Roy J. Tellason wrote in a message to Jack Stein:

 JS> I have WIN95 installed and my wife and kids occasionally use it 
 JS> for some stupid crap that doesn't run on anything but WIN.

 RJT> Same here.    Though I'm not even gonna consider
 RJT> upgrading the w95 machine here to 98,  much less that new
 RJT> version that's out there...

You will be forced to upgrade eventually, just like you were forced to install 
WIN95 to begin with.  You and I, and most of us here would choose never to see 
a WIN logo on any screen on earth, yet we all run it, either at home along
side OS/2, or at work.

 JS> For example, wife bought a travel guide book for our vacation 
 JS> and it came with a CD that attempts to tell you the fastest, 
 JS> shortest, most senic routes to places.  It only runs in WIN95 of
 JS> course.

 RJT> Typical.  Those folks will learn,  eventually.  If their
 RJT> software is of such limited appeal that they end up putting
 RJT> it in the back of a book (seems to be happening to a lot of
 RJT> people these days),  then they may be more approachable to
 RJT> supporting other formats,  or at least providing source or
 RJT> maybe an API to let others get to the data.

That will not happen unless or until WIN no longer totally dominates the
desktop.  That will not happen I'm afraid.  There was a good opportunity from
1991 to 1995, but IBM made certain it did NOT happen.

 RJT> Reminds me of the guy I used to work with -- 24 years old
 RJT> (I'm now twice that age) and he considered himself to be
 RJT> "the best technician in there" because he'd "immersed
 RJT> himself in w98 and now knew it inside and out",  though I
 RJT> did see him get stumped a couple of times and have
 RJT> absolutely no clue as to how to proceed from there.  This
 RJT> guy was the "sales manager" of this retail computer store, 
 RJT> which is now closed up.

I'm sure he had no trouble finding another job.  WIN dominates totally.

 JS> I guess thats how it is everywhere today....

 RJT> I'm sure that it seems like "everywhere",  but it's not as
 RJT> bad as all that.  Only looks that way sometimes because they
 RJT> dominate the personal marketplace for the most part.

No Roy, they dominate the marketplace, not just the "personal" market place.

                                              Jack 
--- timEd/2-B11