Editor's Note:
This is a heavily-revised version of a list that's been doing the rounds for a long time. Enjoy.

If IBM made toasters...
They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six, toasters. DB2/Toaster will ship within 12 months.

If ParcPlace made toasters...
Their OO building block system would be called EGGO.

If Oracle made toasters...
They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.

If Sun made toasters...
The toast would burn often, but you could get a really good cuppa.

If Novell made toasters...
With most of the NetToaster market, they feel incredibly secure. Then they purchase ToasterPerfect...

If Netscape made toasters...
They don't actually make shipping toasters, they just allow you to download successive beta versions of ever-better toasters.

If Oracle, Sun, Netscape and Novell made toasters...
They'd re-engineer the old fashioned 'dumb toaster', rename it the Network Toaster (or NT) and hope like hell.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters...
They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Tandem made toasters...
You could make toast 24 hours a day, and if a piece got burned the toaster would automatically toast you a new one.

If Thinking Machines made toasters...
You would be able to toast 64,000 pieces of bread at the same time.

If Sony made toasters...
The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Intel made toasters...
Their ever-popular Complex Toaster Chip Set (CTCS) would double in power every 18 months, whilst still remaining compatible with the original 2-hole drop-sided toaster. Each toaster now requires its own individual exhaust fan.

If Motorola made toasters...
Motorola's Reduced Toaster Chip Set (RTCS) provides infinitely faster processing of each individual toast instruction. However, it toasts only two molecules per instruction. The PowerToaster (see below) should be a huge step forward.

If Lotus made toasters.....
Lotus' GroupToaster is designed to allow all the folks on your street to share the toast-cooking duties. Your allocated toasting day is Wednesday.

If Computer Associates made toasters...
CA recently acquired the ultimate toaster. They will be re-releasing it in two years as a washing machine.

If Symantec made toasters...
They don't actually make toasters, but can provide you with toast compression, debugging and backup tools.

And finally, two views of the classic argument:

If Microsoft made toasters...
Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would :

• weigh 15000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop),
• draw enough electricity to power a small city,
• take up 95% of the space in your kitchen,
• claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you want your toast to be,
• and secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them.

Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters...
It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years earlier.

or...

If Microsoft made toasters...
All the other toaster manufactures would complain because, whilst their toasters might produce better toast in a given situation, they don't have the ability to sell their toasters as well as Microsoft does. This really isn't a problem because virtually no-one really wanted to use these toasters anyway. Eventually Microsoft will ship a full 32 crumb clean toaster for the kitchen benchtop market, but they are waiting until the home cooking market starts buying bigger benchtops. The BackBench toasting group has developed a great toaster, but cooks complain because it is too easy to use and this implies that business kitchens don't really need these highly paid toaster administrators.

If Apple made toasters...
The toaster would be really easy to use but it would cost 3 times as much as the equivalent Microsoft toaster. Apple toaster users would continually bleat that their toaster came out first, and is far better, whilst stuffing a loaf of bread into those people who mention Xerox as the actual people who developed the technology. Apple toasters can be used by virtually anyone but they are very slow, and depending on the bread you use, you will be required to have the right version of ToastOS (white bread requires 7.01.9.34 whilst brown requires 7.01.9.46a - unfortunately this breaks white bread but it will be solved with the delivery of the PowerToster based version).

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