🚀 go-pugleaf

: Speaking of Unmentioned Things :

: 1)  MS is spending *AT LEAST* $500,000,000.00 on launching W95
: 	a)  freebie CDs on August Z-D nesstand copies.
: 	b)  a massive media campaign
: 	c)  a massive PR campaign

I heard US$10^9

: WHY, *IF* W95 is *THE* Second Coming, is it necessary to spend even a 
: fraction of this ?

: After all, according to Gates, OS/2 is either Dead or a Niche Product .
: What else is there to compete against W95 ?
: Why spend all that money ?

If you look at how Microsoft marketed Windows 3 it was against DOS
(not Mac or OS/2). Similarly, Win95 will be marketed against Win3.11.
Why market so heavily? Well, Microsoft won't make much money off
Win95 directly -- suppose they sell 100,000,000 copies for $50 each
(wholesale) then they make 5 billion, but 1 billion is spent just
on marketing, and who knows, maybe half as much on actual development
and testing (we were working out how many programmer years you get
for the money they're spending on marketing -- interesting calculation),
and a fair bit on after sales support, etc. The big money will be in
selling Office 95 and replacements for all the other things that won't
work quite right until you upgrade.

--
Tonio Loewald | <<censored>> Consulting | PO Box 76/Garran 2605/AUSTRALIA
"We just bowed our heads and put the heels of our hands in our eye 
sockets. The light came through our hands as though we were looking
at the sun with our eyelids closed. And you could feel the heat almost
immediately, from seven or eight miles away." (Andrew Marshall, WIRED)