mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) (07/24/87)
[Followups have been pointed to comp.misc.]
In article <406@esunix.UUCP> bpendlet@esunix.UUCP (Bob Pendleton) writes:
<Somewhere along the way IBM noticed that software cost more than the hardware
<and started charging for each piece of software. All other manufacturers
<followed suite. Who knows, the way prices are going maybe someday you'll buy
<the software, and they'll toss in the hardware for free.
It's already happened. Sometime not long after the IBM-PC was
introduced, the price on CP/M-80 boxes fell drastically. To the point
that retailers were giving away *scads* of software with them. In
theory, everything you could want on a small business machine came
with most of them.
Someone noticed that the retail on that software was more than they
were charging for the machine + software, so they started offering a
"free 4MHz 64K 2DDDS drives CP/M-80 portable" (I think it was an
eagle) if you bought the software. Did rather well at it, from what I
recall.
<mike
--
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