Re: NT5 [you may know it as Windows 2000]

[Nigel Orr <nigel@xxxxxxx>]

At 16:09 16/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
>That's a true statement John but strange when you look at it.  Why is
it the
>"the evil empire" continues to take market share when it's
products are
>supposedly so bad?

Because most people happily bimble on using their products, because they
are tied to the software that has been developed around them (homeseer etc
etc as you have pointed out earlier this afternoon).  There is no
"supposedly" there- the quality of the software is poor, by any
standard,
and the quality is more quantifiable compared to other systems.

Secondly, because product quality is almost completely unrelated to market
share.  The myth of "build a better mousetrap and the world will flock
to
your door" has been debunked very often.  It's the bane of an
engineer's
life- it seems that no-one is all that interested in quality, just shifting
units and making money, because that's what makes a company look 'good' and
if it doesn't look 'good' the share price falls.

As a result, someone making quality stuff in a competitive market might not
last a year, but the folk churning out cheap tat will probably have a long
and prosperous future.  (Obviously there are exceptions- I'm hoping Comfort
and KAT5 are 2 of them :-)  )

Personally, I prefer quality to features and price, and shop accordingly
wherever possible, but that seems to be an unusual approach.  It paid off
with Comfort, it paid off with linux, and I hope it continues to be a
feasible approach- it certainly makes life more pleasant in the long run,
even if it means I can't afford _all_ the gadgets that I might like to
have.

>We have a Novell Server in work too but we are probably going to have
to
>change to NT when the next version of our Till software moves away from
DOS
>to a Windows system.

And that's why MS does so well.  So few people are prepared to put any
effort into getting something better.  And that's fine, if they're happy
with their lot, I don't care what OS they use for their accounts, as long
as it doesn't foul up my transactions!

Nigel


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