The computer industry’s general protection fault

By Michael A. Garcia

English 125 a

Prof. Hawkins

The computer industry is a cold and ravenous beast, which hunts and kills its prey with the same heartless precision of nature’s most terrifying predators. It lives beneath a Shroud of broken products and the haziness of misleading performance promises. Software companies continually release unfinished products to unknowing consumers, and slip away into the night. Hardware companies ship incomplete products to stores, while other beasts of the computer industry sell substandard products all around the world.

Hardware companies are releasing products to the public with software drivers that are poorly written, and unstable on most operating systems. The nature of the business, internal conflicts, and the lust for money cause these problems. The end result is the consumer getting stuck with sullied software, hardware, or some other product.

The designers, programmers, and developers themselves are usually not at fault. In fact, the competition amongst the industry and its rapid pace are partly to blame. Sometimes, consumer demands force poor business decisions to be made. In some cases, the development teams are rushed to meet production schedules, and push to ship products that are substandard or incomplete. Some businesses hire inexperienced technicians to a$$emble their systems. And very few businesses have enough capital to offer satisfactory customer support.

Microsoft’s software issues

High-profile monoliths, such as Microsoft, create their own problems in the industry. Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating systems is a very delicate and unstable product. It was shipped incomplete to the stores. There are well over fifty patches available on the Internet for Windows 95. Even more patches are being released on the Internet to this day. The latest versions of Windows 95 are only available to consumers on brand-new PCs. With Windows 98 coming soon the same problem will probably be repeated.

Internet Explorer 4.0 is yet another Microsoft product plagued with similar ailments. Internet Explorer 4.0 was unstable and buggy from the day it was shipped (Martin, 1998, PP 45-46.). Internet Explorer 4.0 was voted the buggiest product of the year (Baskin, 1998, P. 23). Some of the most obvious bugs included countless active desktop errors, mouse lock-ups, fatal errors, general protection faults, and printing problems (Spanbauer, 1998, P. 49). This Web browser was designed to integrate itself with the Windows 95 operating system. It would change the desktop as well as other applications. But installation would eat up as much as 50 MB of hard disk space (Martin, 1998, pp. 45-46).

An article by Martin showed that a once stable system would begin crashing several times a day after installation of Internet Explorer 4.0. Many complaints by consumers prompted Microsoft to release version 4.01 of Internet Explorer. The new version was supposed to fix of many of these problems. Unfortunately, many users still had problems after installing the new version. The same article also mentioned business owner Kent MacNown, who had installed Internet Explorer 4.0 on his office computer. Kent’s once stable system soon began crashing several times a day. Microsoft Technical support could not solve the problem. They suggested that Kent needed to install Internet Explorer 4.0 on the same drive partition as Windows 95’s Wsock32.dll. Kent opted for the alternate solution of using Netscape Navigator 4.0 (Martin, 1998, pp. 45-46), and now his system is running fine.

Products such as the upcoming interactive TV will use Microsoft's Windows CE. Imagine what would happen when your TV suffers a PC-style crash during the Super Bowl or the Olympics (Baskin, 1998, P. 23). Windows CE will also be used to run the futuristic AutoPC (Baskin, 1998, P.23). This is intended to allow drivers to check e-mail or get directions. This is a genuinely bad idea waiting to happen. As if drunk drivers, women drivers putting on makeup, or a gun wielding road rage fanatic aren’t a driver’s worst hazard already.

Non-Microsoft software issues

There are quite a few other companies that have products that suffer the same symptoms. Netscape navigator 4.0 was voted the second most bug-laden product of the year. Major office suites that have been released this year are crawling with bugs. Norton Utilities 3.0 was found to trash zip disks with its ZIP disk rescue utility (Baskin, 1998, P. 23). Norton Utilities 3.0 also caused driver conflicts and registry corruption. There are two updates for Norton Utilities that have been released on the Internet already (Spanbauer, 1998, P. 49). Other software such as Internet phone software are covered in bruises. The sound quality is appalling, the software is buggy, and it’s not even compatible with regular telephones (Baskin, 1998, P. 23).

Bad Java

Sun Microsystems is trying to convince the world that Java is the greatest thing since sliced bread. This programming language is doomed to fail however. Sun Microsystems’s claim that Java is an Internet solution is a delusion of grandeur. The Internet and the Java programming language should not be confused. Although Sun gains no significant revenue from Java, it makes Sun appear to be more profitable. The performance of Java is far too slow for interactivity, multimedia, and gaming. Especially when it’s crawling through the Internet. The Java programming language is simply not a solution to any of today’s computer industry problems. Java doesn’t offer any real advantages to programmers, because it’s available to everyone (St. John, 1997, P. 25).

