VBA and VBS can be thought of as scripting languages, but VB itself is compiled code. Personally, C# works well for writing Windows GUI apps, the simplicity of VB and the power of C++.
Games programmers won't write games for Linux unless they are convinced they can cover development costs and also make a profit from it (there are exceptions like id). Look what happened to Loki. There is a perception that people who use free software aren't willing to pay for software, this includes games.
Perhaps what you haven't considered is that Windows customers haven't requested this feature til now. Even Windows users/admins have finally learned the usefulness of a powerful shell.
DirectX (in particluar Direct3D) comes out with updates more regularly than OpenGL (1.0 to 1.1 took a long time, 1.1 to 2.0 is a little quicker but not here yet). What this means is that if a hardware manufacturer has a brand spanking new feature it will most likely be availble in the next DirectX revision which will come out right around the new 3d cards come out, but for OpenGL they have to submit it to the ARB, wait a long time to be approved, then become standard. Or they can implement an OpenGL extension, but that means a particular game developer needs to be aware of that extension to make use of it, this means a game is limited to specific cards for specific features as ATI is unlikely to support NVidia's extensions. Besides, being a member of ARB is easy, you just pay a fee, being an active member is different.
Most consumers don't read Tom's Hardware or Anandtech. They don't know the difference between ATI, Nvidia, and 3dfx. They just know that they would rather spend $100 upgrading the video card to play games currently out than spend $400 on the newest card waiting to play the next Doom or Quake. I used to be one of those that upgraded my computer constantly. New CPU, new 3d card, Ide Raid, soundcard, you name it. Now I have a PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox and most of my gaming at home is on those systems. At work, however, I will play PC games like Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Age of Myth to take advantage of playing on a LAN (I refuse to play on the Internet on PC due to rampant cheating which completely destroys the gameplay).
I don't see how they cooked the numbers. They surveyed 104 companies for their experience in a 5 year time span on TCO of administering their systems. Did you read the article?
Electrovaya is best known for making extended batteries for notebooks (check out the PowerPad), however, they have a new Tablet PC that is supposed to have up to 16 hours batter life, see http://www.electrovaya.com/
Not sure where you got the $14.2 billion from, but according to Quicken's website, they "only" earned $7.8 billion, about half what you report (source: http://www.quicken.com/investments/stats/?p=MSFT&t ag=1)
As many others already pointed out, first, the $300 they charge retail is what people are willing to spend. Second, as someone also has pointed out, you can buy an OEM version for much less (about $80 per pricewatch), we are only talking the Workstation version of XP.
Seeing as how Sun wants to charge $450 for the x86 flavor of Solaris 9, seems like $300 is competively priced. (Redhat wants $150)
You have to keep in mind that there are different ways of measuring success. And profit is only one of them. If their goal is to attain 10% market penetration or to get 5 million customers, etc... without making a project (yet), then they are successful. Success depends on how their goals are defined.
I think you are missing the point. I guess what you are saying is that MS should only charge enough to cover manufacturing costs and perhaps a bit more for profit, but let's not let them cover the cost of R&D. As I've pointed out before, MS intends to spend $5.4billion on R&D for fiscal 2003. That creates a lot of jobs and costs a lot of money to actually make software. People forget that manufacturing costs is more than just the cost of duplicating a CD and the packaging.
At the local EBX, there was a line of 20 people buying the XBox Live kit. I suppose this is expected since EBX is purely a gaming store while Best Buy is an electronics store.
I agree that currently PS2 and to an extent Gamecube has the best games, but Xbox has the most potential with HDTV and Dolby Digital support.
Re:For the cost of an XBox your desktop PC be grea
on
Xbox Live Goes Online
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· Score: 1
The processor isn't what makes your PC into an XBox, it's the graphics chip. Even if it is a processor, with the $200 bucks you spend on upgrading, you already would have bought an XBox with DVD kit and 2 free games. With the $300 graphics card you would need, you'd have even more. I have a PC with a decent graphics card for PC games, I also have a PS2, Gamecube, and XBox for console games. Basically, I play specific games on each one that isn't available on the others. I also prefer to play games on my large TV and awesome home theater setup over sitting in my computer chair, but I guess that's just me. Apples and oranges.
