From: talley@ashleigh.Kodak.COM (Brian K. Talley) Subject: Re: Great marketing (Was Re: BYTE asks, is UNIX dead?) Date: 30 Sep 1992 11:48:59 GMT
In article <BvB0JA.7tr@ibmpcug.co.uk> gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
>In article <1a7gv0INNc35@almaak.usc.edu> ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>:The leader of the Windows NT project is a guy named Dave Cutler
>:who worked for DEC before this job. He was asked how doing this
>:project was different from his earlier work. He said ``it's the
>:same OS, but I've never seen such marketing''.
>:
>:Really: it's sickening to see the way the peasants are blindly
>:believing that Windows NT is the ``OS of the future''. This when
>:it's as certain as plain daylight that Microsoft will never have
>:a market share as large as what it had in 1987, ever again, even
>:if Windows NT can ship before end-1993 and it can be free of bugs
>:and it can be worth using for anyone. Remember these guys tried writing
>:DOS, Windows, OS/2.
>
>Unfortunately I fear you may be wrong. Note the "Dec" above. Windows NT
>is being targeted at the new Dec ultra-fast 64bit Risc line, which
Are you referring to the Alpha chip? If so, the NT port probably ain't so
hot, as the Alpha chip is proverbially buggier than Maine in June.
>Microsoft will use as a stepping stone into the real computer
>market.
This isn't necessarily a Bad Thing. It may force Microsoft to a) produce good
software and b) charge competitive rates. It may not, though.
> Rumour has it that the Dec port of NT is actually ahead of
>the Dos version... what i see happening is that people will be able
>to use this to move their software away from DOS and [345]86 architectures
>which will then die out, but Microsoft will survive because they're already
>heading in this new direction :-(
[345]86 platforms will die out? No, I disagree. DOS, maybe, but not the
hardware.
If Microsoft and DEC work together to port an operating system (that's reputed
in some circles to be not much better than MS-DOS), fine. For all their work,
they're still far behind: look at Unix. It's been running on everything from
Crays to 286 boxes (and below?) for a while now.
As I said before, all Microsoft *really* has is the marketing team from hell.
>
>G
>--
--Brian
__________
Brian Talley, Systems Consultant, Eastman Kodak Research Labs, Rochester, NY
talley@acadia.kodak.com