The hard truth about Microsoft’s monopoly

So Microsoft is a monopoly. So what? What does that mean for us, the travelers who have to wrestle with the technology while we’re on the road?

To determine how U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s declaration that Microsoft abused its dominance of the personal computer industry will affect road warriors, listen to a conversation I had last week with Chuck Kirkpatrick, a help-desk supervisor at Dell Computer Corp.

I recently bought a new desktop (more on that in a future column) and after a week of using it, discovered that the internal clock didn’t work. Specifically, it lost about five minutes every day. Since I use the PC to record all of my appointments, it meant that I’d missed a few meetings. Not too good for a writer whose workday is punctuated by deadlines.

Kirkpatrick diagnosed the problem immediately. “The version of Windows 98 you’re using has a bug,” he explained. “On some computers – not all of them – it loses time. Microsoft knows about it, but they don’t have a fix.”

“Don’t you think you should have warned users before selling a faulty product?”

“It doesn’t happen all the time.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I groused. “It happened to me.”

“We’re not responsible for what Microsoft does. We just sell the hardware,” Kirkpatrick replied.

I couldn’t believe my ears. “Isn’t that kind of like saying you just make the guns, but you’re not responsible for the people they kill?” “I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. Microsoft feels it’s not a big problem, and we can only go along with what Microsoft says.” We finally settled on a radical solution. We renamed a systems file, which calibrated the PCs timekeeping functions to the computer’s internal clock. I could no longer adjust the clock, but at least it would keep the time accurately.

I didn’t know whom I was angrier at: Dell or Microsoft. Dell, for blindly doing what its masters at Microsoft wanted (“Bad clock? If Bill says it’s not a problem, it’s not a problem.”) Or Microsoft, for being so arrogant and insensitive to the concerns of users who really don’t have an alternative (“It’s our stock price that really matters.”)

Microsoft’s attitude about the timekeeping flaw goes right to the heart of the judge’s opinion. This isn’t about selling a faulty product as much as knowing that the boys in Redmond, Wash., can get away with it. Why? Because it’s almost impossible to find a computer that runs something other than Windows. If you’re not on the Microsoft OS, you’re an outsider who can’t share files, run most programs or do much of anything except process words. As the realities of the Microsoft monopoly ruling unfold during the next few weeks, I will be remembering my conversation with Kirkpatrick. A part of me hopes that the judge will stop Bill Gates by either compelling his company to make the source for his computer operating systems public or even breaking up Microsoft, a la Ma Bell. Part of me hopes that my software concerns will never be dismissed the way they were when my PC’s internal clock headed south.

But another part of me hopes that at least a piece of Microsoft will be preserved. Our industry needs standards. Sure, Gates has ruled the PC operating systems market as a benevolent dictator, but at least most of us are reading from the same page now, as opposed to a decade ago when anarchy reigned. I recall some of the people I’ve interviewed for this column who would continue to benefit from an OS standard. Folks like Scott Hancock, who carry several computers on each trip so that they can get the job done. I know that standardization in the Personal Digital Assistant OS niche would be a tremendous benefit to frequent travelers. Gadgets could talk to other tech toys (phones, palm pilots, pagers) without any of the headaches that come with trying to make two otherwise incompatible devices communicate.

I’m afraid the U.S. Department of Justice could be so effective at neutralizing Microsoft that it might throw the Windows standard, flawed as it may be, out the proverbial window and turn our lives upside down in the process. Just think: Even the little things that travelers take for granted now, like being able to walk into a hotel’s business center to pull up the contents of a disk on a rental PC, might not be a sure thing anymore. Try running a presentation on a projection system when PowerPoint is no longer the de facto presentation standard and see how far you get.

My point is, even though I’m rooting for the little guys like Linux and, in this case, the DOJ, their victory may not be our victory. True, Microsoft has gotten obscenely profitable at our expense, but they’ve also imposed much-needed standards on what was a chaotic industry.

If the government succeeds in undoing Bill Gates’ monopoly, it may be doing none of us a real favor.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Be the first to comment