Revenue and Income doesn't take into consideration R&D costs. Just because manufacturing costs of software is low (this doesn't apply to MS) doesn't mean R&D is also low. Recent news has stated MS is boosting R&D to $5.2 Billion for fiscal 2003.
You misunderstand the dumping law. Basically you cannot sell the same item in the US as another country and have a huge difference in price. So if Nintendo decides to "dump" in the US it's gamecube for $50, they would have to sell it for an equivelant amount in Japan to not be considered dumping. So that means they can take a loss selling in the US if they also take a loss selling in Japan, but they can't sell in Japan for $100 and in the US for $50.
It doesn't help much for Hoover if people call their non-Hoover a Hoover, if they didn't buy a Hoover. Basically, people are using Hoover as a generic term and obviously people don't buy the Hoover brand by this example. Same thing will happen to Tivo. It will only live on in name. Tivo is dead, long live Tivo!
If you look at Satellite pricing vs. Cable pricing (I live in Seattle), it's about the same for the same content. Hardware and install is free (after rebate). If Dish and DirectTV merged and decided to jack up the price, you can certainly believe that people would run to Cable. I currently have DirectTv because cable (ATT Cable is the only choice I have) sucked for a long time. Now, ATT is ready to offer local HD channels via cable and I'm going to switch. Satellite as it is now will never offer local HD channels, they simply don't have the bandwidth available for it. The right solution is to allow Dish and DirectTv to merge with restrictions and to force local Cable competition.
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VBA and VBS can be thought of as scripting languages, but VB itself is compiled code. Personally, C# works well for writing Windows GUI apps, the simplicity of VB and the power of C++.
Games programmers won't write games for Linux unless they are convinced they can cover development costs and also make a profit from it (there are exceptions like id). Look what happened to Loki. There is a perception that people who use free software aren't willing to pay for software, this includes games.
I would be more interested to learn the percentages of income rather than revenue.
XP has something similar built into the OS called sc.exe
Perhaps what you haven't considered is that Windows customers haven't requested this feature til now. Even Windows users/admins have finally learned the usefulness of a powerful shell.
DirectX (in particluar Direct3D) comes out with updates more regularly than OpenGL (1.0 to 1.1 took a long time, 1.1 to 2.0 is a little quicker but not here yet). What this means is that if a hardware manufacturer has a brand spanking new feature it will most likely be availble in the next DirectX revision which will come out right around the new 3d cards come out, but for OpenGL they have to submit it to the ARB, wait a long time to be approved, then become standard. Or they can implement an OpenGL extension, but that means a particular game developer needs to be aware of that extension to make use of it, this means a game is limited to specific cards for specific features as ATI is unlikely to support NVidia's extensions. Besides, being a member of ARB is easy, you just pay a fee, being an active member is different.
Most consumers don't read Tom's Hardware or Anandtech. They don't know the difference between ATI, Nvidia, and 3dfx. They just know that they would rather spend $100 upgrading the video card to play games currently out than spend $400 on the newest card waiting to play the next Doom or Quake. I used to be one of those that upgraded my computer constantly. New CPU, new 3d card, Ide Raid, soundcard, you name it. Now I have a PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox and most of my gaming at home is on those systems. At work, however, I will play PC games like Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Age of Myth to take advantage of playing on a LAN (I refuse to play on the Internet on PC due to rampant cheating which completely destroys the gameplay).
I presume that although the chip is on the motherboard there will be an external jack to hook up an antenna.
I don't see how they cooked the numbers. They surveyed 104 companies for their experience in a 5 year time span on TCO of administering their systems. Did you read the article?
