An exception to be made in this case: Will nature tolerate a vacuum?

Once before, the laws of economic physics were defied and, maybe, it will happen again.

I'll recount. About three years ago, the working members of the United Parcel Service (USP) went on strike. I, along with more than a few others, felt that the moment UPS walked off the job, the other couriers could immediately step in and fight tooth and nail to divide UPS's territory and market. To think in such a way is nothing out of the ordinary and to expect less would be extraordinary. What happened then... nothing! A big, fat 'nothing'.

Well, that's not entirely true, there was one enterprise that sought a larger market share of the courier business and they went after it. Federal Express, Emory Air, DHL and the others did absolutely nothing to cash in on UPS's ill fortune. The United States Post Office, however, splashed ads on television, increased the work force and expanded post office branch hours and, in fact, did make profitable inroads where only UPS before had ventured. A once-in-an-eon, golden opportunity was allowed to slip through UPS's competitors' fingers.

The question is today, will the same thing happen now that Microsoft is in a legal bind? Will the familiar and not-so-familiar competition to Microsoft sit back and do nothing, or will 'sharks' like AOL, Linux-related-enterprises, Novell, Oracle and IBM swoop in and wrench loose Microsoft's iron grip on world computing commerce?                                                                  – top –

I believe that whether the 'opposition forces' are going to, or not going to, make hay at Microsoft's expense depends on one simple element: do they have the guts to go forth and make battle of it?

It goes without saying that the 'battle' is to be with Microsoft; the battle, though, is actually to be fought on two distinct fronts. Battle Microsoft-Prime and its entire product line (and deep pockets) and battle the Microsoft customer who has already sunk big bucks into computers, operating systems and application software and is not in the frame of mind to switch over to something else.

Therein lies the rub for the Microsoft opposition — convincing Microsoft customers there's a viably economical reason for switching to something else. Not to mention the learning curve to be endured by the customer. Oh! The disruption of it all!

Here's an up-front admission from a Microsoft customer: it's going to take an awful lot for me to switch over to another operating system. Not because I'm a died in the wool Microsoftista, but because of other more important reasons. I've got a USB scanner hooked up to my computer and a USB Canon S10 digital camera and I'm running Windows98. I really would like to try out Linux but Linux doesn't work with USB (yet). I think Office 97/2000 are the best of breed and I choose not to settle for less. I use Paint Shop Pro for web image editing and evrsoft's 1st Page 2000 for web authoring. Paint Shop Pro is a 'MS Windows-only' application, whereas 1st Page 2000 can run on both Windows and Unix platforms. Hell, I can't afford money-wise nor time-wise to change over to something different.

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