X-no-Archive:yes
Well figuring that most of his net worth is in the company he founded and
has led up to now, I don't mind it at all.  The sultan of Brunei's wealth,
I believe, is inherited (a la Kennedy) and is composed of the holdings of
his country's oil reserves.  If, on the other hand, he worked for his
fortune, and invented and built things which he sold in a free market
economy, then I will have to re-assess my opinion of said Sultan.

It is actually interesting to see how many billionaires are in the software
or computer industry.  This was an industry which did not exist a couple of
generations ago, and I believe the majority of the world's billionaires (or
at least a plurality) are in this field.  M$ has also made of lot of people
rich, and not just within Microsoft.

I applaud success and do not believe it should be punished.

Before you let paranoia take over completely, just remember that the one
sure thing in this world, apart from death and taxes, is change.  MS can
fall over at any time, and it will probably happen at some point.  Look at
DEC, now a division of a PC MAKER that is not much older than my 14 year
old daughter.

But I took what you said at heart.  So I took a quick survey of the
software on my systems.

Windows NT 4.0 SP3 (runs great for me, both on the server and on the
laptop.)
MSOffice 97 (has all the goodies I need and most of my customers have it or
the 95 version.)
WRQ Reflection series (I can easily talk to my 3000, my 9000 and I love
their FTP client.)
MS FrontPage (It make maintaining the web site a snap.  And now, all our
documentation is in HTML.)
NikkoMac WinZip and Self-extractor.  (Registered copies, works very well.)
MS Internet Explorer 3.02  (Why should I pay extra money to get a file
viewer, this works fine.)
Hicomp Hiback and Hibars (The best backup products in the business.)
DeLorme Street Atlas (Big trip coming up, yes, I am going on vacation!)
MS Visual Basic 5 (Great environment to develop stuff.)
MS Age Of Empires (Best strategy game around, can't wait for the sequel.
 No shoot-em ups here.)
Adaptec EZ-SCSI  (If you do SCSI on NT, (and you should), this stuff is
great.)
Adaptec EZ-CD Pro  (Easiest way to write CD-R.)
Rex TrueSync  (Synchronize my Rex card with Outlook'97 with one click.)
Symantec WinFax Pro (Easy to send and receive faxes.)
Dragon NaturallySpeaking (The new preferred edition 2.0 with hooks into
MS-Word.)
HP DeskJet utilities (they work OK, but they have lots of bugs.  This is
the area which causes me most trouble.)

On another computer at the house we have the MS flight Simulator for
Windows 95, an F-18 flight simulator, a Tank battle game and a few games
for the kids, from Humongous software.

What struck me here is the veritable dearth of software.  I have very
little software on my systems, at least compared to many systems I have
seen.  This could be one of the reasons my systems are so stable.

Also note the absence of any of the utilities that one finds on many
systems.  Again, stability and usability are my goals here.

Now, if you have suggestions about alternatives to the above list, please
let me know.  Do remember, however that I paid money for all of it, so that
if I change, it would have to be because it is incredibly superior or that
it has features which I can't do without.

All this to say that "yes, I use Microsoft software", and it is the largest
chunk of my software collection.  Why do I use it, because it works very
well for me.  I also use non-MS software, because that also works well for
me.  I am very selective in the software I install.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Tuesday, 23 June, 1998 1:19 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Having problems with e-mail, is this message any better?

Denys asks:

> BTW, did you hear the news today that Clinton's DOJ lost the appeal of
its
> injunction against M$?

Yes, I just read the news. I also read yesterday that Forbes now places
Bill
Gates' wealth at $51billion dollars. That now makes him officially richer
than
the Sultan of Brunei, who has to scrimp along at $36billion dollars.

"Embrace and extend, embrace and extend, embrace and ...."

Wirt Atmar