they almost blackmailed Dell, Gateway, etc, into only providing Windows on their machines.
Then it went a step further. So Dell is putting windows on all their machines. Then MS says, you can't include netscape either, even if it runs on top of Windows. You have to use our browser only. And if you don't, we'll revoke your ability to sell our OS, and you'll go out of business. That's pretty crappy if you ask me.
But yeah, if MS bought Dell, they'd be free to sell Dells with whatever software they liked, and they wouldn't have to offer linux. I'd be fine with that. You can limit your own company however you want. Just don't go around telling other companies not to support your competitors.
You can sort of draw a parallel with Apple and the iPod. They don't have the huge marketshare that MS had with Windows, but they're definitely the major player in mp3 players. Belkin makes a lot of iPod accessories. I'm sure they're making plenty of money off of them. But they also make accessories for the Dell DJ. Maybe Apple should call up their CEO and tell them to stop making stuff for Dell's mp3 player, or Apple will do everything they can to make the belkin accessories not work on ipods. Would you approve of that? Now pretend that losing their ipod business would kill the Belkin company, put them out of business. It wouldn't, because they're well diversified in products, but with MS it was different. If Dell or Gateway had lost their windows licenses, it would've been the end of their companies. MS was holding incredible power with their OS monopoly, and they were not the least bit shy in using it. That was very detrimental to consumers, and that's why the DOJ took interest in it.
Yes, but MS was forcing that through another company. They were using their market share an importance in a market to set the business plans of companies that they had no direct ownership in. And they directed those companies not to even offer competing OS's. That's not cool. It's certainly anti-competitive.
No one is saying MS should be forced to offer X-box'es with linux preinstalled. They can ship them with whatever they like, they're manufacturing them and selling them. But when they tell Dell that every person who orders a computer there has to also buy a copy of windows, that's pretty crappy.
The deal is that TigerDirect saw the possibility of some easy money, hoping that just the threat of an injunction so close to Tiger's release would scare Apple into sending them some cash just to forget about the whole thing. Apple didn't bite. And a judge didn't fall for it either.
So TigerDirect revealed themselves as a bunch of jackasses, and the courts worked as they're supposed to. Yay!
I generally think the editor's comments are annoying attempts by them to try and sound funnier and smarter than they really are.
But this one at least made me smile. Lighten up. It's their website, not yours. They've been adding commentary like this for years, most of it's dumb, sure, but that's how the world works.
I'd guess it has more to do with the fact that the media is entirely lame and worthless as a whole right now, and high school kids are smart enough to realize it as a bunch of fluff and barely-veiled advertisements. But next to that, they're still naive enough to believe that the government actually does things to make life better for us all. They think the government would pass laws and stuff to actually make media better.
Basically, I don't think they see the link between the decline of the media and the intermixing of strong corporations and governments. It's certainly a complex thing, and public schools don't teach you to challenge that sort of thing. I know when I was a child, I looked at the President of the United States with a certain adoration, even though I had no knowledge or even interest in any political issues. It's a bitter pill to swallow that even in this country with its fancy constitution and big elections, that we've filled the government with a bunch of selfish and corrupt jackasses.
Along the same lines as reputation is the fact that the alternatives are significantly better. Bundling certainly helped IE become so prominent, but the fact that Netscape really sucked for quite some time didn't hurt MS either. There was a good period of time, while the internet was making its transformation to a part of daily life for most people, where IE was competitive in terms of quality.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it is still choice. You might not like the new price, but there it is, make your decision.
Nintendo gets picked on too. There's no love here for the Virtual Boy. Everyone admits the problems that the original GBA had.
Comparing this mini GBA to a new version of Word from MS is sort of a silly analogy. Nintendo is giving you a brand new piece of hardware for your money, and it doesn't break compatibility with the old one. Some people might value the smaller form, some might not. Why are you so pissy about it?
Nintendo has its fanboys just like every other system. Go read the threads about the other systems. Sony and MS get ripped apart in some posts, and held up as gods in others. Nintendo isn't any different in that regard.
