Think about it for a moment. If everybody claims to despise their ways how come they sell some of the most popular software in the world? Either there are still a lot more people out there with some serious buying power who haven't twigged onto this Microsoft thing and so are happily maintaining Bill's sales or we're not admitting a couple of things.

Firstly we could have a strange schizophrenic nature, saying we hate Microsoft to each other while secretly adoring their each and every product. No, that's pretty unlikely. Maybe its because that even though we disapprove of some of what they do we don't have a choice.

What! That's right, we don't have a choice. I'm not talking about having to follow the de facto standard that Office and Windows are sadly becoming. I'm talking about the fact that there wasn't any other company offering what we wanted. Office is not a bad application, Word and Excel are actually pretty good, its well marketed, only slightly overpriced and nothing else we hard heard of offered that. Any really good solutions are never marketed well enough. Take Windows95, its ok, nothing amazing but the marketing hype around it ensured that there wasn't any apparent alternative to the Microsoft offering in the consumer's eyes. The consumer didn't seem to have a choice.

Cry "Apple!" all together now. Yes it is an excellent alternative BUT their marketing prowess is rivaled only by Larry Ellison's humility. Ok, they're not very good at it (does that mean Larry isn't very humble?) and why? Firstly their adverts range from poor to very occasionally good but they just don't do enough of it. It is virtually useless advertising in Apple user based magazines, it's in the PC magazines, Internet magazines, business journals and newspapers that they've got to focus. They're competitors aren't the cloners, its the PC manufacturers.

Meanwhile, even though we disapprove, we're maintaining the Microsoft expansion and while we approve, Apple is withering away. "Isn't it ironic?" as Alanis Morissette would sing.

Got a gripe? Need to rant and rave? We'll publish the best here on Groan every week. Send them to us at sysop@j-dom.demon.co.uk

© 1997 j-dom media. contact us.

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by Jason P. Kitcat [e-mail him]