Third, I think that MS misjudged (thus far) what the palm market wants.
One thing to understand about Microsoft is that every product they put out will be either oriented towards one of their big revenue streams or it'll be dropped. This means that if a product can't be hardwired into Windows or MS Office, Microsoft sees little value in it. I don't think they are necessary worried about dominating every single market, but they are worried about markets or potential markets that can cut into their revenue streams.
In the case of WinCE palmtops, I don't think to set out to dominate the palm/embedded market but instead mistakenly designed the palm devices to be value-add extentions to Microsoft Office, and the settop boxes to be extensions of MSN. They ignored the new markets and looked to Wince as an extention to the markets they were already in.
They made their marketing play to the IT Manager types that were supposedly going to support palm devices as integrated computing equipment. This hasn't happened yet, and if it has the IT geeks are probabbly more familiar with Pilots anyway. But, if someday Palm devices are standard corporate supported equipment, the supposed Windows/Office 'integration' will give Microsoft a much stronger sell.
Wince Terminals seemed like a good idea, but the advent of $400 Windows 98 PCs pretty much eliminated that from MS's standpoint. Think about it -- the costs of supporting a mixed Office 97/PocketOffice environment are going to outweigh any minor cost savings Wince would give you. (If you want a WTS/Citrix client, you can use any ol' 586 PC.)
They'd much rather push Win2000's remote management features on a standard PC because it keeps the users where the applications are (which incidentially is MS's primary revenue stream). What if WinCE took off, but people started using "WordPerfect for WinCE" because PocketOffice was so crappy? --
I agree that USB = higher CPU utilization is heresy, but look at this post , although it could be a Windows issue.
This fits with what I've heard from others, and if a mouse takes 5% of your CPU, I hate to think what Ethernet does. (Although Intel and AMD might be happy!) --
During it's meglomanical phase, Novell bought Unix from AT+T, and for a brief period sold a x86 Unix called UnixWare. (If only this product was marketed properly...)
They've since sold Unix and UnixWare to SCO and turned the UNIX trademark over to The Open Group (?). So they don't currently have any vested interest in Unix other than the fact that Linux/BSD is competition for NetWare. --
I would imagine that "Windows 2000 Home" (or what ever it will be called) wouldn't cost any more than Windows 98.
I'm sure that Microsoft would love to stop spending the money developing two seperate OSes that have to be compatible with each other. The problem is that a portion of their customer base (Gamers and Companies using DOS/Win3 apps) have told them that they are never upgrading to NT5. So, they figure they can go to the well one more time and milk the 'legacy' base for another upgrade. (Although, 'Millenium' might just be a downloadable service pack.) --
It would seem to me that the target market for these computers are corporations that want something cheap for the average desktop worker. For these corporations, upgrading is ususally not economical in terms of labor costs, and they're going to buy a new one after the depreciation period ends.
However, I understand your worry, because these computers will end up in the hands of small business and home users that don't understand that they are trading upgradability for a lower purchase price. Think back to the old Mac LCs and Performas -- dog performance, no upgradability, unhappy users. --
No, I think he has a point. Sun has done well, but they've been running for the high end as fast as they can. They're ditching the workstation and low-end server market, and are covering their Sparc bet with full support for the IA64 commodity platform.
Sun and SGI can survive sitting on the high end (look at IBM and it's insanely profitable mainframe line), but eventually they're going to get cut off from the mainstream user base, and Solaris/Irix are going to get pegged as exotic and expensive server operating systems (much like OS/400 has). People will only want to use it if they absolutely have to.
In the long run, they're losing mindshare which will lead to the loss of marketshare. (Look at people who try to implement NT in midrange situations just because NT is a familiar quantity.) The fact that a commodity Dell box running Linux|NT|Solaris is even comparable with a custom Sun or SGI box is bad news in the long run for custom UNIX hardware.
One thing both companies have in common is a large installed base of loyal users that aren't cracking the wallets open as often as they "should" to upgrade. Both SGI and Apple have made some great machines, and they typically have a much longer lifespan than your typical PC, and people tend to hang onto them longer.
The genius of the iMac and the G3 is that it got many of the old Performa and Quadra users to buy a new Apple. SGI needs a similar product for their installed base, and the NT/Intel workstation wasn't it. --
They have pretty good sales and a decently growning market. On the other hand, they only sell Linux boxes. Because of this, they're missing out on a majority of the desktop and server markets.
To the contrary, their devotion to Linux has got them to where they are today. If they also supported NT, NetWare, and SCO, they would just be another high quality screwdriver shop with integration services, and without 'community' support, and they probably wouldn't be going public.
