what you also dont see is a working vista.

the device driver support is not worth the 400 dollar price tag of vista ultimate.

Take an economics class....

Just 10,000 copies sold bring in less than $150,000 after you take into effect marketing, packaging and production.
Now you have 10,000 customers you have to provide a lifetime of support. You can't do that alone, you have to hire trained personnel to tackle that task. How are you going to pay them? $150,000 won't last 1 year....

hmm:

marketing - word of mouth. cheap and most effective
packaging - download of the net. cheap and most effective.
production - hmm, if you download, not much production costs...


10k copies @ $20 != $150k

its $200k. simple arithmetic class could have taught ya that. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...es/biggrin.gif

edit - d'oh - didnt see "after taking into account marketing..."
edit - still, i would estimate a yearly cost of owning a server farm and such to allow others to download to be about ~15k a year. that would be about it. that is easily manageable with an electrical engineering degree, no?

also, it would be a software product. most software products dont generate too much profits, unless you obtain most of the market share. i also have a few hardware ideas up my sleeve as well, that, if they were to be brought to retail sale... well, heh, i would not have too many financial problems. trust me on that one.

OK, $0 for marketing, and the rest. You still can't sustain support for only $20 a copy... it's just not possible. Who would be answering the phones? Who would be paying the phone bill? The benefits? Employee training? Insurance? Leased office space? Legal fees? and about 100 other expenses....

It can't be done.

I'm not trying to piss in your Wheaties here. But providing lifetime support for anything is a losing proposition.

the trick is to not have support calls. thus, if anyone actually needs it, it will not be overwhelming.

its all in the programming. you want to know why windows has so many holes? so other companies can benefit. why do you think symantec and mcgfee(w/e) raised hell about vista? because microsoft was taking too much heat over security, and they decided to work on it [more] and thus interrupted the security services of symantec and mcfee(w/e).

im not completely stupid, nor am i completely intelligent. i know enough to get by, and if i dont, ill take a detour.

haha - your just pissing in my cheerios (bitch) http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...lies/ninja.gif

good thing i didnt eat those cheerios.

security cameras ftw!

Good luck Lemon, I think that you are going to need a ton of it.

Most of these systems start out simple enough but are complicated by damned consumers & software/hardware producers who want things to work & then the more consumers the more of a target you become for hackers who WILL find a way past your code (dozens (hundreds?) of hackers vs Lemon).

Allan

only if you program a way past the code. http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/wink.gif

Isn't that what Bill Gates said?

Allan

Lemon, good luck. So lets see some of your early work. If you have big dreams to make an OS with your programming skills, im curious as to what you've already programed? Gotta start somewhere.

BTW, i cant wait to see the first version of "Lemonsoft"

heh @ "lemonsoft" ..

wouldnt go well with the lemon laws... http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...milies/yuk.gifpr nightmare...