Companies such as Microsoft are in a far better position to push a new language than Sun will ever be. This is probably why Microsoft moved so quickly to license the Java programming language from Sun. The cross-platform capability of Java means absolutely nothing in today’s computer industry, since there aren't any other platforms besides Windows 95 and NT. Java is not strong enough to keep failing companies like Apple afloat, or make Unix vendors ship better systems. Microsoft will probably end up taking the useful slices of the Java pie, and placing it alongside good old Windows code. Within a few years Java will fade away, and no one will even remember that it existed (St. John, 1997, P. 25).

Placebo-ware revealed

Disturbingly, some software companies have actually tried pa$$ing off placebo-ware to consumers. The most widely known example is the memory doubling packages of yesteryear. Not so long ago, Connectix put out the RAMDoubler utility. There were many heated debates about this particular product. Some claimed that it worked wonders on their computers. The product seemed valid enough. It included real executable code and the whole nine yards. However, a private firm dissected the first version of this utility only to find that it did absolutely nothing. MagnaRAM2 from Quarterdeck was not as good as was promised. And SoftRAM95 from Syncronys Software didn't even work with Windows 95 (Popko, 1998, personal communication).

The Big Rush

Some software companies have been known to release their products with featured components missing or totally broken. Only one percent of the 3,111 game titles released last year were worth the boxes they shipped in (McDonald, 1998, p.23). Sturgeon's law shows that if only thirty games were released, only three games would be any good. Due to the nature of this creative industry, and customer taste or lack thereof, some sucker is going to buy the crappy titles.

Marketing issues

Similarly, companies within the industry realize that sex sells. Marketing research shows that box design has a great influence on consumer sales (McDonald, 1998, P. 27). So, they throw on images that attract the eye, and offer impressive details about what the consumer should expect when they buy the product. This catches the consumer's eye just like great big neon signs that say, "Coldest Beer", "98% Fat Free", or "Totally Nude." Of course, it’s always possible that the consumer doesn’t realize that these companies are a little biased when labeling their own products.

Game development today is too slow for the speed of technological advances. Programmers are barely learning to use the latest tools to their advantage when new ones arise. The future tools must be factored into the equation of development. Poor planning and limited forecasting keep programmers running an uphill race. The planning phase of development must allow for future generations of new tools (McDonald, 1998, P. 23).

An example of poor planning can be seen when looking at Epic Megagames and its latest title: Unreal. This product has been in development for four years. It was finally released on Memorial Day weekend, 1998. The software hype for this game began in 1997 (Epic Megagames, 1997, pp. 52-53). This is considered cruel and unusual punishment for people anticipating the release of this title. By the way, the first patch was available on the Internet the very day it hit retail shelves.

This brings into another point about computer industry corruption. Why is it that television commercials and advertisements continually fool us? There was a game last year called the Age of Empires. It was touted as being a cross between a game called Civilization and a game called Warcraft. The words on the box actually spoke of things that were either missing from the game, or things that are only a minute part of the product (McDonald, 1998, P. 27).

Another title called Sabre Ace claimed to have superior Aerodynamics and accurate plane physics. To call that claim a lie is the greatest understatement of the year. Why is it that companies are allowed to make such fraudulent claims? If the box claims one thing, and the product does not live up to the promise, shouldn't this be considered fraud? Imagine buying a car that claimed to have cruise control, only to find out that it had no cruise control at all (McDonald, 1998, p. 27).

Hardware issues

Not all the computer industry problems are software related. In fact many hardware problems also plague the industry. For example, the Snappy Frame Grabber's online manual showed an animation feature in the product. Yet, the feature was not available in the final version due to bugs. Snappy’s technical support promised that a patch would be available on the Internet soon (Popko, 1998, personal communication).

DVD Stuff

One of the hottest technologies padding around today is DVD (Boot, 1997, pp. 16-17). The Digital VideoDisc is making its way into the hands of consumers. Yet, there is no standard for this particular hardware. Even today major players are fighting over which specification to use. Hitachi, Sony, and Toshiba originally formed a 2.6 GB specification. Then Companies such as Hewlett Packard, Phillips, and Sony dumped this specification for a new 3 GB specification. And yet another company, NEC, who was not a member of the DVD forum, chose to go with a 5.2 GB specification. The DVD forum then chose to move up to the 4.7 GB specification, which turned out to be incompatible with the original 2.6 GB software. Hitachi's Pete Doelling said, "they are not compatible." Hewlett-Packard's Dave Dean said, "there's nothing in our specification that says you have to include support for the original 2.6 GB standard" (Boot, 1997, pp. 16-17). With an attitude like this, why even bother building the product? The consumer is being screwed by the corporate big shots.

DVD hardware may promise incredible features, but developers are not shipping software due to specification problems (Tully, 1997, pp. 51-54). The specification battle is preventing the benefits of DVD from reaching the consumer. Programmers are forced to guess at how to make it work. Video card companies are not getting it right, so the software they write doesn't work with the DVD hardware. The DVD software must talk to the DVD drive and the decoder card for the MPEG2 video to work. This forces developers to test the drive on different platforms, and with different decoder cards. In a conference in July of 1997, 90% of these combinations didn't work.

