From: lmalloy@abacus.bates.edu (Laura G. Malloy)
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! : )
Organization: Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 19:49:27 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.132340.14614@wraxall.inmos.co.uk> des@inmos.co.uk (David Shepherd) writes:
>Joseph T. Malloy (jmalloy@hamilton.edu) wrote:
>: There's one thing that troubles me about this assumption that MS put a
>: code checker into Win 3.1 for the sole purpose of befuddling DR-DOS
>: users: if it's this easy to find out what they did, if it was as easy to
>: correct as I've heard it was, if it was as easy for DR to update (they
>: had the needed mod within hours of the Win 3.1 release), why for Pete's
>: (!) sake would they do something so transparent?  If this is, indeed,
>: what they did, they look awfully bad.  Since MS is darn good at
>: marketing (which I would think includes projecting a positive image of
>: the company), I find it difficult to believe they'd shoot themselves in
>: the foot so.    
>
>: Any plausible reasons why they might have had an incompatiblitiy with
>: DR-DOS?  
>
>
>from a conspiracy theory point of view
>
>1) it was easy to fix so that it DR could claim that MS had tried to
>lock them out of machines running Win 3.1

I'm afraid I don't quite understand this point.  If the coding was so
obvious and thus so easy to fix, I'd think DR would have made a point of
this in the press. 
>
>2) they had several months during beta testing of publicity that DR-DOS
>would not run Win 3.1 which probably still is a factor when people
>consider the compatibility of DR-DOS. I think MS were trying to
>generate a sense of fear in going the DR-DOS route so that people would
>decide to play safe and stick with MS-DOS.

Well, this might be true, but I think you overestimate how much
attention is paid to beta testing by the vast majority of computer users
out there.  The people actually beta testing it made their complaints
known on Compuserve (I was part of the beta and I recall those problems
being mentioned) so I suppose one could accuse MS of not having fixed
the problem (whatever it was) for DR (assuming they could have by
modifying Windows' code).

>
>of course this tactic can always backfire. I was a happy DR-DOS 5 user
>who wanted to get a windows environment. There seemed to be 2 obvious
>choices - Win 3.1 or OS/2. Win 3.1 would involve me buying MS-DOS 5 or
>upgrading to DR-DOS 6 + fix (and DR UK were offering virtually no
>discount for the DR-DOS 6 upgrade) as well as Win 3.1 so this was one
>of the reasons for going OS/2, though the main one was that it looked
>like a much better system.

You make my point with great clarity: if the point was to *sell* you DOS
5 to replace DR-DOS 6, it failed miserably (assuming that was its
function, it should have so failed!).  MS is far too clever at marketing
to shoot itself in foot for no advantage.  I'm still befuddled about the
problem and why it existed, but I still don't buy a conspiracy theory
(at least yet!).

Joseph T. Malloy
jmalloy@hamilton.edu
 


>david shepherd: des@inmos.co.uk                     tel: 0454-616616 x 625
>                inmos ltd, 1000 aztec west, almondsbury, bristol, bs12 4sq
>                New Year Resolution for 1993: Start using capital letters.