-----Original Message----- From: Joe Brenner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2000 2:03 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: recipient.list.not.shown; @nswcphdn.navy.mil Subject: Re: [OT] MS Breakup > > Bill Ward wrote: > > >Jon, I'm sorry to say, but we do owe Microsoft a few (positive) things: > > >The machine on your desk wouldn't exist if not for the > >foundations built on MS-DOS. Sure, I know, you run Linux > >now... but the machine is based on commodity parts that > >were produced to run an OS championed by IBM for he > >business world. Intel designed those parts, but if > >Microsoft hadn't had an OS to run the system on, in all > >likelihood, the use "critical mass" required to lower the > >prices down to the current levels, and raise the > >performance to these current levels, would not have > >existed. I'm not saying Gates invented DOS (he didn't); > >I'm not saying that he invented the killer app(again, he > >didn't. Visicalc did); I'm not saying he invented the > >PC(IBM, Intel, etc.). But his company was critical in > >those early stages. Without him, we might be using TR-DOS, > >CP/M, or some other legacy OS as the "mainstream" OS, and > >saturation would be a lot less. You seem to be laboring under the odd misaprehension that MS-DOS was an improvement over those old "legacy" systems like CP/M. MS-DOS did have some unixy features hacked in, like pipes and hierarchial directories, (though unlike in Unix, they never seemed to work very well). On the other hand, CP/M had a few clues about device independance. Have you ever *used* CP/M? It was okay. It *is* possible that if IBM had gone with Digital Research and CP/M the world would be different... for example, CP/M ran on different hardware (like Zilog chips), and we might not have ended up with an Intel hegemony. You seem to think that this would be a bad thing, that competition in hardware design would lead to higher prices? This strikes me as really bizarre reasoning. (I *could* think of positive things that MS has done... for example, their windowing system was less dogmatic about forcing you to use the mouse all the time, so now I can use an imitation like icewm -- an excellent window manager that gives me the option of ignoring the mouse most of the time.) --------------- New Info ----------------------------------- Joe, I've used CP/M and MSDOS. Of the two, CP/M was more powerful and more useful. It was also larger (a lot larger!) more cryptic to use in a number of important areas, slower, and designed PURELY for business. Many of the important features that you and I, as either computer hobbyist or professionals, would like are simply not important to the average user. And that's not including the fact that in a 64K PC, you just don't have enough RAM to have a decent CP/M Kernal, so you had to upgrade the PC to 128K or (god forbid, it was costly!) 256K to get any useful space in the system. If IBM had chosen CP/M (it was the number two choice, and IIRC, they DID for offer a version for the original PC. It didn't sell for diddly, because you couldn't use it on an original PC without the extra RAM... and when the RAM was as costly as it's weight in gold.... (no lie... I once spent >$500 for 1 Meg of RAM chips to expand a PC Clone to 1.6 Megs of RAM). As for different hardware, the idea that you express about the Zilog chips is specious. As soon as the machines came out, folks started copying the 8086 (and 8088) chips as fast as possible. In all my machines over the years, the first machine I bought with a Genuine Intel CPU was my old 386-33DX. Part of the reason these machines became commodity is that the CPUs WERE so widely copied. And IBMs open architecture was also key (the closed architecture of the Mac is why the Apple has never really taken off... they charged a monopoly price (no competition) because they wouldn't allow anyone to compete against them. Stupid, really. Of course, who here is actually using an IBM machine? I'm sure some are... but most are clones.) The key point is that the groundwork was there; it was possible for the PC to take off. But the only one that really stood much of a chance was IBMs machine, and they had to have MS-DOS to do it. The alternatives took too much horsepower for the time to support the explosive growth. If Microsoft hadn't been there with MS-DOS, some other company might indeed have done it... but it would have been nearly identical with MS-DOS, and we would simply have a different name for the same company. As Juliet once said "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" (or not, depending on how you want to call it). We owe Microsoft that: they were the ones in the right place at the right time with the right product at the right performance and requirements to push computers from the realms of the Mainframes and Supercomputers to the PCs. If they hadn't done it, we wouldn't have these machines today, regardless of what the name of the company is. And with that, I've spoken my part... since I've gotten verklempt, you make speak amongst yourselves or not ;P Bill Ward -- To unsubscribe: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" as the Subject.