In October of 1997, Microsoft, Intel, and SPA sponsored a DVD conference (Boot, 1998, P. 14). At this conference Intel suggested a new command set that would allow for immediate production of DVD software. Unfortunately, this new command set did not take full advantage of DVD. Another problem is that developers are still using the old MCI legacy command set for video. Microsoft's Kirk Hunter said this was the main problem of incompatibility. Kirk Hunter was also quoted as saying, "MCI is legacy [and] we don't want to extend any more than necessary." Looks like there are more problems on the horizon.

The fact that there is no application layer in the DVDROM specification is also causing problems (Boot, 1998, P. 14). Microsoft's DirectShow application is intended to set the standard (Tully, 1997, pp. 51-54). In the meantime, the lack of a standard stifles development. And since no development base exists, others don't want to start developing software.

The end result is that consumers are now buying hardware with nothing to run on it. Companies such as Electronic Arts are not planning to ship retail titles anytime soon. Independent contractor Jonathan Schwartz said, "the big story is that there is a real lack of standards as to how DVD titles should be written to work on DVD hardware (Tully, 1997, pp. 51-54)." What good is this technology if the consumer cannot use it? There is no reason for consumers to begin buying DVD hardware at this point. Even things like home recording of video and audio onto DVD are still three to four years away (Tully, 1997, pp. 51-54). Since audio CDs are only backward compatible on DVD hardware, DVD hardware cannot even play CD-R discs at this point. Finally, the Dolby digital audio DVD uses discourages full implementation, and the sound suffers when mixed down to stereo or surround sound.

Modems Operandi

Another similar problem plagued the 56 Kbps modems. These modems began shipping to stores with no standard, and falsely advertised the 56 Kbps speeds. The fact that modem manufacturers were promising 56 Kbps was a farce. Federal communications laws prohibit speeds exceeding 53.3 Kbps on public telephone lines. Another unspoken truth is that 56 Kbps modems only allow 53.3 Kbps asynchronously. While a consumer can download at 53.3 Kbps, the upstream only reaches a maximum of 33.6 Kbps. This results in truly misleading performance from these modems.

The 56 Kbps modem wars were fought on two levels. The X2 technology from Hayes was pitted against the 56 KFlex technology from Rockwell technologies. The X2 technology left the gate quicker, but lost the race. Many X2 consumers complained of extremely slow transfer rates. The X2 specification was slow gathering support in most places, and it was full of bugs.

The 56 KFlex technology became the greater power easily. The 56 KFlex technology was implemented alongside the X2 technology, meaning that Rockwell did not have to wait as long for implementation. The Rockwell modems greatly outperformed the X2 modems. So, Rockwell received fewer consumer complaints. Finally, the power of the Rockwell name gathered a wider consumer base.

Intel Where?

The processor competition between Intel and other chipmakers is also causing consumer growing pains (Halfhill, 1998, pp. 31-32). There are a plethora of processor incompatibilities between existing chips as well as future processors. For example, Intel and Hewlett-Packard have announced the new IA-64 processor. The new 64-bit standard will begin with the Merced chip, which pushes parallel processing execution to new heights. Meanwhile, AMD announces their new K7 microprocessor.

This RISC based processor will be similar to Intel's single edge connector Pentium II. However, the K7 microprocessor will be electronically incompatible with Intel's slot-1 motherboard (Halfhill, 1998, pp. 31-32). Consumers will need to purchase new motherboards for the K7. AMD also plans to add new instruction sets to its K6 processors. These instructions will be similar to Intel's plans for an MMX2, which will be implemented in the Katmai processor. Finally, AMD will get to beat Intel to the punch. Similarly, Cyrix intends to add new instructions to its 6x86mx series processors, while newcomer Centaur will create their own set of instructions to add to their WinChip. That crashing sound you hear is the future of Processor Stability.

This may sound confusing at first, but only because it is. Cyrix's new instructions will not be compatible with AMD's new instructions. Wait, it gets worse. Neither AMD nor Cyrix's instructions will work with Intel's MMX2. Finally, Centaur's instructions will be incompatible with everyone else's instruction set. From this vantage, it is obvious that software developers will be hit the hardest, since they will need to write code to support each different chip. Or they risk losing portions of their consumer base (Halfhill, 1998, pp. 31-32) .

Intel has been shipping their Pentium processor with a long list of flaws from the beginning. Many of these flaws still exist in today's processors. When the Pentium processor first hit the market, there was a large-scale recall. This was due to a flaw in the processor's mathematical computations. Even their Pentium Pro was not free of these flaws. This chip, which was superior to the original Pentium chips, had an underlying problem with video frame rates. A third party software developer creating the FastVid utility solved this. The flaw still exists in Intel's newer Pentium II, which makes me wonder why Intel still hasn't addressed this problem.

