Microsoft Using Monopoly Power to Hurt Palm

Try little things like altering win2000's IR to suddenly not work with palms? The monopoly they are abusing is the desktop os, nothing to do with the Pocket PC.

Looks like someone let the trained monkeys at the DOJ send out another press release. Let's see - MS has an itty bitty share of the handheld market, while Palm and it's licensees control the rest. So clearly we must conclude MS has used it's mind-bending monopoly powers to completely corner the PDA arena. Righty-o.

FWIW, I've been using various pre-release version of Windows 2000 back since Beta 2 and never once had any problem with my Palm devices syncing, except for the new USB drivers that Handspring hadn't even written until recently. I actually gave up on my Casio WinCE device and took an old PalmPilot Pro out of mothballs because I couldn't get the Casio work right under Win2K--but the Pilot worked just fine.

MS has had an uphill struggle against Palm, and it's clearly resulted in a big improvment in the WinCE/Pocket PC devices over the last few years. And their existence undoubtedly hurried up the introduction of more expandable devices like the Visor, the TRG Pro, and the color Palm IIIc. That is exactly how competition is supposed to work.

-Bryan

Fact 1) The competition in the Palm field is fierce. Handspring, IBM, TRG, Symbol, Qualcomm are all producing PalmOS machine targeted at various audience. And even if Palm own the PalmOS I have no infos about "forced" incompatibility between Palm software/hardware and other producer hardware/software. M$ instead has done this with a certain constance.

Fact 2) Please learn better the laws of your own country (I assume u're american). The DoJ argument against M$ is NOT the fact the thay are a "de facto" monopoly, but that they use they predominat position to blackmail they partner to act against M$ conpetitors (i.e. "ABUSE of dominant position"), distort they products feautures to damage competitors, destroy indipendent innovation (re)producing for free what start-up companies build with effort, and so on.

Fact 3) M$ products are the epitome of bad and infleted coding. An every-day-life example? It tooks to 95 (ninty-five!) minutes to transfer my mail from OE 4.5 to OE 5.0 for Mac!!!

Should I go on?

Ervino

You need not argue with me on this issue Ervino, Your preaching to the choir here, I for one can't stand MS. My point is that the DOJ has no clue as to what's best for the computing industry as a whole. I remember back in 98 when this trial began, Ralph Nader made a statement to the press that his solution to this case is to immediately ban Windows and require all PC makers to install Linux on their PCs! Yeah right! And if that were to actually happen, the entire PC computing world would instantly become Mac users! This proves my point. A technology world shaped by the DOJ is, in my opinion, even more terrifying than one dominated by Microsoft.

And if Microsoft does take the fall, what's left? Larry Ellison and his greedy dream of network computing? Or maybe Scott McNealy and his vision of Java thin clients in every home?

What does the future hold? Only Janet Reno and thomas "pinhead" Jackson knows....that thought alone has me pissing my pants!

Again, what I see here is a lot of bickering on what is political and what is not political. The last time I checked, the American dream was Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. making a ton of money is not a crime here. Letting and huge company pay you a truck load of money to buy you out is not a crime. Trying to crush your competitors to make more money is not a crime. Allowing our government employees to punish the will to succeed SHOULD BE A CRIME. I cannot get upset at Gates wanting to be the best and make bank at the same time. Hey, my hat's off to you. I dislike more MS products than I like them. There are only a few that I use not including the OS. The OS does what I want it to do when I want it. And it gives me no grief. No reason for me to go to a competitor. I was not, however, happy with CE which is why I 'm here. CE is a poorly designed os for 1/2-ass laptops. Inefficient desktop, or bloated palmtop? Palm IIIc does what I want it to do, for now. That's why the market sways to Palm (even though they have really, really poor accounting and customer departments). Once people decide to stop letting a bunch of 2-year-olds run our country, we will be much better off. Like I said before, if this country and government was so pissed off at monopolies, why do we still have Unions and the United States Postal (so-called) Service?

My organization is also upgrading to Win2000. I just purchased a Palm IIIxe around six weeks ago, and I cannot get it to synch reliably with my Win2000 machine. It is constantly losing the connection. I have not been able to come up with a solution yet. I'm curious as to what other problems the person you oeverheard may be aware of. In the meantime, I'm hanging for on dear life to an NT Server box I've got on my desk for R&D. It's the only thing I can use to synch my Palm.

Problem #1:

A CompUSA employee that knows something. This is setting yourself up for failure. There is no way that MS can control everything outside of their own sandbox. I currently use IntelliSynch for EVERYTHING. Mail, To Do, Dates, etc..., and I custom design templates for everything else. There is no way that CE is going to allow me the power to combat what I can do with a Palm. I own a IIIc as well. Windows 2000 is a hybrid 98/NT OS that pretty much does the same thing as 98, but looks prettier. I have yet to make one of my software packages crash it. The only problem I have had with W2000 is VPN. Aside from that, pretty solid piece of work. I don't trust it 100%, but I haven't benched it to my full satisfaction, yet.

Problem #2

A company (bigger than 2 employees) upgrading the entire infrastructure to W2000. Any company bigger than that is not going to upgrade everyone in a company to a new operating system right out of the gate (no pun intended). They're going to beat on it as much as they can to make it fail first. That's what they like to do, blow up crap. Another thing about this is the executive level never gets excited about having to replace a ton of equipment with a ton of "like" equipment. (Unless they don't have the committment of being profitable, that is.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, having the right tolls for the Palm makes it total omnipotent (sp?). Even for a IIc for being as new as it is, it works with everything I want it to, seamlessly. CE cannot offer me that. Even communicating with its' own Outlook 2000, Palm and IntelliSynch win, hands down.

Sandokan

Hi Dave,

I hate to put it this way, but please refer to my article on Palm Tech Support. Forums are your best bet in this case. I made a note for your problem as I continually look for problem solutions. I will try to get some information on this as soon as I can.

Good Luck!

Sandokan