Fun_People Archive
9 Sep
How Does Microsoft Get Away With It?
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 95 11:39:58 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: How Does Microsoft Get Away With It?
From: Hal Glatzer <0002018560@mcimail.com>
The answer to the question How Does Microsoft Get Away With It? is this:
The subtext of every Microsoft pitch can be paraphrased as follows:
This is a reasonably good program, and it sort of runs okay on the
hardware you've got. But if you really want to use what's in it,
and get the most out of it, you've got to have a little more hardware.
Dealers love this. The markup on hardware is much higher than on software.
Microsoft is helping them sell iron. So they give Microsoft more shelf
space than anybody else, which helps perpetuate Microsoft's self-
generated myth of superiority, and encourages customers to buy Microsoft's
brightly colored box.
If you don't believe this, ask anybody who has used the Quarterdeck
products: those DOS shells delivered true multitasking and a friendlier
user interface while Windows was still a Will-They-Ever-Ship-It? joke.
And you didn't need a Pentium and 16 MB RAM to run Quarterdeck software.
© 1995 Peter Langston