Cheaper is not better

Quite often computer vendors ship PCs, accessories, and peripherals that may not live up to consumer expectations. In some cases it is consumer demand that is at fault. This is especially evident in the new low-end systems that appear on the market today. These low-end systems made up less than 4% of the market last year. It is predicted that the low-end systems will to make up 40% of this year’s market. For example, Compaq's $799 PC made up a whopping 10% of their total PC sales last year. Large companies like Toshiba and NEC have totally eliminated their high-end machines (Boot, 1998, pp. 16-17).

Too bad for Intel; they were late in recognizing the low-end market. Intel's new Pentium II were less than 20% of Intel's sales last fall (Boot, 1998, pp. 16-17). The older Pentium P55C made up 60% of their sales. Consumer demand is driving the Low-end systems. Unfortunately, the low-end systems stifle innovation by eliminating cutting-edge technology.

Sometimes, the company's desire to make a well-priced product fails the consumer. The CH Racing System and Gamestick claimed to be a high-performance part (Del Rizzo, 1998, pp. 71-72). But, the wheel is cheap and so is the software bundle. The CH Racing System is devoid of tension, has a limp return to center, and poor center detent. The clamping system is substandard and only fits desks that are up to 1 1/2 inches thick. There is no gearshift, the pedals are to close together, and it doesn't have a weighted base. To top it all off, the software installation was a disaster. The Gamestick is far too pricey, it lacks features, and the base is too light. During high action it slides around the desk.

High-end upsets

Other companies who strive for greatness sometimes fail miserably. The Falcon Northwest Mach V was far below expectations (Del Rizzo, 1998, pp. 74-75). This 300 MHz Pentium II had an Asus LX motherboard, 128 MB of SDRAM, a SCSI Raid controller, 4.5 GB UltraWide SCSI Cheetah, DVDROM, zip drive, and a Viper V330/Obsidian 100 SB video card. The price tag was a whopping $7,995, because of the cost of the Raid controller.

Unfortunately, the power of the parts is only half of the battle. The Raid setup was expected to hit 9 MB/second, but only managed a measly 3.6 MB/second. Random access should’ve hit 7.0 MB/second, but only managed 4.4 MB/second. This particular computer had quite a few other problems. For instance, the computer only had one free slot available, which limits future upgrades. There was no software bundle included with the system. The DVDROM quality of the computer was substandard. There were no gamepads included with the system, which makes the price seem relatively high. And the game card included did not support digital controllers (Del Rizzo, 1998, pp. 74-75).

The problem with the system is that it suffered from poor testing. The design was fine, but the end product was poorly configured. It would seem that Falcon relied too heavily on the high performance parts to carry the product. But high performance machines need to be fine-tuned to purr like a kitten. This would have yielded better performance figures. I guess the Falcons quality a$$urance team was out to lunch that day.

Hardware Driver Issues

The issue of hardware drivers affecting final performance is one that cannot be stressed enough. Hardware companies are hiring inexperienced programmers to write their hardware drivers. A large percent of these drivers fail 20% of Microsoft's tests. Too bad for the consumer; many of these products will ship anyway.

Original equipment manufacturers hack their drivers to enable newer features. This ends up causing a myriad of problems for consumers. Poor driver programming by independent hardware vendors causes system crashes. The consumer ends up playing the part of the guinea pig. There are no detailed compliance tests in the computer industry. And independent hardware vendors are not held responsible. The consumer ends up blaming Microsoft, since it is the Windows 95 logo that they first see at startup (St. John, 1997, P. 25).

Microsoft really doesn't have anything to do with this. Microsoft’s only goal is to make its operating system look good, and any given driver needs only to support the most critical functions (St. John, 1997, P. 25). It is the competition amongst independent hardware vendors to create the fastest product on the market that creates busted drivers. Each company continues to try and outperform their competition. And the consumer is stuck with a tricky driver upgrade because of the way Windows 95 is designed.

Eighty percent of Microsoft's technical support calls are driver related (St. John, 1997, P. 25). This is because great programmers don't program hardware. This is not a very desirable position, and it is usually left for the inexperienced programmers. The simple truth is that independent hardware vendors don't have great programmers. The hardware companies don’t emphasize driver quality either, since their main concern is the hardware. It only makes sense; hardware companies are not great software companies.

Of all these problems, only critical driver bugs are fixed before Microsoft ships them (St. John, 1997, P. 25). Independent hardware vendor drivers fail Microsoft certification four to six times before pa$$ing. These certified drivers usually still contain twenty to thirty bugs.

