Re: Microsoft Follies (was: [ANNOUNCE] XML/Ada 0.5 released)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <TLfK6.549$%i7.302004@news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com>, tmoran@acm.org
says...
>
>>You'd think Microsoft would take great pains to *avoid* the "forking" issue. :-)
>  One might think the airlines could simplify ticketting, meals, etc. and
>save money if they had one class, instead of Economy, Business, First.  ;)

Perhaps, but it ceartianly wouldn't save the airlines any money if they had the
different classes flying on different planes using different schedules. B-)

The only OS in their panoply that I think you could really make an argument for
needing to be separate is Wince.

The trick to making money on "discrimintory pricing" is to keep the services
provided as similiar to each other as possible. Microsoft already does that
quite well with their "student versions" that are the exact same versions of
their software, but sold at school bookstores for %20-50 less. Note that a new
"student version" of Win2K costs less than a new consumer version of WinMe. 

---
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