Re: CFA: Microsoft overcharges consumers $10 billion in 3 years

[Eric Bennett <ericb@pobox.com>]

Wandered Inn wrote:

> Hardly.  I've run Linux on an old 486 as well as my current Pentium 200.
> Although it does run fine on the 486, I would never go back to it.
> 
> M$ and improvements should not be mentioned in the same sentence.  They
> do nothing but extend their monopoly and crush other companies.
> 
> Intel, AMD and Cyrix would disagree with you as well.

You can add me to that illustrious list too.  :-)

There are many valid uses of increased computing power.  Two from work:
being able to do scientific simulations and data processing in hours
instead of days and being able to to real-time manipulations of 3D
molecular images.

And for my machine at home, being able to compress digitized video with
a modern compression technique like Sorenson Video rather than a much
less CPU-intensive--but also much lower video quality--method like
Cinepak.

As you might guess, none of these tasks involves Windows or any other
Microsoft product.

-- 
Eric Bennett ( ericb@pobox.com ; http://www.pobox.com/~ericb )
Department of Chemistry, Cornell University

We have increased our prices over the last 10 years [while]
other component prices have come down and continue to come
down.
-Joachim Kempin, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Corp.