Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 06:50:55 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Bob Bishop <rb@gid.co.uk> Cc: dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) Message-ID: <15863.861457855@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 19 Apr 1997 12:02:06 BST." <l03020907af7e55ac3bf5@[194.32.164.2]>
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[Redirected to -chat out of compassion] > At 22:40 +0100 18/4/97, dennis wrote: > >[...] > >You decide between Window 95 and NT by understanding what the product can > >do and what is expected to be available in the foreseeable future. If you > >had to reinstall the thing every 3 months there'd be a lot of people > > using something else > > So why aren't there a lot of people using something else? :-) :-) Bottom line? Ease of use. That damn GUI interface and point-and-click setup tools have lowered the cost of ownership just enough that the Unwashed Masses(tm) can drive the thing around without a Master's degree, and that's what got the ISVs to jump aboard with their thousands of office applications, closing the loop and propelling Billy to Billionare status. Anyone remember Windows prior to 3.0? Not many do, and for awhile it even looked like the whole technology was going to fall flat on its face (I remember the trade rags of the time saying "Windows? No thanks" and "Windows: Microsoft's million dollar mistake") - then they got their acts together and substantially improved the interface and the administration tools, at which point the damn thing just took off. Note that the underlying product was still an unholy P.O.S. (no expansion of that acronym should be necessary) and GPFs were the order of the day, but still it was purchased by the truckload - it was simply easier to come to grips with than any of the alternatives (IBM was still having schizophrenia problems with its OS/2 strategy and thus wasn't a serious player while the critical market window was open). Of course, over in the UN*X world, we were right in the middle of fighting the GUI wars and inventing a window system that only engineers could love, so we got passed by. ;-) Jordan
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