However, putting down my crack pipe, this does worry one in the long term. While VA might be a great vendor for smaller shops who are aware of their reputation among Linux users, do they have any chance against Compaq, IBM, HP, and Dell in the larger corporate market? These huge companies are already gearing up their Linux support, and VA isn't going to be differentiated for very long.
And yes, it's great they do Linux development work. However, this is overhead that put them at a comparative disadvantage to other computer makers that just pass the licence costs on to the customer. I certainly didn't get the letter, but I would be a little wary buying this stock. --
Hmmm. I recall for a while, IBM was configuring all of their commercial computers as duel-boot (OS/2) and (IBM DOS/MS Windows 3.1) machines, which booted into OS/2 by default. It took some obscure trick to get it to boot DOS/Win3.1. Needless to say, neither the Windows nor the OS/2 shops were very happy with this arrangment.
I can understand your frustration, but larger shops that would use OS/2 (or WinNT) probably do their own custom disk images anyway, so the market for preinstalled OS/2 was probably small enough that even IBM could afford to neglect it for a cheaper Windows licence --
I recall a computer shop owner telling me that he couldn't sell a computer without an Operating System installed, but that OS didn't have to be Windows, it could have been NetWare, SCO, MS-DOS, IBM DOS, or even DR-DOS which was pretty cheap in those days. --
Actually, people are into Windows NT because it's Windows-compatible, not because it's (a little) UNIX-compatible. In the MS propaganda dimension, UNIX = difficult and expensive = legacy = not a good thing.
The exam question beside (which is trying to verify a shallow understanding of the standard NT architecture diagram), I don't think there's any widespread misconception among "NT Heads" that NT is UNIX-compatible. Almost zero thought is put into the POSIX subsystem by NT admins, except to disable it in security sensitive situations, or maybe run vi as a parlor trick. --
Well, understand that IBM is an unusual case. Any large scale internal deployment they undertake would be a test case for their consulting division, not necessarily because it's the best TCO-justified solution. --
Well, if you're pointing out that the NSF format is not very efficient in terms of disk space, you're right. Although, consider that it's trying to do alot more a gzipped text file is.
The client help is actually 7 MB, the rest is programming and administrative documentation which a normal user wouldn't need. --
Note that NT seat licences aren't required if you are running application server software (only SMB filesharing). You still need to pay Lotus for the seat licencing, no matter what the platform is. --
But, what after the install? No man pages, no documentation, no instructions. I checked the notes home page and couldn't find any additional documentation package I needed to download.
The documentation is in Notes Databases, accessible from HTTP or Notes in the Help directory. The docs are the main reason your data directory is so large in a default installation. I highly recommend full text indexing the databases -- full text searching is very fast on Domino.
You can also get the docs in HTML or PDF formats from http://notes.net (the actual home page for Domino.) Just click on the "Doc Library" button and look for the installation guide. You'll need Javascript turned on. --
Note that the Domino server has only a console interface.
The Notes R5 client, Windows and Mac only, actually has resolved many of the issues listed at the Interface Hall of Shame (some of which are actually issues with a custom mail applicaiton, not the standard Notes product.) --
"Why would *anyone* want ZDTV?" should be the question. My understanding is that it's programming is only on the air a few hours a day (usually at 2AM) in certain markets. I thought the whole thing was going to get shut down.
Also, note that unlike some ZD publications, ZDTV is not aimed at a technical audience at all. It's target audience seems to be newbies who don't know what RAM and FTP are and can't decide if their iMac should be purple or green.
(This makes it difficult to use as a propaganda engine. Sure they could tell all three viewers they have to call their congressman and advocate "The Freedom To Innovate", but certainly the prime MS customer base of MIS Manager types aren't watching this show.) --
MS-DOS 6 had a bundled AV scanner with a Win3.1 front end. One of the few products Microsoft ever dropped, rather than building up and taking over the market. --
Actually, if we're comparing apples and apples, let's throw Windows 9x out the window right now and talk about Windows NT. (Win 9x was designed to have no security, and to even defeat certain NT network security features. -- MS's answer to customers who want desktop security was to run NT, which predates 95 by a couple years.)
And while there are many "incredibly stupid" NT users that run everything as local Administrator, many shops do not, and the model is certainly no worse that Unix's.
Implying otherwise is either a) ignorant or b) trolling or FUDing --
Slashdot Mirror
Third, I think that MS misjudged (thus far) what the palm market wants.
One thing to understand about Microsoft is that every product they put out will be either oriented towards one of their big revenue streams or it'll be dropped. This means that if a product can't be hardwired into Windows or MS Office, Microsoft sees little value in it. I don't think they are necessary worried about dominating every single market, but they are worried about markets or potential markets that can cut into their revenue streams.
