Freeware:Tips, Tricks and Commentary:
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The Computer Industry and the MediaI remember, several years ago, the cover stories for Time and BusinessWeek, and a headline on the front page of the Wall Street Journal were all about a RAM shortage which they unanimously professed would cripple the computer industry in this country. What struck me most about all these stories was that they were all published the same week, one week after InfoWorld and PC Week carried stories stating that the 4 month old RAM shortage was over and that wholesale prices were headed back down. It took the general media 4 months to even find out about something, and by the time they got around to telling anybody about it, it was over! If you want to know what's happening in an industry, check the trade press, not the general media. Return to the top of this page. Microsoft vs. The WorldThere are a number of people who proudly carry the moniker of "Microsoft Basher." Indeed, an entire industry has sprung up, whose mission it is to show the world that there are viable alternatives to a dependance on Microsoft at any level. Microsoft may not have played fair all the time. Their Marketing Group may have engaged in unscrupulous (though possibly legal) business practices. Their Applications Group may have had the unfair (though possibly legal) advantage of a direct pipeline to the Operating Systems Group. The fact remains that Microsoft's products are always top performers in their categories, and while there are other products of perhaps equal stature, the synergy that is available from having multiple Microsoft products is worth more than the cost of the individual products. The best reason to buy Word is Excel, and the best reason to buy Excel is Word. Microsoft may not be the best company to everyone all the time, but it is usually a good company to most of us. That is rare, unfortunately. Return to the top of this page. Symantec: Less Than The Sum Of Its PartsThe Symantec Corporation has never come up with anything new. It just buys the companies whose products it likes, or at least buys the exclusive rights to market those products. After an indeterminate amount of time, some, then all of the products from the purchased company would be discontinued from the Symantec product line for seemingly no reason. A company called Fifth Generation Systems produced several good products, one a first class backup program called FastBack, another a printer sharing device called The Logical Connection. Both of these products sold well right up to the the time Symantec bought Fifth Generation Systems. The Logical Connection was dropped from the Symantec product line almost immediately, and Symantec had listed FastBack in their product catalog for years, you couldn't buy it anywhere. Two companies, Norton Computing and Central Point Software, both produced a variety of high quality products, some of which competed, and both companies were doing reasonably well when Symantec bought them. Now, most of the products from both companies have been discontinued, noneof the Central Point products are being supported, and only a few of the Norton products have been upgraded. Symantec is less than the sum of its parts. Competition in general, and the computer consumer in particular, are the poorer for it. |
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