The Direct 3D API wars also result in consumer headaches. And once again, Microsoft is caught in the middle of these wars. Although Microsoft has announced a way to license, develop, and certify open GL drivers for Windows 95, it is not intended to overshadow their Direct3D API (Boot, 1998, P. 14). Microsoft has no plans to distribute OpenGL support with DirectX. Alex St. John says, "this [announcement] is really just an agreement to do nothing." Microsoft wants Direct3D to be the King, end of story.

Criterion Studios, ATI, and Rendition are forging ahead with OpenGL anyway (Boot, 1998, P. 14). This is sure to end up causing another level of busted drivers causing more compatibility problems. Jonathan Newt said, "the sooner the industry focuses on the real problems both OpenGL and direct 3D face... The better off we'll be."

It is these broken drivers that limit Windows 95 performance. OpenGL doesn't work that well because there is no 3D-driver architecture that works great with Windows 95. ATI and NVidia don't write working drivers. Direct3D must compensate by limiting how badly independent hardware vendors can screw up their drivers. However, Windows 95 itself flaws the Direct3D API. For example, the complexity of page locking is a feature of backward compatibility with Win 16 applications. The performance gain of 3DFX's glide API is only attributed to the fact that Glide isn't reentrant. This means that Glide can crash anytime (St. John, 1998, P. 25). I guess that 3DFX didn’t think of that little loophole.

Some believe that Microsoft should create an OpenGL driver for the ma$$es. This would truly be a bad idea. It would end up suffering the same problems as Direct3D (St. John, 1998, P. 25). Or it would need to be slowed by an abstraction level. This could get very messy.

Direct3D requires parallel drivers for each card, which means another one for independent hardware vendors to write. This is extremely bad since they can't even get one driver to work. Independent hardware vendors compete so heavily for speed that stability is usually compromised (St. John, 1998, P. 25). Unfortunately for us, Microsoft will only support API’s like OpenGL when a competitor gains strength with it.

Miscellaneous Issues

There are many external complications that cause the fetid stench of the computer industry. For example, Iomega was accused of consumer fraud last year (Boot, 1997, P. 17). They were accused of failure to deliver rebates to consumers. Consumers cried out about their poor technical support. Iomega also had a nasty habit of not honoring product warranties. The packaging on their products made claims of easy installation and free technical support. Yet Iomega charged consumers almost $20 for each technical support phone call. On a side note Iomega has filed a suit against SyQuest claiming patent infringement.

Another particularly smelly area of the industry comes from the major retail chains that now offer technical support, upgrades, and repairs. Using 20 identical PCs, PCWorld created three minor problems were to test the chain’s prowess. Of 55 problems across 20 stores, 30 problems were misdiagnosed, ignored, or unfixed. Best Buy and Computer City missed nine of the fifteen problems. Out of ten problems, Radio Shack missed six. CompUSA missed 6 out of 15 problems. Only two stores out of all these chains fixed all three of the problems, but only by a narrow margin (Piller, 1998, pp. 120-121).

Seven of fifteen stores did not meet minimum acceptable level on phone support. Best Buy and CompUSA scored 3 of 5 each, with one pa$$ing by marginal amounts in each case. Only two of five Computer City stores met the same requirement. Radio Shack does not offer phone support. Ten of twenty stores failed to identify a bad IDE cable problem. No chain solved this problem more than three of five times (Piller, 1998, pp. 120-121). This problem is so commonplace; anyone with half of brain should be able to find it easily. What kind of technical support is this?

Thirteen of twenty stores failed to detect a misplaced SIMM chip. CompUSA managed to solve the problem three times, while computer City and Best Buy failed four of five times. Nine of twenty stores tried replacing good parts. Three Radio Shack stores were guilty of this, as well as two stores from each of the other chains. Costs for these repairs vary greatly among chains. For example, Best Buy would charge $20 most of the time. Comp USA was usually under $100, but had a minimum of $90. Computer City wanted to charge up to $605 for unnecessary parts and labor. Radio Shack wanted to charge as much as $720 for unnecessary parts and labor (Piller, 1998, pp. 120-121).

Consumers are also running into problems because they don't read the fine print. Free e-mail accounts are offered all over the Internet. Consumers must be careful, because these aren't always as free as they might seem. For example, Microsoft just recently purchased the Hotmail free e-mail service. Hotmail users fill out a confidential user profile which hotmail uses to generate revenue, via advertising banners. Hotmail guarantees not to divulge username, id, etc to third parties (Kimen, 1998, P. 29). With Microsoft at the helm, how much of this will change?

If the user wants to be protected s/he has to be careful. Yahoo will disclose user information to some of its partners. Their list of partners include Ziff Davis, Softbank, Intel, Compaq, Sequoia Capital, Reuters, I/pro, TIBCO, and global center. These corporations have clients and partners including Prodigy, Hotmail, Playboy, Microsoft, Sun, 3Com, and Hewlett Packard (Kimen, 1998, P. 29).

