Re: Some interesting economic facts

["Matt Deatrick" <mattd@shocking.com>]

 You got it Mitch. The way M$ impresses upon the consumer the value of a
product is via marketing. Obviously, if you can say : we have 60 products
that work on the fastest machines available at a price never before dreamed
of at the begining of the computer revolution, you've got something there.
Add the fact that inter-connectivity appears as a "value-added" bonus( as
opposed to just simple, and stupidly obvious necessity!) and you can charge
more. I hear people say all the time: "I won't buy cheap software!" To
which I reply: So if Win95 went on sale for $5 a copy tommorrow you
wouldn't buy it? Look at IE and how quickly it took market share, even
before it was "integrated". 
	

> Now, I understand entirely that the software market has become impossibly

> distorted by the monopoly. But what I'm suggesting is that Microsoft must

> continually create the impression of improvements, if not the reality of 
> improvements, otherwise stagnate. Or at the very least, they will begin 
> to stagnate as the market saturates with their products, or competing 
> product in the same class.
> 
	Yep. Why do you think M$ products are proprietary as opposed to open
platformed? Get them hooked and reel them in. 

> Microsoft has a huge incentive to obsolete its own products in order to 
> keep us on the forced upgrade path, because in reality, the marginal 
> value added of one version of Word over the previous version is 
> essentially nil (and arguably negative!), and the price should begin to 
> reflect this. They have the perfect vehicle for maintaining this forced 
> march via the operating system tyranny and the OEM lock-in.
	Yes and no. There are those everywhere obsessed with the idea of faster,
better, more. M$ products become luxury goods like BMW's and Porsches. When
that occurs, they will truly be a monopoly of epic proportion.
	Matt


>    Mitch Stone
>    Editor, Boycott Microsoft
>    http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
>  +---
>    The idea that people know what they want is wrong. 
>    --- Laura Jennings, Vice President, Microsoft Network
>