……

After Tang Huan got into the car, he was not in a hurry to leave, but stayed for a while to observe.

When he saw various computer manufacturers, and even semiconductor manufacturers, coming out one after another, he said sarcastically: "These guys who don't want to make progress are really unpopular." ”

John Chambers nodded, "That's true, it's just that there's just a lack of an opportunity to break out." ”

"It seems that I have become a wicked person." Tang Huan smiled and shook his head.

"In essence, that's what a leader looks like." John Chambers analyzed seriously, "After you wake up these semiconductor manufacturers with a slap, I will be able to handle the next trivial matters much easier." ”

"Actually, there are some opinions that I didn't say at the meeting just now, and I can't show the way to these uninteresting guys, and besides, they won't appreciate it." Tang Huan snorted coldly.

"Due to the increasing attention of emerging economies to the high-tech industry, the diffusion of semiconductor memory production capacity to the world is the general trend, and obsessing with trade protection to save the field will only become more and more backward."

"In addition, the semiconductor industry in Silicon Valley is quietly dividing its work into a design-and-manufacturing model that is beginning to favor what each does best—fabless design firms can focus on their ideas, while foundries can focus on improving their processes and making the most of their production capacity."

"This is an era when industrial development can change dramatically at any time, if the concept can not adapt to the new beat, it is better to think about the early stop loss."

"IBM is a bit behind the times." Looking at the representative of Compaq as he walked by, John Chambers sighed: "IBM-PC compatible machine manufacturers like Compaq have a really good business, and conservatively estimate that they have seized at least one-third of the IBM-PC market capacity, and under our suppression." IBM-PC's share of the PC market shows no signs of improving. This shows how much business IBM has been robbed of by Compaq and other start-ups, but it seems that it has no choice. ”

"People who do bad things don't always get punished." Tang Huan waved his hand and motioned for the driver to drive, "IBM won't learn how to fight a price war on low-priced products." This is determined by the conservative tradition that is rooted in its bones. Of course, this immobility can often allow it to survive the industry crisis. ”

"Since Phoenix Technologies introduced a BIOS that is fully compatible with IBM-PC, companies such as AwardSoftware and AmericanMegatrends Incorporated have also entered the field, making it even more technically difficult to build an IBM-PC compatible machine." John Chambers reminded with concern: "If this trend continues, these IBM-PC compatible machine manufacturers will not only dig into IBM's corners, but will also inevitably pose a substantial threat to our personal computers." ”

"There's no way around it, who let Pandora's box have been opened." Tang Huan replied with a deep groan, "At present, it seems. The most effective way to deal with this camp is to use advanced technology to get rid of them while they are still scattered. ”

Speaking of this, Tang Huan laughed playfully, "Of course, the first person who should have a headache is IBM, and it is estimated that they are thinking about how to close the unguarded door of IBM-PC and shut out the disorderly compatible machine manufacturers." ”

……

The two exchanged ideas along the way. Arrived in Cupertino. John Chambers took a helicopter flight to Mountain View, the headquarters of Fangyuan Computer.

Presently. EA and Fangyuan Computer have moved to Redwood City and Mountain View, respectively, leaving only a software industry cluster and a first-class R&D center in Cupertino.

Previously, tens of thousands of employees gathered in the small Cupertino, bringing all kinds of glory and all kinds of problems to the local area.

For example, during peak periods of commuting and observing. There will be complaining traffic jams, continuous traffic flows, and even the occupation of public roads.

The list goes on and on.

The administrative feature of the United States is regional autonomy, as long as you disturb the people. Volkswagen doesn't care about your Fortune 500 companies, they still protest, and the local administrative departments also use them as all kinds of bargaining weights.

Tang Huan didn't superficially take it for granted that he could enjoy the supreme pleasure of centralizing power by building a large number of so-and-so centers in a majestic manner and gathering all his subordinates together like bees.

From the bottom of his heart, Tang Huan is very willing to drive out various companies with his own ideological scars to blossom everywhere, and start a family like a child, so that it can be called development and growth.

