Yesterday we professed our inability to comprehend Microsoft's claim that a Department of Justice-mandated delay of Windows 98 could cost the U.S. economy "billions of dollars" worth of damage. Well, today that claim became a little clearer to us in a Wired News article. Apparently Microsoft's argument is based on companies who have already spent a ton of money on their own advertising and marketing campaigns assuming Windows 98's June release. (To the several AtAT viewers who suggested that the potential lost revenue was the expected increase in technical support fees: this doesn't mean your point isn't valid. Or funny.)

Yeah, okay, that may explain how several companies who lacked foresight took a serious risk and could pay the consequences. But what about this claim that the delay would have dire effects on the whole U.S. economy? Nobody on the AtAT staff has even a smidge of education in economics, so our opinion on the matter is nothing more than a gut feeling-- the whole statement just trips our nonsense meter. Our AtAT guts feel vindicated, though, to find that they share the feelings of the guts of "some of the nation's leading economists," who agree that the idea that a delay would "wreak havoc on the U.S. economy" is pure bunk. In fact, a senior economist at WEFA Inc. classifies that claim as simply "unbelievable." We think faithful viewer Richard Class says it best: "If a delay of Windows 98 will cost our collective bank accounts some billions of dollars, can Microsoft explain how much has already been lost since the name was changed from Windows 97?" Indeed.

So even if it's true that the effect of a delay on certain companies in the industry could be dire, given that the flap over Windows' forced bundling of Internet Explorer has been a hot topic since last year, we have a hard time feeling sorry for any companies who bet the farm on Windows 98 shipping on time. Anyone who stakes a wad of cash on any software product from any company shipping on time is just begging to get screwed; and betting that a Microsoft operating system will ship on time is even a bigger risk, especially given that talk of possible intervention by the Justice Department has been circulating for so long. If they were only AtAT viewers, these companies would have known better...