Microsoft Corp. is settling a $23.3 million antitrust lawsuit brought last year by defunct operating system maker Be Inc., which alleged that the software giant had illegally thwarted distribution of Be's operating system.
The BeOS emerged in the mid-1990s and promised superior digital media handling capabilities. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company attempted to thrive by getting PC makers to offer its operating system on dual-boot systems, which are PCs loaded with two or more operating systems that users could launch at start-up.
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