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This site is no longer maintained.
My current weblog.
Sunday, March 31, 2002"Today was a good day."
I attended a church service this morning, first time in many years. On the way out I was stopped by the person who first hired me for my last employer. I had been trying to re-establish contact with him some months ago, as he has the potential of being a highly valuable for networking.
Sometimes good things happen when you least expect them.
Sendo's Z100 will supposedly launch in a matter of weeks. Bluetooth isn't included, and the price is estimated at $399 subsidized, $999 contract-free. I'll have to pass at that price, see my earlier thoughts. If it had Bluetooth I might have been willing to pay that early adopter penalty (my VoiceStream and DT contracts are expiring shortly).
And since when do carriers pay $600 subsidies? The Treo appears to get $200.
On another note, Samsung has inked a deal to use Nokia's "Series 60 user interface for smartphones", whatever that is. According to the article, this comes as a significant blow to Microsoft.
Eric Raymond: Linux will rule the desktop
From a ZDNet interview:
Linux will take over the desktop because as the price of desktop machines drops, the Microsoft tax represents a larger and larger piece of OEM margin. There's going to come a point at which that's not sustainable, and at which OEMs have to bail out of the Microsoft camp in order to continue making any money at all. At that point, Linux wins even if the UI sucks.
My take is that Microsoft has anticipated desktop operating systems ceasing to be profit centers in 5-10 years. They keep tens of billions of dollars in cash to ease the pain of any shortfalls that may occur during the transition.
That's not to say that Microsoft will give up the desktop: they cannot afford to. Sales of desktop applications (ie: Office) and CALs have long been ahead of Windows. Server software (ie: Windows 2000 Server, BackOffice) generates half the revenue of Windows.
If Linux ever becomes a serious desktop threat, I predict that Microsoft will make Windows available to OEMs at a price that approaches free.
Sometimes Google fails me...
I've been trying to find an article where a Microsoft exec predicted that SmartPhones would have 20% market share in 1 or 2 years. That would be 80+ million units, easily representing a couple of Billion dollars in additional revenue for Microsoft. Regular PDAs are another few Billion.
Microsoft doesn't keep expanding into other markets in order to acheive "Total World Domination", they expand because if they do not, they may die.
There's a CompactFlash Camera add-on available for the Zaurus. Still pictures only, 350k pixels, $170.
The geek in me wants wireless PDA video conferencing.