In the case of WinCE palmtops, I don't think to set out to dominate the palm/embedded market but instead mistakenly designed the palm devices to be value-add extentions to Microsoft Office, and the settop boxes to be extensions of MSN. They ignored the new markets and looked to Wince as an extention to the markets they were already in.
They made their marketing play to the IT Manager types that were supposedly going to support palm devices as integrated computing equipment. This hasn't happened yet, and if it has the IT geeks are probabbly more familiar with Pilots anyway. But, if someday Palm devices are standard corporate supported equipment, the supposed Windows/Office 'integration' will give Microsoft a much stronger sell.
--
Wince Terminals seemed like a good idea, but the advent of $400 Windows 98 PCs pretty much eliminated that from MS's standpoint. Think about it -- the costs of supporting a mixed Office 97/PocketOffice environment are going to outweigh any minor cost savings Wince would give you. (If you want a WTS/Citrix client, you can use any ol' 586 PC.)
They'd much rather push Win2000's remote management features on a standard PC because it keeps the users where the applications are (which incidentially is MS's primary revenue stream). What if WinCE took off, but people started using "WordPerfect for WinCE" because PocketOffice was so crappy?
--
Take a look at the recent slashdot thread about a Java PDP emulator running Spacewar
Apparently the emulator can also boot V7 UNIX. Also see comment #73 for a link to DEC's non-java emulator.
--
I agree that USB = higher CPU utilization is heresy, but look at this post , although it could be a Windows issue.
This fits with what I've heard from others, and if a mouse takes 5% of your CPU, I hate to think what Ethernet does. (Although Intel and AMD might be happy!)
--
During it's meglomanical phase, Novell bought Unix from AT+T, and for a brief period sold a x86 Unix called UnixWare. (If only this product was marketed properly...)
They've since sold Unix and UnixWare to SCO and turned the UNIX trademark over to The Open Group (?). So they don't currently have any vested interest in Unix other than the fact that Linux/BSD is competition for NetWare.
--
Doesn't USB require CPU to service the bus? I can imagine that USB Ethernet would be a slooow ordeal.
Is it possible? People used to run ethernet with those Xircom parallel port adapters, so given enough pain, sure.
If the Intel things are targeted towards corporate market, they'll have onboard ethernet.
--
I would imagine that "Windows 2000 Home" (or what ever it will be called) wouldn't cost any more than Windows 98.
I'm sure that Microsoft would love to stop spending the money developing two seperate OSes that have to be compatible with each other. The problem is that a portion of their customer base (Gamers and Companies using DOS/Win3 apps) have told them that they are never upgrading to NT5. So, they figure they can go to the well one more time and milk the 'legacy' base for another upgrade. (Although, 'Millenium' might just be a downloadable service pack.)
--
It would seem to me that the target market for these computers are corporations that want something cheap for the average desktop worker. For these corporations, upgrading is ususally not economical in terms of labor costs, and they're going to buy a new one after the depreciation period ends.
However, I understand your worry, because these computers will end up in the hands of small business and home users that don't understand that they are trading upgradability for a lower purchase price. Think back to the old Mac LCs and Performas -- dog performance, no upgradability, unhappy users.
--
No, I think he has a point. Sun has done well, but they've been running for the high end as fast as they can. They're ditching the workstation and low-end server market, and are covering their Sparc bet with full support for the IA64 commodity platform.
Sun and SGI can survive sitting on the high end (look at IBM and it's insanely profitable mainframe line), but eventually they're going to get cut off from the mainstream user base, and Solaris/Irix are going to get pegged as exotic and expensive server operating systems (much like OS/400 has). People will only want to use it if they absolutely have to.
In the long run, they're losing mindshare which will lead to the loss of marketshare. (Look at people who try to implement NT in midrange situations just because NT is a familiar quantity.) The fact that a commodity Dell box running Linux|NT|Solaris is even comparable with a custom Sun or SGI box is bad news in the long run for custom UNIX hardware.
--
One thing both companies have in common is a large installed base of loyal users that aren't cracking the wallets open as often as they "should" to upgrade. Both SGI and Apple have made some great machines, and they typically have a much longer lifespan than your typical PC, and people tend to hang onto them longer.
The genius of the iMac and the G3 is that it got many of the old Performa and Quadra users to buy a new Apple. SGI needs a similar product for their installed base, and the NT/Intel workstation wasn't it.
--
They have pretty good sales and a decently growning market. On the other hand, they only sell Linux boxes. Because of this, they're missing out on a majority of the desktop and server markets.
To the contrary, their devotion to Linux has got them to where they are today. If they also supported NT, NetWare, and SCO, they would just be another high quality screwdriver shop with integration services, and without 'community' support, and they probably wouldn't be going public.
