Re: bundling is inherently unfair to consumers

[Dan Strychalski <dski@ms17.hinet.net>]

Lewis A. Mettler <lmettler@lamlaw.com> wrote --

> Bundling always causes two affects:
>
> 1) the price is either raised or kept high to cover the bundled products
> 2) choice is limited in the short and long term

I've felt all along that there was something to what Lewis was saying.
Thinking about an example that, on the surface, seems entirely
beneficial to some consumers, I recently came to the conclusion set
forth above. That bundling can sometimes provide some benefit does not
mean that it is not at the same time harmful in some other way.

I do take issue, however, with one of Lewis's statements: the claim that
everyone else here is advocating some product or other, or some company
or other. No company owns the keystrokes that cause the active process
to receive the values 0 through 31. That only one major product in the
microcomputer world used all of those keystrokes as they were meant to
be used -- as commands of any sort -- is a glaring anomaly that needs to
be explained. *From the very beginning*, I hoped for a word processor
that used those keystrokes differently from the word processor I was
using. And no other word processor I saw or heard of used them *at all*.

Dan Strychalski