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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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