[lazarus] native Win32 Interface

[Robert Scott Horning]

Marco van de Voort wrote:

>>    As an interesting side note, there is a series of servers that HP is 
>>currently releasing with FreeDOS installed as the primary OS.
>>
>
>Actually it is Dell, and they are enterprise workstations. (Optiplex)
>
>>I guess the assumption is that you can choose to install your favorite
>>version of Linux or whatever OS you want after it arrives on your
>>doorstep.
>>
>
>Hardly. It is more avoiding double Microsoft tax (large companies already
>bought large amounts of windows licenses for imaging. They don't use the
>added licenses. We have two 21 inch monitorboxes in the basement full with
>Dell and Compaq OEM Windows 98 licenses. (ok, one is 2/3 full)
>
Thanks for the correction.  The point I was trying to make is that you 
need to be careful when you write off an OS or platform.  Apple Computer 
effectively killed off the Apple ][ platform when it was still making 
quite a bit of money, and there are still Apple ][ emulators floating 
around.  Even Atari 2600 emulators (for the true diehards of 8-bit 
computers.)  I have even heard about some places that are still 
manufacturing Comodore 64 computers (eastern europe?), mainly because 
you can get the OS and archetecture for practically nothing, and it is 
fully debuged and tested... the design and code base that is.  And the 
Amiga seems to keep trying to rising from the dead, although I think its 
death is now complete.

It will be a long tortortus death for the Win32 API, if for no other 
reason than so much software has been written for it that it will 
continue to rise from the dead if for no other reason than to play Quake 
or Doom.

Robert Horning