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Communications on Communication

I could never find anybody who would publish the following lament (composed in Jan., 2000), even though it seems to me to have considerable social significance.

The Microsoft Mistake

OK, let's face it. The Department of Justice has gone after Microsoft for all the wrong reasons. They seem to think that anti-trust measures should be taken against Microsoft because it is a monopoly restraining trade. I contend this is nonsense; Microsoft's major fault is that it has chosen to lead a vast conspiracy to encourage trade, whether the customer wants to trade or not.

What Microsoft has done is create a world where different programs will not work together, my computer won't work with a file from your computer, and your computer can't even run programs I use all the time, unless all the computers, peripherals and software are of the latest vintage. In this nightmare world, people who have spent countless hours learning the intricacies of PC programs on the computer of their choice suddenly find their investment in both computer and "computer skills" has gone down the tubes. Microsoft and its fellow travelers have changed all the rules of the game! Then, we suckers have to invest more dollars and even more frustrating hours just to get back to where we were, but with higher-speed computers that run appreciably slower on the new bloatware which has gone out of is way to omit useful features.

Example: I got a big fat ad in the mail from Intuit, hoping to sell me their tax package for my 1999 taxes. I was about to buy, because I have been using their TurboTax for several years and my previous years' tax files, with roll-over information, can zoom in to simplify this year's work. Further, their software, after one disables all the multi-media garbage, is fairly easy to use.

And then I read the fine print. To run TurboTax, I have to have Windows95 or 98, and meet a whole stack of other requirements, or TurboTax99 will not work.

Now, my computer is 5 years old. I love it. It is based on a 486/66 processor which includes a built-in math co-processor, and very specifically does NOT include a little fan to keep it from melting down in the middle of a job. I am a great believer in Arthur Clarke's first rule of machine design: "a machine shall have no moving parts." I do NOT want a microchip that has to be cooled by a built in fan. It is bad enough to have to have a fan to cool the box as a whole; in Europe, PBXs are required to operate WITHOUT fans, just to prolong their life and increase their reliability.

Further, my 80486 processor uses DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11. By the time Microsoft got to release 6.2, they had DOS pretty near right, and the GOOD THING about Windows 3.11 is that you DON'T HAVE TO USE IT. I have been using it where necessary, as with TurboTax and AOL, but days can go by without me ever having to clutter my RAM with the confusing and user-frustrating Gooy (graphic user interface) which Microsoft (and Apple) took from Xerox PARK after wise Xerox executives turned the product down for their own company.

Because I still do most of my writing in WordStar7 and my calculations in SuperCalc5 and Basic, a holdover from my 1982 Osborne, and I have files for all three extending back to 1978 (some translated over from CP/M), I can do most of my work with DOS sans Windows. There is NO advantage that Microsoft Word or Excel can offer me that will make it worth my while to abandon 20 years of working files. On the other hand, I can occasionally translate WordStar documents into Word fairly easily if necessary to accommodate others stuck in the Microsoft trap. Although it may be possible to run DOS programs under Windows95 and 98, CompUSA has no Windows95 to sell me, and 98 won't run on a 486.

When Windows95 came out, I chose not to buy because of another great advantage of not looking through Windows: I don't have to use TrueType fonts. Instead, I can use the character generators built into my existing software and see clear, easy-to-read text on my computer screen. It may not be perfect WYSIWYG, but as I age, legibility becomes more important than serif certainty. I understand Bill Gates has instituted a huge project to make TrueType fonts readable, but by not running Windows at all, I already have that advantage.

I wrote a letter to TurboTax asking why they had decided to abandon me as a customer. A week or so later, I got a phone call from a nice guy at Intuit who told me it was nothing personal, but they had to go where the demand was. Apparently, I am virtually alone in still having Windows 3.11, and "everybody wants 32 bit graphics." Why an accounting program needs 32 bit graphics is hard to understand, particularly when grownups, in frustration, turn off the sound and pictures so they can get some work done.

Please note that I have no quarrel with multimedia itself; I am all for innovation and new things, as long as they don't deprive me of features and functions I already have. Actually, I think it is a shame that mean old Intel didn't let Microsoft know that the 80386 and 486 were 32 bit processors so that the principal operating system for Intel chips would not have had to leave each register half-empty for six or seven years, making multi-media and other innovations more difficult. But audio and graphics are of no use to me in writing books and articles, making financial and scientific calculations, and processing my income tax. I can limp along with 16 working bits if, indeed, they can be made to work in the future the way they have worked in the past.

Clearly, every vendor hates "legacy systems" and will do anything to make the customer "upgrade to the latest technology" to get "the maximum productivity"; thus most makers of hardware and software go joyfully along with Microsoft. They have to do something to generate enough revenue to meet their payrolls and make their stock options look real. When I called Hewlett Packard to see if my top-of-the-line printer would work with an HP scanner I was thinking of buying, nobody at HP had every heard of a LaserJet 4.

So this is what it comes to: to run a $9.95 program (after mail-in rebate), I am supposed to buy a new computer for upwards of $1000, preferably with Windows98 pre-loaded, and a new laser printer and other peripherals to match. This will also require new word processing and spreadsheet software, to say nothing of basic, and either laboriously translating all my existing files to match (where that is possible at all), or abandoning them. If this isn't collusion among the operating system, hardware and applications community to deny the customer the right to use his own possessions, I don't know what is. I am not nearly as concerned with "price fixing" as I am with being forced to pay "competitive" prices for stuff I don't want or need. Someday somebody is going to have to stop this rotten conspiracy if there is to be any meaning at all to "private ownership of property." We can't go on forever buying stuff that doesn't stay bought.

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