Lycos won't monitor user's e-mail, but there is nothing said about profile information. Excite will not monitor e-mail. They need written approval to distribute profile information, but they do not indicate whether that means electronic or written approval. Juno, on the other hand, will monitor mail. If the user wants to remain protected it is kind of tricky. If the users fill out the applications incorrectly they may give up their rights for protection (Kimen, 1998, P. 29).

The competition driving the computer industry is like really bad growing pains for the consumer. The free e-mail services are fighting to survive. But since they are selling out their users to pay the bills it's not very nice. Not every e-mail services do this, but what the consumer doesn't realize could hurt them.

Some of the causes

Internal conflicts at Microsoft have some impact on their problems. Ex-Microsoft employee Alex St. John tells of some incompetent fools amidst an organization of otherwise smart people (St. John, 1997, P. 33). Microsoft would occasionally hire the smartest people in the industry just to keep them away from competitors. Even if the person is hired to do nothing. Alex St. John tried just about everything he could think of to get fired from Microsoft, while successfully blowing millions of Microsoft’s dollars before his termination.

Money is the biggest key in the entire computer industry. Like any business, computer companies want to make money. This is usually one of the reasons that products are being shipped incomplete. Imagine that Company X's stock is sitting at $25 per share. If the company doesn't sell something by the end of the quarter, their stock could drop down to $20 per share. If the company stock drops to $20 per share, the company may have to lay people off. The company will begin to hype their next product, giving it a ridiculous deadline. If the software developers don't ship a product, they will lose their jobs. Subsequently, the developers ship what they can accomplish within their time frame. This usually results in a crappy product (Popko, 1998, personal communication). The company ends up making their money, and the stock stays at a safe level. Everybody gets to keep his or her job, but the consumer is getting the shaft. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Some companies claim that they really don't have much competition. For example, id software stated that they were not necessarily rushing to complete their latest product, Quake II (Jaquays, 1998, personal communication). This was their biggest product of last year. The pressure that id software faced was an internal desire to complete the product. However, I really don't think that it was a coincidence that it made it in time for the holiday rush.

Even though id software claimed not to be rushed by any competition, Quake II was painfully incomplete. Dizzying rushes of patches were flowing on the Internet. One particular beast of a patch measured over 8 MB in size. This patch crawled slowly along the Internet into the laps of some very patient consumers.

The competition between Intel and smaller chipmakers are causing some real problems. Intel has been launching lawsuits left and right against their competitors, like a snarling beast protecting its territory. Each of the smaller companies has to innovate in their own way to avoid such lawsuits from the Intel behemoth. The software companies then have to go out of its way to support each chip (Halfhill, 1998, P. 32). The consumer ends up footing the bill. Intel has even made some shady deals with software developers. This entails the software code to actually look for the Intel processor signature strings. Meaning that the product will not work on non-Intel chipsets. Pretty sneaky thinking on Intel’s part. Sneakier still are the smaller chip companies who have found numerous ways around this little obstacle.

The 3D API Wars are another sore in the consumer’s side. Since Microsoft wants to be top dog, it won’t support OpenGL. Most developers want to use OpenGL however. The entire computer industry is skirting the issue like piles of dirty laundry. Since Microsoft doesn’t want to lose face, they will force DirectX down everyone’s throat.

Somebody needs to play referee to decide what should go, and what should stay. Microsoft really shouldn’t always have the ball in their court. On the other side of the coin, the independent hardware vendors need to clean their act up. If they didn’t spend so much time in competition with one another, they could maybe write a working driver. What a difference that would make, because the hardware may actually work right in the first place. Then we could get rid of Direct3D, and other ailing API’s.

Another similar scenario is within the realm of DVDROM’s. Many of the developers are heading in totally different directions in order to create the best product. But this is what causes some of the incompatibility issues that is stifling software development. The competition is what is hurting the consumer.

Ninety percent of the time it is the business end of the industry that screws up the technical end. The business people usually aren’t familiar with the product line, or the software itself. The business people don’t understand that it takes time to make the product work right. This is one of the reasons why they set unrealistic deadlines. The business people will be the first to decide to place patches on the Internet, rather than ship the product right the first time (Noel, 1998, personal communication). Business doesn’t want to wait for the money to get into its collective pockets. And the programmer is left struggling to make a great product with these limitations.

Even consumer demands have been shown to cause poor business decisions to be made. For instance, Hasbro is now porting some of their board games to the PC. For some insane reason, consumers are buying these things up like crazy. I can’t understand why someone would pay $40 and up to play Monopoly on their $2000 PC. No matter how silly this may seem, the demand is there for the product. So Hasbro is laughing all the way to the bank. The consumer is totally oblivious the fact that they just purchased a really expensive piece of cardboard.

