🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1995Sep13.191421.10924@scala.scala.com>,
   dave.haynie@scala.com (Dave Haynie) wrote:

> In <42qjqj$kbc@news-2.csn.net>, dhg@goodco.com (David H. Goodlette)
> writes:
>
> > Tonio Loewald (tonio@jolt.mpx.com.au) wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
>
> Sure. Microsoft plans it that way, and uses existing upgrades and new
> systems as a lever to force more upgrades, in business at least. So
> here I am, let's say I put Windows 95 on my system. Now, strangely
> enough, Word for Windows 3.1 is acting flakey (ok, flakier than
> normal).

Hmmm, Dave, are you talking from experience here? I don't think so. For the 
months that I have been using Win95, I've not had a single problem with any 
Microsoft product - Word, Excel etc (non Windows 95 versions) all work 
fine.

I doubt very much Microsoft plan for these products to be flakey. In much 
the same way as your OS design colleagues back at Commodore did, they 
actually put effort in to ENSURE backwards compatibility, and this is often 
what causes delays in release, much like AmigaDOS 2.04.

And also, it just doesn't make sense. If Microsoft went this track, they 
would be providing exactly the same advantages to their competitors. In 
fact, their competitors would have the advantage that they would be able to 
blame Microsoft for the problem - Microsoft would not have that excuse.

> In a week or two, I send some docs out to the rest of the organization.
> Strangely enough, their Windows 3.1 programs can't seen to quite deal
> with the ones I produced in Windows 95. Now maybe 10-20 people in a small
> office have to upgrade, both OS and apps.

Are you saying file formats in new versions of software not being 
backwardly compatible is something unique to MS? Please!

In Word 6, MS took the brave, but I believe correct, step of ensuring file 
format compatibility between the different versions of Word. Ok, it was 
foolish that they were different in the first place, but that doesn't mean 
it was wrong to bring them back in line.

> You can see the kind of problems a business has getting out from under
> Microsoft's spell.

Dave, this is shear paranoia. Why is it a spell? When a company uses one 
particular product, its always difficult to go another way. Consider a poor 
company stuck with Amigas, and they want to get out from under that spell? 
They've got to get new hardware on top of everything else. In this case I'm 
not knocking the Amiga or anything else, but its just a fact of life that 
if you use one piece of software in a company and want to change to a 
competitor, its never an easy thing regardless of who the competitors are.


Tim.

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Tim Barham
tbarham@vcrpmap.telecom.com.au
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