No, you don't have to buy 20 different apps.
While that's great for mom and dad, who don't have to fork out extra
money ("$500 for a PROGRAM??!! No, you'll use the one that came with
the computer!" and Junior doesn't get Photoshop...), it beats down
the market for every other manufacturer out there.
Now, if Micro$oft wrote the world's -best- software, and offered
decent licensing to companies that need lots of copies...
However, most of the Micro$oft programs are... -adequate.- Not the
best, just -adequate.-
Micro$oft Word does an adequate job of word processing. But my copy
kept choking on a large (couple of hundred pages) document I was
editing last year. Now, that may have been because I didn't have the
latest patches (company computer), but it was annoying that a program
couldn't handle a document of 'infinite' size and not get confused!
I finally broke it down into sections to keep the program happy.
They don't do everything. Micro$oft Project does timelines, GANT
charts, etc. But there is another program that does it even better.
I forget its name; my company has decided that M$ Project is good
enough.
And that makes it that much harder for a better product to hit the market.
And that's what makes the embedded products so much worse-- you
don't have a chance to evaluate the alternatives.
Do computer vendors still load up all sorts of trial software on
their machines when you get them? ie limited or timed versions of
the other manufacturer's programs? Or has Micro$oft forbidden this
as part of their contracts with the hardware folks?
I guess I'll have to go and watch a video on my BetaMax, and take
notes on my Newton, and upload them to my Macintosh, then read email
on Eudora, and browse newsgroups on Agent... All programs and
objects which are -better- (IMHO), but didn't get the advertising
right, or are having a tough fight against the incumbent.
This just in-- Ralph Nader &co are suggesting that the federal
government can help break this monopoly by using non-microsoft
programs-- about a $50 Billion investment.
There -is- a practical reason to use non-Micro$oft programs-- most
virus authors target Micro$oft programs because they're everywhere!
Lesser-known software is relatively immune, because they do things
differently. (:
--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn_at_ix.netcom.nospam.com
"Lee, Christopher J" <christopher.j.lee_at_intel.com> wrote (in part):
>Well...unless I'm mistaken, there really isn't any roadblock built into the
>OS to keep one from installing Netscape (other than the fact that it's a
>lousy browser compared to IE5) or Photoshop or Premier or any other program
>that replaces a bundled Windows app. I, as a consumer, appreciate that I
>don't have to go out and buy 20 different apps to do things that MS included
>bundled apps for.
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