Just to counter your anecdotal evidence, I've got all three of the current systems in my house, and the Gamecube gets the most play by far. Even though I do a large portion of my gaming at my girlfriend's house on her gamecube.
And for the Love of God, would you people stop picking on Mario. Yes, there's dozens and dozens of games with Mario in them. But amongst those games, there's dozens and dozens of entirely different types of gameplay, all of consistently high quality, and tied together by an extremely creative and fun universe that Nintendo has cultivated over more than 20 years. Their franchises are not only a financial powerhouse, they're also a springboard from which lots of fun games have developed. What's the problem with that?
I agree. Let Nintendo play their own game, and if that interests you, great, if not, you've got two other consoles to choose from. There is, however, a large bunch of people who own gamecubes and even prefer them over the other current consoles. And we're happy to see Nintendo taking a different stance on the future of gaming, and we aren't ready to dismiss them just yet.
You don't have to be number one in sales to make a good product. You don't have to own a market to make good games. And anyone already making any big decisions or declarations about a bunch of consoles that are still months away from release should probably calm down. Although I will go on record and say that the new Xbox is ugly. The Revolution prototype didn't do anything for me either.
A lot. I don't think the average consumer has a memory of such things going back more than a couple years.
Besides, I don't think many of them care much about the difference between pumping out flat triangles as fast as you can vs. rendering a textures and lighting while also calculating physics and AI. They just want which ever system they pick to have the highest sounding numbers possible, so they can justify the $400 they spent on it.
You're right! Choice is bad! Nintendo should only produce one type of GBA, in one color, and we should all thank them for it! How dare they take something that's been entirely successful for them and give us consumers more choice?! Who are they trying to fool!?
Nintendo's biggest problem is that they're the one making most of their big games. And they can only make so many. People whining about the use of their franchises haven't played any of the new games. The GC metroid games are nothing like the metroid games of old. There are a bunch of Mario games, but they're all very different. Super Smash Bros != Super Mario Sunshine != Mario Kart != Mario Tennis != Paper Mario. Zelda has a decent variety as well.
There's some common characters between the Gamecube's flagship games, but not in the gameplay. Look at the PS2's flagship titles; Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Gran Turismo. Then the Xbox has the Halo's, KOTOR, etc. A majority of their big games are series as well, but ones that are often even more repetitive in gameplay. It's just hidden somewhat by the bigger mass of other titles released for those systems.
Nintendo's franchises are one of their greatest assets, and they're very skilled at using them to make fun games. And I hope they continue with it.
It's a cool, but definitely overrated feature. In this case, however, its extra important, because MS is really racing to get the Xbox360 out before everyone else. The first to market strategy only works if people actually buy your console. And they won't buy it if the games aren't there. Backwards compatibility can't make up for a complete lack of games, but it can help someone justify a purchase a little more, and every bit helps.
While the PS3 doesn't look like a game system all that much, just as a plain 'ol aesthetic object, I like it better than the new Xbox. When the first images of the xbox360s front leaked out, they looked to me like someone had seen it, and then done a quick mock up of it in illustrator or something. It just looked amateurish. But the actual console looks just like it.
It's actually typical MS design. They try a lot of neat things, but they either forget or screw up that last bit of polish. Of course, until I see one firsthand, I'll reserve any final judgement on any of the three systems. First impressions of the Revolution; It's nice enough, but not exciting or compelling. *shrug*
except people aren't that smart. They'll go to their doctors and demand these treatments. That's why there's so many commercials for different prescription meds nowadays. People see these cures for all their ails advertised on TV, and get pissy when the doctor tries to give them reasons why they shouldn't try them. Or they may even go find a different doctor who will write the prescription.
I agree with you. When I get sick, I'll let the doctor tell me what's best. I might research it some just to have a better idea how it all works. Not many people are as smart as they think they are. It's often easy to convince yourself that you know what's best for you, but in a case like medication or treatments, your doctor probably knows more. If you think he doesn't, you could cause yourself some problems. This website makes it easier for people to think they're more capable of making these judgments then they really are.
Yeah, I always figured that, if nothing else, the machines would've built some massive orbiting solar collectors and then transferred the energy back down to earth. Or some heavy duty geothermal stuff. I'm not sure what was supposed to have powered zion, or all those hover ships, but it seems to me that the humans had access to some significant power generation.