In addition, the hegemons in the field such as Zheru, Fangyuan, and EA gather together, which is also easy to give people room to exert their imagination. After all, in the United States, where the media is highly developed, no one is a fool. Apple's "1984" ad was so successful because of the deep-rooted Western-style thinking genes at work.

As a result, Tang Huan actively promoted the relocation of EA and Fangyuan Computer Company. In the long run, land prices in Silicon Valley are quite attractive, so the two companies have each enclosed a lot of land. EA has built a video game industry base centered on itself, attracting a large number of tourists every day.

From the office on the fifth floor, you can see Chinese gardens, European buildings, lawns, stadiums, squares, parks, and ...... Arranged in a staggered manner, there is less of the hustle and bustle of the previous crowd, and the comfortable silence naturally makes people feel cheerful.

"It's the perfect combination of technology and art!" Tang Huan smiled slightly, took a sip of tea comfortably, turned back to his seat, and picked up a document.

At the spring COMDEX held at the end of June this year, Tang Huan did not deliberately take the time to participate.

With the boom of the IT industry driven by personal computers, the popular COMDEX has also been sheldon? Adelson is desperately trying to squeeze the value out of it, which can be seen from the frequency with which it is held.

For the first two years, COMDEX was held only once in Las Vegas in the fall. Seeing a surge in visitors, Sheldon? Adelson has changed to two sessions in the spring and autumn, and now he has added another stop in Europe.

The attention that the exhibition economy card can bring is very popular everywhere, and COMDEX is fixed in Las Vegas except for the fall show. Other stops of the exhibition toured New York, Atlanta, Atlantic City, and even as far away as Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

As long as the product release beat can basically correspond to the COMDEX in the spring and autumn of the year, so that competitors are tired and hard to follow, Tang Huan is too lazy to shout and cheer for COMDEX every time, and only needs to make an appearance at COMDEX in the autumn and give a speech on the industry outlook. It is enough to play the role of a leader.

Recently, there are not many completely new products that have emerged on COMDEX, let's take Zheru as an example, the so-called new products launched are mainly new versions with more functions, which also makes the small system software of virtual floppy disk particularly eye-catching.

IBM-PC has an obvious limitation on the use of memory, that is, it cannot directly use more than 1MB of memory, although it is related to the CPU real mode of Intel8086, but it is also caused by IBM's design. And that's just a limitation on the system, to the user. The memory that can be used directly is 640KB.

With the use of large memory, IBM-PC had to solve the problem in two steps, the first is to use the 384KB of memory occupied by the driver between 640KB and 1024KB, and then the use of more than 1024KB of memory.

At present, MS-DOS does not provide a direct and effective solution at the operating system level, but some hardware manufacturers have designed a type of expansion board to provide a solution.

There is no such trouble on the Fangyuan personal computer platform, and the support for large memory is perfect. In turn, more functions can be tapped than the IBM-PC platform.

The virtual floppy disk can make full use of the mainstream hardware resources of 512KB of memory and 20MB of hard disk, and the floppy disk will be non-copyrighted disk. Emulates into hard disks and even memory, reducing the need for slow floppy disks, extending the life of the disk and saving time. In addition, the benefits are endless.

The greater significance of this software is to make more people understand. It's not a waste of a PC with more memory, it's just that the programmer's imagination needs to be further improved.

The pulling effect of this series of software on the consumption capacity of hardware is very obvious, and it has faintly formed a tacit understanding in the IT industry that allows users to pay more money. It can be said that it can only be understood and cannot be spoken, and it has also made Zheru's position as an industry leader more and more consolidated.

Of course, there is never a shortage of lion cubs in the lion pack who will challenge for the lion throne.

After sweeping away all competitors of the spreadsheet software Lotus1-2-3 on the IBM-PC platform, Lotus Software began to expand its territory to other application software fields, especially office collaboration.

Regardless of the form of the token ring network or the form of Ethernet, the development of LAN is very rapid, and software application solutions based on this architecture have given many small companies the opportunity to settle down and even get ahead.

Lotus Software has expanded in a very old-fashioned way, directly using the cash accumulated from the sales of spreadsheet software Lotus1-2-3 to acquire several small companies that are doing well, and cleanly extend its tentacles into the application field of office collaboration.