Consumer demand even plays a part in the DVD battles. Since the consumer demand is there, DVD companies are killing each other over getting their fair share of the market. Yet, the consumer doesn’t realize that they shouldn’t want DVDROM’s until they actually work as promised. New PC’s are shipping with DVDROM’s because that is what the consumer expects to see on the newer machines. The consumer only knows that these DVD things are the latest gadgets in the industry. The consumer really doesn’t understand what it is that they are buying, but they sure think they have to have it.

Looking at the low-end PC’s, we can see that consumer demand is leading the way down that dark path as well. This ridiculous idea is totally driven by the consumer demands. Marketing research shows that the low-end market is the way to go. Once again, the consumer really doesn’t know what they are getting into, they only know that they can finally afford a computer. I really don’t understand why someone would make a $1000 investment without doing more investigating.

One of the most recent brainchilds of consumer demand is the leasing program offered by Dell computers. The leasing program really isn’t that great an idea. Let’s just see how many consumers actually do the math before jumping into the fray. For example, let’s take a $3999 PC on a 24-month lease. Initially, Dell would charge $80 for shipping and handling. Monthly payments on this system would probably be $155 per month. This yields a sub total of $3624. At the end of the lease, there would be an option to purchase the machine for an additional $510. Now, that $3999 has grown into $4134 plus shipping and handling (Furger, 1998, pp. 33-36).

This is where the consumer must be scrutinizing. The same product could be purchased on a credit card for a substantially lower amount. On a credit card with a 5.9% APR, the total would only be $3611.82. Even if the APR increased to 15.9%, the total would still be less at $3990.32. Increasing the APR to 19.9% finally surpa$$es the leasing offer at only $4147.89. The leasing program offers the opportunity to upgrade the system at the end of the lease. Of course, the consumer must lay down another lump of cash for the new system (Furger, 1998, pp. 33-36). From these examples, we can see that the lease is not the best choice. Yet, there are thousands of consumers leasing from Dell every month. It turns out that lower income families see the lease as a cheap way to get a computer, because of the low initial payments. I wonder if they realize just how expensive things can get for them in the end.

Happy Holidays

Year after year software and hardware developers rely on a hot holiday season. The products ship with missing features so they can get them to the stores in time for the holidays (McDonald, 1998, P. 23). Of course, consumers are usually looking forward to those titles to give as Christmas presents. The fact that they can post patches on the Internet allows them to get away with this. This will continue unabated, unless the consumers band together to rise against it. I often wonder if the consumers would rather wait until after the holidays for the finished product.

Of course, the holidays aren’t the only times that developers are rushed. Norton Utilities was shipped with a long list of bugs because the ship date had to be met (Spanbauer, 1998, P. 49). Internet Explorer 4.0 was also forced out to meet shipping deadlines (Martin, 1998, P. 46). Even the release of Internet Explorer 4.01 was shipped incomplete. The result was that many of problems it promised to fix were missed. Even Windows 95 itself shipped incomplete in order to make the ship date (Baskin, 1998, P. 19). The amount of advertising that went into Windows 95 prevented Microsoft from holding off any longer. They built up the consumer demand to the point that they had to let loose the animal they had created. That animal still hasn’t been properly domesticated, but that isn’t stopping them from releasing Windows 98.

The cycle usually ends with the consumer taking their broken computer into a local computer shop for repairs. These businesses do not always have the capital to acquire the more knowledgeable PC Technicians. Technicians at these shops are not always trained properly to handle the arduous task of troubleshooting (Piller, 1998, P. 120). Speaking from personal experience, it’s not as easy as some may think. When a technician is really knowledgeable, it’s not that difficult. Unfortunately, the 18-year-old redheaded orphan behind the counter doesn’t always know what he’s doing.

Future Issues

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, something bites you on the behind. Now that the Department of Justice is taking action against Microsoft, their future is really uncertain. The Department of Justice, along with eleven states attorney generals, contest that Microsoft is unfairly crushing competition (Levy, 1998, pp. 38-42). Such is the life of the All-American Monopoly.

Bill Gates has said, "Of all the big initiatives at Microsoft, simplicity is number one." In a Newsweek poll, 42% believe that Microsoft does more to promote technology than any other competitor. For example, Microsoft has been creating speech recognition software for Windows 98. This software has the potential to be a great tool for beginning computer users, as well as lousy typists. However, if the government wins its war against Microsoft, the consumer may never see voice recognition in Windows 98. If the Department of Justice decides that this application is unfair to competing products, they will prevent Microsoft from releasing the title (Levy, 1998, pp. 38-42).

The Department of Justice claims that Microsoft has violated a 1995 consent decree. The Department of Justice is contemplating anti-trust action against the Redmond, WA based company. Microsoft claims that one sentence in the original decree allowed them to include the new improvements that the Department of Justice is challenging. The Department of Justice believes that Microsoft is illegally tying Internet Explorer 4.0 into their Windows 95 Operating System. It is widely known that Microsoft would not sell Windows 95 licenses to computer manufacturers unless they agreed to install Internet Explorer 4.0 on all of their systems (Levy, 1998, pp. 38-42).

