GadgetMaster wrote:
Hmm, I think the opposite would happen. Instead of everyone complying to standards I think every man and his dog would try to come up with their own "superior" format further fragmenting the industry and causing chaos.
Sure, the geeks would be dancing but what about all the lost work from all the MSOffice dependants. Some peoples livelihoods actually depend on MS software. Something we usually take for granted. Not the best position for an industry to be in. It would take years to re-stabilise and it would be very large gap to fill.
I don't know, prior to the PC the big computers came together. VMS, Unix, ect got along fine without having to do any fancy setup unlike getting Windows to play with anything else.
I have a feeling if MS disappeared, compatiblity would be a huge feature. As salesmen boast that, Yes their computer will work with all competitors systems following industry standards. Face it after people get burned with being locked into Microsoft and if MS went away they would want to make sure their next sytem had the feature of being able to easily move to yet another system