"I have to say that Lotus Software is really lucky to have found a good helper." Tang Huan looked at the specially marked name "Jim Manz" on the document and muttered to himself.

THE SUCCESSFUL AND LONG-TERM IT STARTUPS OF THIS ERA OFTEN BENEFIT FROM THE PERFECT COMBINATION OF MARKETING GENIUS AND TECHNICAL GENIUS, SUCH AS APPLE'S JOBS AND WATTS, MICROSOFT'S GATES AND PAUL ALLEN, ORACLE'S LARRY ELLISON AND BOB MAYNER, ETC.

At the beginning of the creation of Lotus Software, it was precisely this condition that was lacking, and Mitchell Kapole basically took it on his shoulders. However, Lotus Software did not become a flash in the pan like other small companies that have successfully started a business, but went step by step and steadily.

The reason for this is that Benjamin Rosen, who invested in both Compaq and Lotus Software, helped Mitchell Kapole find Jim Manz as a good helper.

Like Louis Gerstner, Jim Manz has a very good management experience at McKinsey & Company, a well-known management consulting firm, and has played an active role as a manager.

At present, Lotus Software is honestly operating its own territory on the IBM-PC platform, conscientiously acting as the gold medal fighter of the blue giant, and it is really difficult to cross the line and take action.

Buying a company that only develops software for the IBM-PC platform is a waste of resources.

Thinking of this, Tang Huan couldn't help but shake his head regretfully.

At this time, the secretary reported on the phone: "Boss, Mr. Bill Gates of Microsoft has arrived. ”

"Invite him to the reception room." Tang Huan stood up, stretched his waist, and went to see Gates.

"Bill, I heard that Microsoft and IBM have a new joint project to develop a more powerful operating system?" After saying hello, Tang Huan asked casually.

Just like Tang Huan is developing a 32-bit personal computer, although the actions in the IT circle can achieve commercial confidentiality, they cannot avoid the clues of wind and grass.

Therefore, Gates did not hide it, and replied clearly: "It is an operating system tailored for IBM's third-generation personal computers." ”

"And what about the future of MS-DOS?" Tang Huan asked curiously.

You must know that although Zheru did not develop much software on MS-DOS, Tang Huan and Gates used BASIC to run in the database EBase environment as a bargaining chip early on, and reached a private transaction open at the bottom of MS-DOS, which made him deeply understand every move of IBM-PC from another perspective.

"As a weakly functional version, let's develop it in parallel. However, MS-DOS also gets more freedom as a result. Gates smiled self-deprecatingly, vaguely speaking, apparently not wanting to go into the details of the bargain with IBM.

Tang Huan smiled slightly, he had already guessed that this new operating system jointly developed by IBM and Microsoft should correspond to something like OperatingSystem/2 that is, OS/2 in the original time and space.

The blue giant's new stove can only be blamed for MS-DOS, which has a poor foundation, and it is even more unbearable compared with FreeDOS on the Fangyuan personal computer platform.

And Microsoft made a fortune by selling MS-DOS to the burgeoning IBM-PC-compatible machine makers, and it was impossible for Big Blue not to mind.

Tang Huan fully expected that the operating system that IBM wanted to build, in addition to further controlling the platform, also to solve the shortcomings of multitasking, large-capacity memory and hard disk support, graphics shell and other functions that MS-DOS lacked and could not provide compared to FreeDOS.

"IBM's new product research and development is also in full swing." Tang Huan quipped: "In your opinion, compared with the fourth-generation Fangyuan personal computer, who is stronger and who is weaker in terms of performance?" ”

Gates did not answer directly, but said sharply: "IBM is not optimistic about the 32-bit architecture of the fourth generation of Fangyuan personal computers, they think that this technology span is too large, and it is very likely to fail." ”

Seeing Tang Huan's disapproving expression, Gates snorted, "But I think the 32-bit architecture is the general trend." Actually, I came this time to promote a new operating system, hoping to get permission to log in to the Fangyuan computer platform. (To be continued.) )