radical revamping of techpubs

[Ron Miller]

Your inference suggests that hardware would have stayed expensive  
without Microsoft. I don't buy that. In my view, hardware would have  
dropped regardless because the price of the components dropped over  
time, completely independent from the PC's relationship to Microsoft.  
In fact, I would maintain that competition in the OS/Office  
productivity space in the 90s would have eventually resulted in  
making these items commodities, which would have reduced the overall  
cost of ownership dramatically. Proof of this is the number of free  
office productivity and operating systems that have developed in  
today's more open environment. These products would have developed  
sooner had Microsoft not been allowed to artificially control pricing  
and the market.

I would agree that there it would have created a more difficult  
environment for us as tech writer to produce documentation, but  I  
have the feeling it would have worked itself out, just as it has with  
browser-based help that works regardless of the operating system in  
place.  As for Apple, people continue to buy the product in spite of  
its higher price because it isn't a one for one comparison. There is  
a quality factor, ease of use and stability that I've yet to see  
matched in a PC. And I speak as someone who is relatively recent Mac  
owner, but has used PCs since 1985

Ron

Ron Miller
Freelance Technology Writing Since 1988
Contributing Editor, EContent Magazine

email: ronsmiller at ronsmiller.com
blog: http://byronmiller.typepad.com
web: http://www.ronsmiller.com

Winner of the 2006 and 2007 Apex Award for Publication Excellence/ 
Feature Writing



On Oct 19, 2007, at 2:50 PM, Chris Borokowski wrote:

> I'm somewhat thankful they did, as the result was a standardization of
> hardware that allows $500 to buy a better quality machine than a $1500
> Macintosh or $2500 custom UNIX. Sometimes aggression in business can
> produce very fortunate results for us little people.
>
> --- Ron Miller <ronsmiller at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> In my view, the only reason Windows has dominated personal computing
>> is because Microsoft bullied hardware company into selling its
>> products. It told computer manufacturers throughout the 90s when it
>> built its domination to either use only Windows or to have to pay
>> more for each copy if they didn't.
>
> http://technical-writing.dionysius.com/
> technical writing | consulting | development
>
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