Letters to the Editor (in Chief)

Once again you have written so biased and inaccurate an editorial that I am compelled to write ("Why I Love/Hate Microsoft," August). You assert that Microsoft deserves credit for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Yet none of these products is the premier product in its respective field. You praise Microsoft for its vision of a GUI. That may be praiseworthy, but people spend most of their time working within an application, not the GUI. And Microsoft's "vision" costs untold millions in graphics accelerators just to get decent performance.

Joseph D. Moreno
San Diego, CA

Microsoft's business productivity applications, especially as bundled in the Office suite, control a huge portion of the market. Like it or not, it is these applications, in conjunction with the Windows OS, that h ave made Microsoft a dominant force. It is not a question of technology. It is an issue of consistency, vision, and aggressive (perhaps too aggressive) exploitation of each fraction of a point of market share. -- Rafe Needleman, editor in chief

I was prompted to respond to Rafe Needleman's statement that "Computers don't cost jobs" ("Old Enough to Know Better," September). As you point out, computers have indeed cost jobs in certain industries and created jobs in others. But counting jobs just doesn't tell the story. You need to look at income distribution. Computers have resulted in a widening of the income gap between the well-educated and the poorly educated. Computers have greatly benefited a well-educated minority and have tended to harm the economic well being of the rest of society. Given the current political climate, it's likely this trend will continue.

Alan Kushnir
72500.2232@compuserve.com

I try to avoid political commentary in BYTE, alt hough as computer technology pervades society, it gets more difficult. -- Rafe Needleman, editor in chief