They're not making a big deal about it, they both just mentioned it. Both of them took crap about the design of thier current consoles. The X-box for taking up an excessive amount of space, and the gamecube for looking sort of toy-ish.
Exactly. TigerDirect is just SOL. Tiger is a generic word. Saying you deserve the higher google rankings for that just because you had it once in the past is not a good argument.
And the google ranking doesn't make that much sense. If I was just looking for any ol computer selling website, I wouldn't put tiger in as my query. I'd put Computer Sales, or something to that effect. If I'm looking for TigerDirect specifically, I might put tiger, and then go through the results till I find what I'm looking for. Apple's tiger might make that take a few seconds longer, but it won't mislead me.
I don't just put random words into google, and buy random stuff from whatever companies come up. And I doubt anyone else does either. If that's how commerce worked, then maybe TigerDirect would have a better complaint.
Well, the experience was pretty much all fun for me. I wasn't really working, I was just there to look around. So that was good times. The negative parts are the fact that I was only 16 (and looked maybe 13), so I didn't get much respect or attention from most of the people working there. In fact, there were rules against people my age being there, but some lying and portraying me as a programming child prodigy who was the only one able to explain some new technology got me in. But still, it was apparent that I wasn't making decisions for any companies, so people paid me little attention. Noone was shmoozing me, which was nice, but if they're not shmoozing, they've got no real reason to show you anything. I had also been through a bit of a family problem that caused me to become very anti-social, so I didn't make much of an effort to get anything out of the whole thing except for some visuals.
;)
I'd love the chance to go again, as an adult this time. Not being the only little kid there would give me a bit more confidence, and I'd be much more vocal and talkative. Plus I'd probably remember a whole lot more of it. My memories of nine years ago are sparse and hazy. I was definitely overwhelmed.
Aside from that, I live in New Orleans, so I'd probably scoff at the LA heat
Oh, no doubt. I'll take our government over any of the others out there. But lately it seems like we've got what we have despite the government, not thanks to them.
Even if we had the most benevolent, fair, and just government imaginable, there are still plenty of facets of life and society that we'd be better off without them getting involved in.
I know how fortunate I am to be a citizen of the US. There are millions of people in other countries who would love to get in here. But the fact that our problems are fewer and less severe doesn't mean that we should ignore them.
You didn't dream about tetris? Damn those blocks!
Apple bought out the contracts that they had with the clone manufactures. They didn't just stop sending them copies of the MacOS and pretend like nothing happened.
The whole Mac clones thing was a fiasco, and neither Apple nor the clones companies acted very well. I'm not going to apologize for anything Apple did.
But I still think the magnitude of between those issues is notable. Apple killing the cloning just made Macs more expensive. Apple is a very small percentage of the computer market. MS dictated the course of over 90% of the market, and arguably held back the growth and variation in the "computer industry" in some very significant ways.
Apple has done it before. They did it with Panther and Jaguar. When they first announced Tiger, they referred to it as Tiger, they had big banners that said Tiger, etc. If TigerDirect was truly taking this seriously as a real threat to their trademark value, they would've done enough research to find this out (it wouldn't have been hard). They were just looking for some easy money.
I was lucky enough to attend the '96 E3, even though I was only 16 at the time. It was almost overwhelming, cause I'd never been to any sort of trade show, and E3 just felt huge.
My most vivid memory of it is the setup Nintendo had for the N64. They had some Mario and Wario puppets that you could talk to, and they'd argue back and forth, and sing Beatles' songs.
I also remember they had a big star wars set up to go along with one of the launch titles. I was checking out one of the full size Storm trooper mannequins, taking a close look at the details of his uniform. When he revealed himself as a real person by gently shoving me with his weapon and telling me to "move along citizen", it scared the hell out of me. But yeah, good times.
Yeah, there's so much in common with this Tiger case and what happened to kleenex. A made up word used as a brand name for a product becomes a common term sometimes used for all similar products. Sucks for Kleenex.
