I guess that means we've entered Phase 2 of the Console Cycle: strategic price adjustments.
The interesting thing in Australia being that this comes roughly 5 weeks after the launch of the console. That's looking less like strategy and more like panic by the local distributors, and could be a death blow locally unless the games ramp up quickly.
(The fact that it's selling this poorly means that not enough other people might have one -- and I know what happens after that, I have three Atari Lynxes:)
They have sufficient cash in the bank to practically give them away. Reports indicated that they expected to lose, what, a billion or something in the first year?
Not that I disagree, but any money put towards price cuts means less marketing budget (assuming they don't keep topping that up separately, of course:)
Read the fine print on those phone deals. In this country, at least (Australia:) they're required to include minimum total cost of the plan -- and I refuse to believe that A$1200 (about US$600) doesn't cover the cost of the '$5' phone that they're selling you.
A lot of their stuff gets rebadged and sold by some of the higher-end PC companies, AFAICR. I'm looking at an old 15-inch Acer monitor as I type this... still going along pretty well:)
I don't think MS is the devil, I'd just like to see a time when they don't have the influence they've had for so long.:/ It may have been good for the computer industry in some ways, but in the same way that, e.g. Singapore benefits because of its competent one-party government. Does the job, but doesn't give you much choice or freedom to choose differently (at least if you want to interoperate with others, because MS keep warping standards, even their own from a few years ago).
Its always so goddamn virulent around against MS - but those prices (and the ones for the schools and Mexico) sound like just an amazing deal - really a fine bargin. I guess I dont get it.
That 18-20 y.o. CS student may become tomorrow's purchasing agent at Fortune 500 Company X. So obviously Microsoft are spending for the future.
In fact, if they were acting in ways that weren't for the financial benefit of the shareholders, they'd lose their jobs. Some of thus think they've gone a little too far. The Democrats agreed when they had charge of the DoJ, although the Republicans seemed to have nipped that in the bud pretty quickly.:/
I'm not particularly bothered about the bundling of IE, although they were lying under oath, but the requirement on OEMs to pay a fee to MS for each CPU shipped, whether or not that CPU has an MS OS with it, was a definite abuse of their monopoly. The web services play also scares me.
It's been proven, in court, that they can't be trusted at their current level of market share -- so why should we want to see them get that last few percent as well?
While I mostly agree with you (and have no time for alternative medicines in general -- although I do find acupuncture very relaxing), I would just like to query one part...
Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.
I'm not American, but surely they could be just a little bit amenable to commercial pressure? (Both in allowing drugs and banning them.)
How is this offtopic? I would imagine that IBM would be quite willing to 'lease' the name to another firm, and indeed it seems that that's what they're doing in their HDD merger with Hitachi.
Similar business principles in the consumer market seems on-topic to me.
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I guess that means we've entered Phase 2 of the Console Cycle: strategic price adjustments.
:)
The interesting thing in Australia being that this comes roughly 5 weeks after the launch of the console. That's looking less like strategy and more like panic by the local distributors, and could be a death blow locally unless the games ramp up quickly.
(The fact that it's selling this poorly means that not enough other people might have one -- and I know what happens after that, I have three Atari Lynxes
They have sufficient cash in the bank to practically give them away. Reports indicated that they expected to lose, what, a billion or something in the first year?
:)
Not that I disagree, but any money put towards price cuts means less marketing budget (assuming they don't keep topping that up separately, of course
On 20 April 2002 at 02:05:33 (Canberra time), the resident population of Australia is projected to be:
:)
19,551,839
(gotta love the ABS
Minimum wage is a good deal lower in the US, I'd imagine. And tips at McDonalds' can't be all that great :/
:)
Also, the fact that all the wages are so high in the US means that cost of living is higher too. Swings & roundabouts.
(Of course I'm Australian too, so I wouldn't really know
Are you suggesting MS's biggest (only?) competition is underwear gnomes?
