OT = How Does Shrapnel Stay In Business

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Originally posted by geoschmo:

What if ANYTHING did MS do first ???

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Uh... turn a profit?
Geo

LOL LOL I have to concede you got me good on that one. However let me point out that there ARE such things as robber barons and MS fits the "Bill" LOL LOL.

The way it happens is that rather than offering better PRODUCTS for sale, a RB offers better incentives to BUY. A trivial example is having a sales office in every city, with sales reps that take purchasers from potential corporate customers out to lunch, give gifts in the disguise of free samples and generally are such good buddies that the judgement to buy is made not on the merits of the product, but on the prospect of personally recieving more free goodies.

A less obvious example is having a well run customer help center with well trained staff so that rather than developing a product which does not require help at all from the provider, the customer is lured into thinking that the product is well concieved and supported but just too complex for his/her own personal understanding. Tell me I am wrong on that one ? The software products do NOT have to be beyond the understanding of the average person, let alone that of the average developer. But they have been DESIGNED THAT WAY BY INTENT as a policy to lock customers in to the product family. This is because after going through the horrors of getting the product to function, the customer BELIEVES that alternative products would be just as bad or worse...

A third RB tactic is to design in rapid obsolesence of the products. Basically you do this by having kitchen sink products that do many things at a minimum level of functionality, but nothing well. You call this an "integrated comprehensive solution for the Millenium". Then you offer partial upgrades to individual functions which taken together cost 4 times the price of the package. Every couple of years you offer a "major upgrade" of the entire package for 2x the cost of the previous package, plus a new customer introductory package at the same cost as the previous one but with slightly better functionality. At no time do you EVER offer the customer a product as good as you COULD make, because then it would be several years before the customer could be persuaded to buy again. The classic example of this is International Harvester in the old days making 20 year tractors, while automakers put out 4-8 year automobiles.....

While these tactics have become ingrained into the mindset of corporate America, they all violate basic principles of equity. Such as "a fair exchange of value", "the best product at the best price", "fair competition and a fair deal", "may the best man win", and going back a couple thousand years - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

So yes, there ARE robber barons, and the only real problem is finding some company which is NOT run by them. This is because those companies only Last a few years in the piranha "invested" waters of corporate America. I happen to be optimistic enough to think that in the long run society will have a bellyful of this behavior and stop tolerating it. In the meantime the best that can be done is to blow off a little steam every once and a while to remind people that everything is NOT hunky dory.

Atrocities - that software licencing is why I will not write one single line of code for windows....

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 03 August 2001).]