On December 11, 1997, Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson handed down a preliminary order demanding that Microsoft offer Windows 95 without Internet Explorer 4.0. He even suggested that Microsoft bundle Windows 95 with the competing Netscape Navigator 4.0 package. Who is he kidding? I don’t see him telling Pepsi to include one Coca-Cola in every six pack. Microsoft thumbed its nose at the honorable judge and proceeded to offer only a broken, or two year old version of the Operating system. Later, the court acknowledged that Windows 95 relied on portions of the Internet Explorer 4.0 code to run properly. And of course, Windows 98 will also require the code, but Microsoft made sure it was much more integrated (Levy, 1998, pp. 38-42).

Joel Klein, who is Anti-Gates, is threatening to break Microsoft up into two separate companies. His plan is to split Microsoft into an Operating system company, as well as an Application company. His fuel is fired by a comment made by one of Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officers. Bob Herbold was asked what he felt about smaller companies trying to compete with Microsoft on particular products. He suggested that these smaller businesses should sell out to Microsoft or,
not go into business to begin with (Hirsh, 1998, pp. 42-43)." Mr. Gates is probably finishing his Bob Herbold pate right now.

If the Department of Justice puts Microsoft under the knife, we could be in some pretty big trouble. Internet Explorer 4.0 is absolutely free to everyone in the world. However, the government would force consumers to buy a similar product from somebody else. Which doesn’t make sense since many Netscape products are also available to download for free on the Internet. The gears in the research and development departments at Microsoft would come to a grinding halt if the government wins (Hirsh, 1998, pp. 42-43). Unless Microsoft is allowed to innovate, the Windows Operating system would remain stagnant. The government would effectively be choking Microsoft to death.

The End Is Nigh

To conclude this epic journey, let us look back at the issues. Even though the computer industry seems totally corrupt and immoral, it is rea$$uringly obvious that this is not necessarily the case. Perhaps, if the market were not so fiercely competitive, more companies would be able to release solid and complete products. If business people had the ability to schedule appropriate deadlines, the developers could truly create some incredible products. The downside is that some companies are still out to cash in on the consumers dollar. They know what the consumers want to hear, and they know how to sell them something they don’t need. Even when there are no standards for development, they will continue manufacturing for profit, and leaving the consumer trying to figure out if they want product A, or product B. It reminds me of the VHS and Beta debacle wherein thousands of Americans were taken to the cleaners. Caveat Emptor: let the buyer beware. It’s a jungle out there.

(1997, November). DVD-RAM Forum Strikes Out. Boot, 15, 16.

(1997, October). Iomega Accused of Consumer Fraud. Boot, 14, 17.

(1998, January). DVD-ROM Confusion, INCOMPATIBILITIES FINALLY ADDRESSED. Boot, 17, 14.

(1998, February). Microsoft Supports OpenGL, It Ain’t What You Think. Boot, 18, 14.

(1998, March). The Death Of The High-End PC. Boot, 19, 16-17.

Baskin, C. (1998, March). Windows—and Bugs—Everywhere. PC WORLD, 3, 19.

Del Rizzo, B. (1998, January). Control Freaks Apply Here. Boot, 17, 69-73.

Del Rizzo, B. (1998, March). Falcon Northwest Mach V. Boot, 19, 74-75.

Furger, R. (1998, March). Look Before You Lease. PC WORLD, 3, 33-36.

Halfhill, T. (1998, January). Goodbye x86 Compatibility. Boot, 17, 31.

Hirsh, M. (1998, March 9). The Fed’s Case Against Bill Gates. Newsweek, 42-43.

Kimen, S. (1998, March). Not-So-Free Speech. Boot, 19, 29.

Levy, S. (1998, March 9). Microsoft vs. The World. Newsweek, 36-42.

Martin, A. J. (1998, March). Web Browser Woes. PC WORLD, 3, 45-46.

McDonald, T. L. (1997, November). Board with Gaming. Boot, 15, 27.

McDonald, T. L. (1998, February). Caveat Empire Builder. Boot, 18, 27.

McDonald, T. L. (1998, April). The Fall of PC Gaming, Volume I. Boot, 20, 23.

Piller, C. (1998, April). PC Repair. PC WORLD, 4, 118-132.

Spanbauer, S. (1998, March). Norton 3.0: New, Improved, Buggy. PC WORLD, 3, 49.

St. John, A. (1997, September). How To Get Fired From Microsoft. Boot, 13, 33.

St. John, A. (1997, October). The Dire Driver Dilemma. Boot, 14, 25.

St. John, A. (1997, November). Why Java Is Doomed To Fail. Boot, 15, 25.

St. John, A. (1998, March). The Truth About OpenGL. Boot, 19, 25.

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Unreal Epic MegaGames. (1997, October). Advertisement. Boot, 14, 52-53.

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