Electrovaya is best known for making extended batteries for notebooks (check out the PowerPad), however, they have a new Tablet PC that is supposed to have up to 16 hours batter life, see http://www.electrovaya.com/
Thank you for stating the obvious.
You just described Linux!
I'm sure Microsoft doesn't want the extra $10 from the minority modders if it *may* affect how others enjoy their service.
So someone decides to mod their XBox with who knows what and you expect Microsoft to support such an untested configuration?
Not sure where you got the $14.2 billion from, but according to Quicken's website, they "only" earned $7.8 billion, about half what you report (source: http://www.quicken.com/investments/stats/?p=MSFT&t ag=1)
As many others already pointed out, first, the $300 they charge retail is what people are willing to spend. Second, as someone also has pointed out, you can buy an OEM version for much less (about $80 per pricewatch), we are only talking the Workstation version of XP.
Seeing as how Sun wants to charge $450 for the x86 flavor of Solaris 9, seems like $300 is competively priced. (Redhat wants $150)
You have to keep in mind that there are different ways of measuring success. And profit is only one of them. If their goal is to attain 10% market penetration or to get 5 million customers, etc... without making a project (yet), then they are successful. Success depends on how their goals are defined.
I think you are missing the point. I guess what you are saying is that MS should only charge enough to cover manufacturing costs and perhaps a bit more for profit, but let's not let them cover the cost of R&D. As I've pointed out before, MS intends to spend $5.4billion on R&D for fiscal 2003. That creates a lot of jobs and costs a lot of money to actually make software. People forget that manufacturing costs is more than just the cost of duplicating a CD and the packaging.
At the local EBX, there was a line of 20 people buying the XBox Live kit. I suppose this is expected since EBX is purely a gaming store while Best Buy is an electronics store.
I agree that currently PS2 and to an extent Gamecube has the best games, but Xbox has the most potential with HDTV and Dolby Digital support.
The processor isn't what makes your PC into an XBox, it's the graphics chip. Even if it is a processor, with the $200 bucks you spend on upgrading, you already would have bought an XBox with DVD kit and 2 free games. With the $300 graphics card you would need, you'd have even more. I have a PC with a decent graphics card for PC games, I also have a PS2, Gamecube, and XBox for console games. Basically, I play specific games on each one that isn't available on the others. I also prefer to play games on my large TV and awesome home theater setup over sitting in my computer chair, but I guess that's just me. Apples and oranges.
Revenue and Income doesn't take into consideration R&D costs. Just because manufacturing costs of software is low (this doesn't apply to MS) doesn't mean R&D is also low. Recent news has stated MS is boosting R&D to $5.2 Billion for fiscal 2003.
You misunderstand the dumping law. Basically you cannot sell the same item in the US as another country and have a huge difference in price. So if Nintendo decides to "dump" in the US it's gamecube for $50, they would have to sell it for an equivelant amount in Japan to not be considered dumping. So that means they can take a loss selling in the US if they also take a loss selling in Japan, but they can't sell in Japan for $100 and in the US for $50.
It doesn't help much for Hoover if people call their non-Hoover a Hoover, if they didn't buy a Hoover. Basically, people are using Hoover as a generic term and obviously people don't buy the Hoover brand by this example. Same thing will happen to Tivo. It will only live on in name. Tivo is dead, long live Tivo!
If you look at Satellite pricing vs. Cable pricing (I live in Seattle), it's about the same for the same content. Hardware and install is free (after rebate). If Dish and DirectTV merged and decided to jack up the price, you can certainly believe that people would run to Cable. I currently have DirectTv because cable (ATT Cable is the only choice I have) sucked for a long time. Now, ATT is ready to offer local HD channels via cable and I'm going to switch. Satellite as it is now will never offer local HD channels, they simply don't have the bandwidth available for it. The right solution is to allow Dish and DirectTv to merge with restrictions and to force local Cable competition.
It's not just about mileage. It's also about emissions.