RE: WHAT IS POWER?
RE: WHAT IS POWER?
Sent: 11/14/96; 7:44:55 AM
From: dan@gui.com (Dan Shafer)
Observation #1: Microsoft Turns on a Dime =========================================
There is a myth in America that say Big Companies can't adjust quickly to market changes. Therefore, that myth continues, small companies with vision can beat their big, bad competitors by being able to move with agility as new opportunities appear. The analogy that's often used is that of a large battleship sliding silently past a beachhead occupied by a bunch of PT boats who were able to get there quickly.
But I wonder if there's ever, in the history of American business, been a case of a company as large as Microsoft making as dramatic and sudden and -- here's the scary part for competitors -- _thorough_ a change as the shift from monolithic business apps and OSes as the primary focus to the Internet and the Web. This isn't a sham shift. You and I both know people there who have really adjusted their horizons and changed the direction.
I think Johnathan Seybold commented on this at the recent SF conference but I haven't heard many other people make this observation.
if Microsoft can be huge and change directions quickly, they frigging _deserve_ to win, dammit.
Observation #2: Plug-n-Pray Doesn't Work ========================================
I recently upgraded a 486/33 box to a 586/166 and in the process added a 1.2G hard drive and a 32-bit sound card. The sound card was back ordered, so I took the rest of the system home and installed Windows 95 on it. I don't think Windows 95 is _great_ but if you've been a Windows 3.x user it's certainly a major improvement.
The sound board arrived and I plugged it in, fully expecting it not to work. To my pleasant surprise, it did. The system started, a message came up saying, "New hardware detected" and politely asking if I'd like the software installed. I said yes. Things went fine.
Then I restarted the machine. Suddenly one of my hard drives -- my main one as it turns out -- was no longer recognized by the OS at boot time. I tried several things. Then I yanked the sound board. Things returned to normal, but quiet.
Three dealer visits later, my system is in worse shape. The sound board isn't installed. My hard drives keep spinning down and bringing the system to its knees. My networking card, which was fine through most of this, is no longer acknoowledged. The dealer may be partly to blame here, but he's one of the best in the area and I've been dealing with him for years. He thinks that the sound board won't work in a system that has three hard drives but that's not documented anywhere. But why didn't Win95 plug-n-play pick up on that conflict? It's at the system level, my dealer tells me.
I'm writing a more gruesomely detailed narrative of this whole experience for my Web site and I'll post it this weekend, but I thought it was illuminating in light of the other note i made here this morning.
Fact is, Microsoft is like most other companies -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, some smart stuff, some dumb stuff -- only a lot bigger.
Take care.
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