scott wrote:
>> If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I 
>> wouldn't have a problem with that.
> 
> The MS shareholders would though, because they wouldn't make as much 
> profit. It's the same as if Ford suddenly decided all cars were going to 
> be made to Rolls-Royce standards - not exactly a smart business move.

No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once 
every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut 
down. However, for software it seems it's OK to sell a malfunctioning 
product.

>> What I have a problem with is the fact that they charge a fortune for 
>> very low-quality products, and get away with it.
> 
> Last time I checked, a company was free to sell their products for 
> whatever price they wanted to.  If they try to sell them too high, 
> nobody will buy them.

Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy 
that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their strategy 
if that happened. But it won't.

>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded 
>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
> 
> Never seen any real competition for Windows.

Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)

But what about, say, Word? There's quite a few other word processors out 
there - and in past times there were even more. And most of them were a 
lot more reliable than Word...

> Linux is certainly getting 
> a lot better, if they could get people to release games for it (like 
> they do for xbox/ps3/pc) then they'd be a strong competitor I think.  
> Not used Apples much, but again lack of games prevents me from looking 
> seriously at it.

Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
decision. Linux is nice, but... well, it's fundamentally designed for 
UNIX nerds. So if you're not, good luck... Besides, I'm not convinced 
that the whole UNIX design is particularly coherant. (E.g., autoconf 
exists.)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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