(...cont'd)

Because there was nothing much to distinguish between the various OEM PC's, competition was vicious and prices plummeted. As a result the IBM designs wiped every other design out, including IBM's in the end. I don't recall what IBM called the design that followed the PC/AT, but it failed in the sense that OEM's didn't bother copying it. So prices for its components didn't drop, and the design just faded away. IBM got out of the PC business a few years later. The PC/AT design by that time had developed a life of its own. By now every OEM understood the importance of standardisation. IBM's lead wasn't needed any more.

If you look at who won out of this, it wasn't the OEM's. Compaq, Gateway, Osborne - they are all history, victims of the very commoditisation they used to wipe IBM out. And it obviously wasn't the creator of the PC, IBM. It was the component suppliers. Almost all of them did very well. Intel and Microsoft in particular did extraordinarily well, but not because they had extraordinary products. Rather it was because they had a monopoly on the components they produced - the CPU and the operating system. We have a name for that duopoly today - WinTel.

So have you figured out what set this off yet Yabby? Probably not. Obviously the magic source was the IBM's design being open and copyable, while remaining an iron fast standard. Obviously computers aren't like bolts in that way - they seem to tend toward standardisation. But why was it open? Surely IBM knew what would happen - after all everybody else copied IBM's other designs in the same way.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

Well IBM did know, but they had no choice. They had a huge anti-trust suit hanging over their heads, brought by the US government. It was hanging over their heads precisely because previously they had used propriety hardware, and a closed operating system that made their systems near impossible to copy. And as I said, computers aren't like bolts. They do tend toward a single standard, and by hiding the details of the current designs for a while IBM ensured they owned the standard, thus creating a nice little monopoly for themselves.

Naturally after a couple of decades of this everybody got pissed off, pollies became involved, public prosecutors were asked to fix the problem and IBM's next hardware design effectively had to be open source. The computing systems you see today is what developed from that open source design.

The hardware with a few exceptions effectively remains open source today. Anyone with the know how can design a new PC. What is left of the natural monopoly the seems to develop around computers is now owned by Microsoft. It it maintained in the same way - by setting the standards, but hiding them for a while so everybody is behind you. By the time they catch up, the standard has changed. If another standard threatens to take hold, you deliberately use it but extent in a competing product which you sell for peanuts. Ship it with the Windows for free if necessary. Eventually your extended standard which only you know takes hold. Rinse, lather and repeat. This strategy even has a name now - Embrace and Extend.

(cont'd...)

(...cont'd)

Having seen what happened to IBM, Microsoft spends a great deal of time and energy telling everyone how lucky we are to have a monopoly running the show, how important it is to have a single standard, and how the current revolution in computers could not have happened without them. That would be the kool aid Pericles keeps referring to. It is all rubbish of course. What is important is standards, and as the current hardware ecosystem shows you don't need a monopoly to enforce them. Openness works just as well.

Anyway, this has turned into a long rant. Sorry to bore you. But just to repeat: Bill Gates did not enable the PC revolution. He rode on the back of it. I am tempted to say "like a parasite", but that would be a little unkind.

That was actually an interesting story Rstuart, so I'll tell it to
you from my perspective :)

I used to have an IBM golfball for officework, I looked at computers
but there was no way I was going to use MS-Dos. Push this code, that
code, bugger em. I had a business friend who had an Apple, quite
amazing it was, but everything had to be Apple from A-Z, or they
would not deal with you and when they did, for an extremely high
price. Some friends had Ataris and similar, but they mainly played
games on them, something that I was not into.

When Gates released Windows 3 in 1994, that changed everything!
On top of that came Office 94, at a major disount price. Finally
a computer that I could use, with software that I could use, at
a reasonable price. So I bought an Osborne for my business.

By 95 Telstra/MSN was established and we country bumkins
could actually go on the internet, for 5 bucks an hour. Later on they
changed it to 9$ an hour and I rang my MP outraged. He did not
know what the internet was at that time :) I told him that this
had a future in a country like Australia, but those lines were
not burning coal like power generators, they should get reasonable.
It went from there.

If you check the MS figures, you will see that they took off with
Windows 3. It was not an Apple, but similar enough to an Apple and
Gates sold his sofware to anyone, you did not need to buy an MS
computer, printer etc, as was the case with Apple.

Everyone had the VHS/Beta story fresh in their minds. Gates made
the most of it. Good luck to him.

No, you didn't mention it Yabby.

>>Meantime, as I think I mentioned, when my computer man popped in the first time, he pushed a couple of buttons or whatever and hey presto, my old Outlook from Office 2000 worked in XP mode or something similar<<

You originally informed us that:

>>So I dug out my old copy of Outlook 2000, but that won't work either<<

Now your "computer man... pushed a couple of buttons or whatever and hey presto, my old Outlook from Office 2000 worked"

Given that "pushing a couple of buttons" is Yabby-shorthand for "setting up a Windows XP Virtual Machine inside Windows 7", I think you did very well.

It's also quite interesting, the way your story keeps morphing.

Originally, the person who "popped in the first time" was female.

>>Nothing extra, for when she delivered the computer, the bill was already written out. I asked her to give me a hand, moving the stuff that I wanted to move and she was happy to do that.<<

Now it seems she was a he, and there were multiple visits.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. That's why you outsource. As long as your supplier is close by, competent and reliable. Which they clearly are.

But it does beg the question, why you posted in the first place.

You weren't without email. And you weren't even without your beloved Outlook.

Odd.

And for the sake of historical clarity, Microsoft's marketing masterstroke was to convince PC suppliers to pay a license fee for each machine shipped, regardless of the operating system that was actually delivered.

Manufacturers had a choice. Pay $x per unit shipped, or $4x per license.

Some more history:

>>So I bought an Osborne for my business<<

Interestingly, it was the boss of Osborne, John Linton, who took a stand in 1985 against the idea of paying Microsoft for the privilege of receiving nothing. He bundled OS/2 Warp with his machines in an attempt to break through with a superior package. Unfortunately, the Microsoft tax cut his margin to ribbons, and the company folded the following year.

Pericles, you clearly weren't following the story, as it unfolded
over time! Sometimes, with only 350 words, shortcuts are taken,
so perhaps I did not express things clearly enough for you to get
the drift. So I'll explain.

The guru is an engineer who is sick of city life, so moved to the
bush. His offsider is a farmers wife. She delivered the computer
and helped with the transfers. When I still had a couple of
issues, I rang him and he came out, some days later. I mentioned
the email problem and he gave me the options. That was a number of
days after I bought the computer and started then thread.

Apparently one can run any programme in Windows 7, in Xp mode or
Vista mode or whatever.

Yup, I outsource some things, focus on others. When I bought my
LED tv recently, I looked at the manual, looked at all the wires
leading to a couple of satelite dishes etc, picked up the phone
and rang the local tv guru. 60$ and half an hour after walking in
the door, he had everything up and running, so I tipped him 10 bucks :)

OTOH, last night I reread the 70 page manual for a 9000$ feed
mixer I'm about to crank up, chains, belts, augers everywhere.
Then the second lot of 20K worth of other equipment is arriving
later this morning, for my experiments.

I also focus on the stock market. About a year ago, I had a very
public OLO discussion with Keith, who thought I was a fool for
buying BHP shares at 25$, WBC at down to 14.70. I pinned my ears
back and kept buying. I picked up tens of thousands of $ from all
that, as I hope to do with the feeding nutrition experiments.

To me that makes perfect sense. Outsource the trivial and irritating
stuff that others know far better, focus on the big ticket things
that involve serious money. After all, we can't know everything,
so it makes perfect sense to me and gives me more playtime, which
matters.