This really pisses me off....

[Spyder32]

Originally posted here by allenb1963


It isn't too hard to sell something when you use strongarmed tactics to impress upon ANYONE who has the ability to foster competition that you have the ability to put them out of business. When you have vendors who are afraid to offer an alternative because they know that their licensing terms will be renegociated in an unfavorable manner if they do. Thats not good salemanship, thats mob tactics.

That's very true and I definitely agree. Microsoft has been and is known to "play dirty" when it come's to competition. They know that Linux is coming up with alot of the percentage these days and when you have a license to all the major computer companies/developers and won't let anyone rise up, then that's not being a good salesperson. IMHO, they should allow competition for one reason: With competition, you try harder to outdo each other and in this, it would be by giving it your all into your every product, which obviously, make's for a better product. But, I guess Microsoft doesn't like it that way.

[firestarter5]

If Linux was in Microsofts position, do you think they would act any differently? Right now MS is King of the Mountain, and they're playing hardball because they know everyone wants to knock them off. These vendors who distribute MS products have a choice. If they think MS is shafting the customer, then cut your ties with MS and sell something else. The only thing "forcing" them to sell MS products is customer demand.

Look at business's like Wal-Mart or Home Depot. These companies are monstrous. They've put more people out of work than employed. Mom & Pop and small town stores can't compete against these places. Why go to Jimmies Vacuum Shop and pay $600 when you can go to Wal-Mart and pay $450.

Only Microsofts arrogance will be their downfall, and right now the consumer is overlooking that for ease of use.

Everyone knows that Mercedes Benz builds a superior car to Ford. But the factor between the two is price. Linux may be 100x more stable than MS, but the factor between those two is basic knowledge of computers which the vast majority do not have at the moment. As more and more people become "computer aware", perhaps MS's dominance will start to fade as more and more people opt for stability rather than ease of use.

[Darksnake]

I feel that it is now that I shall ask everyone a simple question. At my college, a student can buy a legal copy of office xp for $20 and windows xp pro for $10. Looking on Best Buys website I found the price for these products is $300 for xp pro and $550 for office xp pro. My question to you is such; Is M$ making a profit from selling their software at such low prices, and if so how much?
To all of you who can not get the deal on M$ software that I and other students can, I have one thing to say....

[cwk9]

I read an article a few days a go (forget where) but anyways it stated that even if they sold windows for $30 m$ would still turn a profit.

[zooman22]

I have never understood exactly why Microsoft was the only company that ever made an attempt to develope a GUI ( os2 hmm ?) around the IBM PC format. Even IBM failed to see the potential in the PC (actually tried to stall PC sales to move higher end mainframes) until later.

Gates really laid the ground work for what was yet to come by offering MS DOS for such a low price both for the PCand to software developers. He then made the change to TCP/IP and abandoned NetBooty. Almost overnight, he created the demand for the Windows PC and everyone else been trying to follow their lead ever since.

So now we have a GIANT in our midst...me I use LINUX RedHat and FreeBSD

[Matty_Cross]

Originally posted here by cwk9
I read an article a few days a go (forget where) but anyways it stated that even if they sold windows for $30 m$ would still turn a profit.

Well, I don't know about you... but if I had the choice of making 10X that profit, I'd sure as hell take it....

However you look at it, Microsoft is a company.. Companies, in general, provide goods and services.... in return for these goods and services, we (the people) give these companies money... That is what these 'companies' aim for.. To make those lovely little green notes *or other colours, depending on where you live*...
If you think its too much, don't buy it.....

If it offends you that they would ask you to pay $X00 for an office suite... Write a letter... Not to anyone in particular, just get a pen and paper, and write that tender that could earn you a $15,000 bonus at the end of the year... I'm sure it will impress the people so very much, that they will respect your decision to boycott the Evil Empire, that they will still accept the handwritten document, with coffee stains from where you fell asleep and bumped the cup because you were up so long writing the document because its really been years since you really wrote something by hand.....

hmmm, I'm raving again....

[vanman]

Personally Allen I think there products are too expensive also.They always go on about piracy and yet they make a bundle.Make it more affordable and the rest will follow.It is a lot like AMD and INTEL.There is so many people all over the world,who would like to get computer literate but cannot even afford a basic computer.They then still have to pay a heafty amount of money just to get the system going,winxp,2000 or whatever the case maybe.What about all the rest of the software they have to get once they decided what they want to go into.It all comes down to one thing MONEY!!.

Make it affordable for everyone!!!They can only benefit from it.Put a smile on somebody else's face,and it will surely be returned.

regards
vanman

[cine_anime]

I have SuSE Linux and have had few problems. The worst thing about Linux of the past was driver support. I got tired of reverse engineering drivers just to have sound. But, thankfully most of your commercial flavors of Linux now have great driver support. In fact, Red Hat 8.0 had a driver for my video card, and XP didn't.

But even though Linux is a beautiful OS, the main computers in households and offices are powered by Windows. That's going to be hard to change. It would cost time and money for each company to train their employees on how to use Linux. And big business just doesn't want to spend that money.