HIGH TECH CORNER: INFLATION, THE INTERNET, MICROSOFT AND WIN2000

With February marking the largest U.S. growth expansion in history, there are many people in Washington taking credit for the steady pace of inflation. I, on the other hand, have a new theory to propose.

I think that over the last couple of years, growth of the Internet has helped Alan Greenspan keep a lid on this terrible economic disease. With the Internet, public purchases, as well as Business-to-Business orders, are based upon searching the Net.

Theses searches bring up many sources of suppliers for the same product. If you are shopping and see the same item listed for $100 or $35, which one will you buy? Of course, you are going to purchase from the vendor that is selling it for $35.

Back in the days of only brick and mortar stores you would have to go from place to place to verify a price. Now Net vendors are forced to keep pricing in line with their competitors or not get the sale. My theory is that this mechanism is helping to keep inflation in its proper place out of the U.S. economy.

With the 25-year-old Microsoft still in legal tangles with the Justice Department, Microsoft has taken a major pre-emptive strike to prepare for the worst. Steve Balmier, the person glued to Mr. Bill's side for the last 15 years and his old Harvard college buddy, has taken over Bill's position as the president of Microsoft. Mr. Bill is still head of the board of directors, and the richest man in America is now the Microsoft chief software architect.

What this position will entail is that Bill will be the person truly in charge of what the human interface is for, all the new software coming out of Microsoft. How this affects all of us is that a truly common interface between all products with massive Internet interactivity on the horizon.

For the Justice Department this means if a forced break-up of Microsoft is achieved, Steve Balmier's great interactivity with the Microsoft main customer base will continue, but only as the head of the operating system division. If Microsoft is broken up into two companies, with the second being its applications division Mr. Bill will take over here. However, if the company is forced to break up into three different companies with the third being the Internet products, this is where Bill will end up.

The reason the richest man in America would take the small 12 percent of Microsoft to run is the simple fact this part of the company has the largest growth potential. Simply, look at the stock market and see that the major growth factor of money is only in tech stocks based around the Net. When you have that much money, what else is left in life but to make more?

On the technology side, Windows 2000 ships all across the world Feb 15. This major release is a milestone for Microsoft and the consumers.

Windows 2000 is the merging of the Windows 98 look and feel and the Windows NT 4.0 code base. This true 32-bit or 64-bit operating system, depending upon the version, is the most stable of any Microsoft operating system released. This is a 1.0 version of the operating system. If this makes you nervous, a final update disk Service Pack 6.0A for NT 4.0 was released Jan 24 as the last major bug fix for the NT operating system.

I have been running Widows 2000 for over a year and can honestly say this operating system is like Win98 and NT put together on steroids. This is not an operating system for people who want to play games. This is the operating system for working people who want fewer crashes running applications while achieving more stability and security on the Net.

As always, if you have any comments or questions please contact me at RICH@DIGITALLABS.COM

Digital Labs, Rich Comeau, 7636 County Road 621, Cape Girardeau, MO. 63701

Telephone: (573) 335-0141 FAX (573) 335-0510 E-mail: RICH@DIGITALLABS.COM URL WWW.DIGITALLABS.COM