A company that has an already common word as part of their company name is upset because another company uses the same already common word as part of the name of one of their products. Oh God, the world is coming to an end! Between Tiger Direct, OS 10.4 Tiger, the approximately 6 bazillion sports teams named the Tigers, a dominate golfer named Tiger, oh and some stupid animal using the name too...I don't think I can function anymore, my brain is overloaded!
Besides. Apple announced their product as Tiger a long time ago. Then TigerDirect decides to make a big deal of it right before it's about to ship? The timing seems awfully suspect to me. Must be because I'm an Apple simpleton.
You're still missing the point. Apple can put whatever they want on their computers when they sell them. Microsoft can put whatever they want on their computers. Of course, MS doesn't sell computers. So instead they almost blackmailed Dell, Gateway, etc, into only providing Windows on their machines.
Then it went a step further. So Dell is putting windows on all their machines. Then MS says, you can't include netscape either, even if it runs on top of Windows. You have to use our browser only. And if you don't, we'll revoke your ability to sell our OS, and you'll go out of business. That's pretty crappy if you ask me.
But yeah, if MS bought Dell, they'd be free to sell Dells with whatever software they liked, and they wouldn't have to offer linux. I'd be fine with that. You can limit your own company however you want. Just don't go around telling other companies not to support your competitors.
You can sort of draw a parallel with Apple and the iPod. They don't have the huge marketshare that MS had with Windows, but they're definitely the major player in mp3 players. Belkin makes a lot of iPod accessories. I'm sure they're making plenty of money off of them. But they also make accessories for the Dell DJ. Maybe Apple should call up their CEO and tell them to stop making stuff for Dell's mp3 player, or Apple will do everything they can to make the belkin accessories not work on ipods. Would you approve of that? Now pretend that losing their ipod business would kill the Belkin company, put them out of business. It wouldn't, because they're well diversified in products, but with MS it was different. If Dell or Gateway had lost their windows licenses, it would've been the end of their companies. MS was holding incredible power with their OS monopoly, and they were not the least bit shy in using it. That was very detrimental to consumers, and that's why the DOJ took interest in it.
Yes, but MS was forcing that through another company. They were using their market share an importance in a market to set the business plans of companies that they had no direct ownership in. And they directed those companies not to even offer competing OS's. That's not cool. It's certainly anti-competitive.
No one is saying MS should be forced to offer X-box'es with linux preinstalled. They can ship them with whatever they like, they're manufacturing them and selling them. But when they tell Dell that every person who orders a computer there has to also buy a copy of windows, that's pretty crappy.
The deal is that TigerDirect saw the possibility of some easy money, hoping that just the threat of an injunction so close to Tiger's release would scare Apple into sending them some cash just to forget about the whole thing. Apple didn't bite. And a judge didn't fall for it either.
So TigerDirect revealed themselves as a bunch of jackasses, and the courts worked as they're supposed to. Yay!
I generally think the editor's comments are annoying attempts by them to try and sound funnier and smarter than they really are.
But this one at least made me smile. Lighten up. It's their website, not yours. They've been adding commentary like this for years, most of it's dumb, sure, but that's how the world works.
I'd guess it has more to do with the fact that the media is entirely lame and worthless as a whole right now, and high school kids are smart enough to realize it as a bunch of fluff and barely-veiled advertisements. But next to that, they're still naive enough to believe that the government actually does things to make life better for us all. They think the government would pass laws and stuff to actually make media better.
Basically, I don't think they see the link between the decline of the media and the intermixing of strong corporations and governments. It's certainly a complex thing, and public schools don't teach you to challenge that sort of thing. I know when I was a child, I looked at the President of the United States with a certain adoration, even though I had no knowledge or even interest in any political issues. It's a bitter pill to swallow that even in this country with its fancy constitution and big elections, that we've filled the government with a bunch of selfish and corrupt jackasses.
Along the same lines as reputation is the fact that the alternatives are significantly better. Bundling certainly helped IE become so prominent, but the fact that Netscape really sucked for quite some time didn't hurt MS either. There was a good period of time, while the internet was making its transformation to a part of daily life for most people, where IE was competitive in terms of quality.