However, putting down my crack pipe, this does worry one in the long term. While VA might be a great vendor for smaller shops who are aware of their reputation among Linux users, do they have any chance against Compaq, IBM, HP, and Dell in the larger corporate market? These huge companies are already gearing up their Linux support, and VA isn't going to be differentiated for very long.
And yes, it's great they do Linux development work. However, this is overhead that put them at a comparative disadvantage to other computer makers that just pass the licence costs on to the customer. I certainly didn't get the letter, but I would be a little wary buying this stock.
--
Hmmm. I recall for a while, IBM was configuring all of their commercial computers as duel-boot (OS/2) and (IBM DOS/MS Windows 3.1) machines, which booted into OS/2 by default. It took some obscure trick to get it to boot DOS/Win3.1. Needless to say, neither the Windows nor the OS/2 shops were very happy with this arrangment.
I can understand your frustration, but larger shops that would use OS/2 (or WinNT) probably do their own custom disk images anyway, so the market for preinstalled OS/2 was probably small enough that even IBM could afford to neglect it for a cheaper Windows licence
--
I recall a computer shop owner telling me that he couldn't sell a computer without an Operating System installed, but that OS didn't have to be Windows, it could have been NetWare, SCO, MS-DOS, IBM DOS, or even DR-DOS which was pretty cheap in those days.
--
Actually, people are into Windows NT because it's Windows-compatible, not because it's (a little) UNIX-compatible. In the MS propaganda dimension, UNIX = difficult and expensive = legacy = not a good thing.
The exam question beside (which is trying to verify a shallow understanding of the standard NT architecture diagram), I don't think there's any widespread misconception among "NT Heads" that NT is UNIX-compatible. Almost zero thought is put into the POSIX subsystem by NT admins, except to disable it in security sensitive situations, or maybe run vi as a parlor trick.
--
Well, understand that IBM is an unusual case. Any large scale internal deployment they undertake would be a test case for their consulting division, not necessarily because it's the best TCO-justified solution.
--
Well, if you're pointing out that the NSF format is not very efficient in terms of disk space, you're right. Although, consider that it's trying to do alot more a gzipped text file is.
The client help is actually 7 MB, the rest is programming and administrative documentation which a normal user wouldn't need.
--
Note that NT seat licences aren't required if you are running application server software (only SMB filesharing). You still need to pay Lotus for the seat licencing, no matter what the platform is.
--
Note that 50MB of that install is help databases, which you don't need because the client will find them on the server.
--
But, what after the install? No man pages, no documentation, no instructions. I checked the notes home page and couldn't find any additional documentation package I needed to download.
The documentation is in Notes Databases, accessible from HTTP or Notes in the Help directory. The docs are the main reason your data directory is so large in a default installation. I highly recommend full text indexing the databases -- full text searching is very fast on Domino.
You can also get the docs in HTML or PDF formats from http://notes.net (the actual home page for Domino.) Just click on the "Doc Library" button and look for the installation guide. You'll need Javascript turned on.
--
Note that the Domino server has only a console interface.
The Notes R5 client, Windows and Mac only, actually has resolved many of the issues listed at the Interface Hall of Shame (some of which are actually issues with a custom mail applicaiton, not the standard Notes product.)
--
"Why would *anyone* want ZDTV?" should be the question. My understanding is that it's programming is only on the air a few hours a day (usually at 2AM) in certain markets. I thought the whole thing was going to get shut down.
Also, note that unlike some ZD publications, ZDTV is not aimed at a technical audience at all. It's target audience seems to be newbies who don't know what RAM and FTP are and can't decide if their iMac should be purple or green.
(This makes it difficult to use as a propaganda engine. Sure they could tell all three viewers they have to call their congressman and advocate "The Freedom To Innovate", but certainly the prime MS customer base of MIS Manager types aren't watching this show.)
--
MS-DOS 6 had a bundled AV scanner with a Win3.1 front end. One of the few products Microsoft ever dropped, rather than building up and taking over the market.
--
Actually, if we're comparing apples and apples, let's throw Windows 9x out the window right now and talk about Windows NT. (Win 9x was designed to have no security, and to even defeat certain NT network security features. -- MS's answer to customers who want desktop security was to run NT, which predates 95 by a couple years.)
And while there are many "incredibly stupid" NT users that run everything as local Administrator, many shops do not, and the model is certainly no worse that Unix's.
Implying otherwise is either
a) ignorant or
b) trolling or FUDing
--
As a DOS multitasker, Desqview was indeed cool, but realize that it was intended to be a poor man's OS/2.
Nowdays, if for some reason you are a power DOS user, you're probably better off with the real thing.
--
Normal Desqview supported Windows 3.1 in "Standard" (not Protected) mode. Not sure about Desqview/X either.
--