MS makes yet another smart move 1715

Ray Ingles

You can see it, but it's not going to happen. What company in its right mind is going to move away from MS Office, after running it for years and ambutting an enormous collection of Office format files and systems?

But that doesn't stop Linux and OSS from doing it with each new release of each program.

As far as I know, there still is not a single OSS file-server relational database program like MS Access. Millions of copies of Office Pro are sold just to get Access. The OO.o beta 2.0 version has a db client with nice connectivity options, but it uses other existing databases, including Access. I think this lack of a standalone db program is hurting OO.o more than anything else.

That's been predicted for 10 years. The rise of the Internet-browser was supposed to kill the fat client PC running Windows. It didn't. The rise of Linux was supposed to kill Windows. It hasn't and won't. The rise of NT-2000 was supposed to kill Unix - and it's doing just that (along with help from Linux).

Except for the largest universe of non-game applications of any platform, ever. You forgot about those, eh?

True, but it's not difficult to secure Windows.

They didn't target those markets until recently. Even so, Windows CE is now the dominant OS on PDAs. And not long after Windows XP 64-bit goes gold, it will be the widest used 64-bit OS in the world, by far.

PC hardware margins have been extremely tight for at least the last 5 years, but that hasn't stopped OEMs from continuing to sell Windows. By the tens of millions.

Me too. Faster and dual-core CPUs. Bigger and faster 10k rpm hard drives. Faster memory. Better video cards. Higher res LCDs. New mobo formfactors.

All running new versions of Windows.

And all at ever lower prices.

Those are neat features with tiny markets. I expect MS and Windows won't try to move into that area; there's not enough demand.