:)
You may laugh now, but terrible things will happen when Bill Gates wakes up and finds that all of his 200 pairs of boxer shorts are missing
Maybe MS will then 'take a month off from developing software' in order to search for these misguided creatures...
Read the fine print on those phone deals. In this country, at least (Australia :) they're required to include minimum total cost of the plan -- and I refuse to believe that A$1200 (about US$600) doesn't cover the cost of the '$5' phone that they're selling you.
A lot of their stuff gets rebadged and sold by some of the higher-end PC companies, AFAICR. I'm looking at an old 15-inch Acer monitor as I type this... still going along pretty well :)
Yeah, but everyone knows the red ones go faster :)
Guess it depends on who's servicing the warranties? :)
Either way, they're still trading on their name rather than their products, so I don't see that you can say that they are completely different.
I don't think MS is the devil, I'd just like to see a time when they don't have the influence they've had for so long. :/ It may have been good for the computer industry in some ways, but in the same way that, e.g. Singapore benefits because of its competent one-party government. Does the job, but doesn't give you much choice or freedom to choose differently (at least if you want to interoperate with others, because MS keep warping standards, even their own from a few years ago).
The Xbox is $649 in Australia.
:)
Better change that to was.
Its always so goddamn virulent around against MS - but those prices (and the ones for the schools and Mexico) sound like just an amazing deal - really a fine bargin. I guess I dont get it.
:/
That 18-20 y.o. CS student may become tomorrow's purchasing agent at Fortune 500 Company X. So obviously Microsoft are spending for the future.
In fact, if they were acting in ways that weren't for the financial benefit of the shareholders, they'd lose their jobs. Some of thus think they've gone a little too far. The Democrats agreed when they had charge of the DoJ, although the Republicans seemed to have nipped that in the bud pretty quickly.
I'm not particularly bothered about the bundling of IE, although they were lying under oath, but the requirement on OEMs to pay a fee to MS for each CPU shipped, whether or not that CPU has an MS OS with it, was a definite abuse of their monopoly. The web services play also scares me.
It's been proven, in court, that they can't be trusted at their current level of market share -- so why should we want to see them get that last few percent as well?
Testing the new .sig... on my screen it gets the [tiernetworking.com] box after it, the URL being filtered by Slashcode.
While I mostly agree with you (and have no time for alternative medicines in general -- although I do find acupuncture very relaxing), I would just like to query one part...
Please, read and study before putting drugs in your body that aren't approved by the FDA.
I'm not American, but surely they could be just a little bit amenable to commercial pressure? (Both in allowing drugs and banning them.)
We laugh because we dare not cry. :/
What, you mean this isn't an All Fools' Day joke?
:)
Glad not to be an American at the moment
Moderators, this should be (+5, Insightful), not (+2, Funny)! :)
That's the data it's my job to distill -- to separate patterns from noise, well-thought-out requests from blue-ski wish lists
:)
Blue skis? Man, I could really go a pair of those. Of course, looks like I won't be getting any from Microsoft...
The odd thing is that I remembered the (English) distinction when I wrote it, but was tired enough to think that I was writing the right thing. :)
How is this offtopic? I would imagine that IBM would be quite willing to 'lease' the name to another firm, and indeed it seems that that's what they're doing in their HDD merger with Hitachi. Similar business principles in the consumer market seems on-topic to me.
Aren't many IBM PCs these days (high-end) rebadged Taiwanese products? (Or was that only their laptops?)
Mod me down, please -- Hindi language, Hindu people.
Tired. Working too hard.
What's the Hindu for 'F1RST p0sT, LoZerZ!'
:)
Is that American dollars? And no, if I'm happy to sell my sig space, I'll happily trade any scruples I may have. :)
Call me paranoid, but they can take that pill and shove it!
:)
If suppositories are the only way of administering it to you, then I'm sure they'll be telling you to bend over any time now.