"[Steve Ballmer] thinks we ought to admit that Windows 98 will be a yawner"
From: Paul Maritz
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 1997 6:37 PM
To: Jonathan Roberts
Cc: Jim Allchin; Moshe Dunie
Subject: Steveb & Win98
Since the press gave Billg & Steveb a hard time this week at the press retreat, Steveb is panic’d that we are setting expectations too high on Windows 98. He thinks we ought to come out and admit that Windows 98 will be a yawner. The thing that has him hopping around right now is that Paul Gillan wants to write a story about Windows 98 being boring, and Steveb doesn’t know what to say - should he admit that is? Should he try to deny it? He claims to be confused because Billg keeps saying that Win98 is a big deal
I did catch these two guys (billg & steveb) this am for a few minutes and got them to “remember” how we got to where we are, and I did point out to them that they omitted to present to the press the quality/reliability improvements that went into Win98 (eg. registry backup). However we do need to have meeting with billg & steveb on this. My PoV is that we need to do summary of the benefits of Win98, and on the one hand admit that it is not major release, it is a “.1” release, but on the other hand we should not wring our hands over this, we should say that it is a release that has significant quality improvements, some performance increases, and that people upgrading from Win95 to Win98 will have better experience. We should have the support points for this.
Other points:
• Steveb thinks that we ought to take IE4 and drop it into the Win95 upgrade, and get out and sell that for Xmas this year.
• Steveb thinks we should not alter the $89 price, even if it is “not exciting”.
• Where are we on not doing upgrade of Win3.1 systems? I mentioned that there was resistance to doing this, and Steveb went on about us killing another revenue oppty.
Jonro: can you get mtg scheduled with Steveb/Billg. We could possibly do this after Memphis review tomorrow, but I actually think it would be better to let a day/two pass after the review and do early next week ?
[This document is from Comes v. Microsoft (2007).]
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