Slvr, I am with imgod2u and Spud on this, Gates has done many mistakes but he did what a capitalistic company needed to do to succeed. If MS began in Canada, you bet as hell it would never be this way. Is that a good thing?
To me, as much as I love my country, being in Canada would've drastically reduced the Microsoft innovation over the years.
I strongly disagree with how you see it.
I won't comment below on the MSDOS history, as I've little to no knowledge of what happened back then to debate.
It was the hardware. You can't go and praise Microsoft for PCs becoming widespread when it wasn't even a matter of software. Gates had nothing to do with that
You are right in that being non-related to Gates. However, I believe it was the dedication of Gates to create Windows to comply to many hardware companies' products. SOMETHING must have been done in order to let the companies trust MS, and know something will run it well, THAT's where Gates had something to do in it.
Sorry, but that's an overly-idealistic way of looking at it. Windows for some reason caught on where other graphical and text DOS shells hadn't. It wasn't marketting. It wasn't the product's superiority. It just happened because the stars happened to be right one day or something equally unfathomable. Windows 1.0 just caught on because someone had to be the standard and it fell into Microsoft's lap.
That could be why, however at that time, Windows 1.0 was barely heard of. I for one, lived through the 1995 era and I can clearly tell you, even back then Win95 was not that frequent, on my 486, I used Norton Commander and MSDOS to run stuff. I had Win3.1 which I rarely accessed!
All I know, is that Microsoft actually was determined. Even a small feature could've done this. I don't beleive in that sudden luck thing unless something triggers it. This is not a roulette!
Soon this re-investment back into development allowed them to outpace the development of all of the other shells and that just gave MS even more sales. By then, yes, MS was doing well in both marketting and product development. But then what company wouldn't do well? As the Windows snowball kept rolling down that hill, outpacing the other snowballs, it became a monster that no one could stop.
I fail to see what was wrong here, this is exactly why MS was succesful. It's not about being dumb, no sir.
That's why there are tons of people who didn't sign up with Microsoft's latest upgrade regime. That's why so many people are purposely avoiding Windows XP. That's why so many Windows XP users are growing more and more frustrated with Microsoft. That's why most people haven't upgraded Windows or Office in ages. For most people, the prices are too high and the actual benefit that they get out of the upgrade just isn't worth it.
I am sorry but that is not entirely true. The majority of people I know, simply love WindowsXP, for its simplicity (one got cable internet, just plugged the modem, opened IE and could surf). I myself think this is a significant improvement over any OS MS ever did. I am sorry you could not see this, but MS has power to convince, and this OS was damn honest in convincing, as it holds truth. Stability may not be the absolute best, but that's Win2K's job, as WinXP has some Win9x architecture in it.
I honestly have never seen anything greater and easier to use than WinXP, and that's not just the eye candy saying this. I've really enjoyed how everything was easy to setup, rare crashes, no BSODs (except that nv4_disp.dll loop bug which no longer happens, I assume new chipset and graphics drivers did this).
Your claim of users of WinXP being frustrated is rather false. As I said, I have over 5 people in real life that I know, who have used and enjoyed WinXP, rare are the ones who couldn't find their place in it. Aside from moving away from DOS, this OS has little disadvantages, from my POV it has none in fact. It improves over everything Win9X had faults in.
No, Microsoft has been slowly but surely run into the ground over the last two years, if not longer.
I think they are reacting back. Just recently MS announced a huge extension of warranty from 6 months, to 5 years to their products, including support for Win98, and WinXP being warranted for 2007 or so. They clearly are noticing the public's view, and are trying to win them back.
In short, I don't see why you see MS like that, or Gates, but I am with spud and imgod2u, Gates was not just lucky but he knew the real deal back in the 1980s. Ok not a visionary with his 640K oughta be enough quote, but still.
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The worst of enemies shall be prone to later be the best of friends. -Eden