CompuServe Messages

The OS of today, and of the future, is and will be some variant of MSDOS running in a windowed environment. The machines will get bigger, the nets will get "thicker", and more sophisticated s/w will expand these systems. There are nearly 100 million MS-DOS systems installed. Can Unix claim a market even 1% that size? I don't know, but I would tend to doubt it. MSDOS will change, but not in a way that threatens the user. Hardware will become more powerful, and the machines faster, more capable of big jobs; heavy duty file servers will proliferate to handle the big data chores, but the machines that do the most work will be right on the desk, running esoteric software like Word Perfect and Lotus under MSDOS (Yes, I know there are Unix variants). Again, I see you asserting that Unix is it "for the coming years". And I step back, and I look, and do I see that you are directly associated with Unix? Yep. Right? I know of _one_ business that uses Unix to run things, that's our computer dealer in Denver. I know (mainly because I'm active here) a few people who work with Unix. They all, without exception, sing it's praises, and make claims that it's the coming thing. But I don't see anything in the market that says so. Just look at a magazine rack. Count the mags. That little piece of research will tell you right there what the system distribution is. Business is clearly going with MSDOS, nothing else, period. If accounting has a Unix based system, or if engineering does, there will likely be enough PC's in the same location to bury the Unix system physically. Claims that business is "going to Unix" are hogwash, and promulgated by Unix devotees. It's like hearing that people are "going to the Amiga". Only an Amiga user could believe that one. :^) If universities – ALL of them – go to Unix for ALL machines in the shool system, and the gov't goes to Unix, for ALL machines in the gov't system, you've got a lot of Unix machines. I don't beleive for a second that it will happen (just saw a contract for the local indian res, gov't dept that [ MORE ]