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

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

Eric Bennett wrote:

> 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.
>

I can remember like it was yesterday, my feelings when all these (then)
powerful 386's were flooding the market, running five or six times as fast as
what we'd all been used to.  What killer DOS apps we could build, I thought,
but I knew we wouldn't get a chance - that iron was to be dedicated to
Windows and its insatiable demands.

One thing I guess you can credit Windows for - making mass computing possible
and forcing the demand for more powerful machines, and therefore the supply
of them.  Without it would the 486 be the majority machine of choice today?
What would a Pentium cost?

That doesn't mean, of course that it's needed today.  There are a wealth of
alternatives.  If Microsoft closed its doors tomorrow, someone would fill the
gap.  I wouldn't mind, though actually seeing a slowdown in the rate of
hardware power increase.  Seems like we don't even get to digest today's new
hardware; it's obsolete the minute we get it out the door.