On Sat, 02 Feb 2002 14:24:53 -0600, "Rob" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This may be a naive question, but I'm curious. Most of the limitations > of DOS that I see, seem to be imposed upon it, such as lack of further > developement. It looks to me to be a concerted effort to kill it. Is it > dead due to inherent flaws in the system or because the wealthiest man > in the world, with extreme power and influence over government, military, > technological, and corporate entities says it's dead? The lack of further development in DOS is mostly due to lack of interest in the marketplace. Microsoft replaced DOS as the foundation of its software empire because its flagship Windows products based on DOS, ( Win 95,98,ME) never achieved real stability and were prone to crash. It was easier for Microsoft to start over with NT and rebuild. Starting over with NT was a real necessity for Microsoft, in my opinion, if it was to hold onto its dominant posistion. There are inherent limitations to DOS in terms of memory use, file structure, and multi-tasking that Microsoft was unable to overcome sucessfully. Please note that I'm not saying these problems were insurmountable, just that Microsoft was unable to deal with them and eventually became uninterested in dealing with them. I like DOS myself because I'm already familiar with it and because I use old hardware and will for some time to come. But there's not much money in DOS anymore for developers. No money, no interest, no developement. Or maybe little interest, little money, little development. There certainly is lots of interest in alternatives to Microsoft though. Sam Ewalt Croswell, Michigan, USA -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
