>One of us is misremembering. I seem to recall an interview with Gates and/or Ballmer where they talked about the realization that the cost of 5 or 6 floppies a

>One of us is misremembering. I seem to recall an interview with Gates and/or Ballmer where they talked about the realization that the cost of 5 or 6 floppies at wholesale was insignificant ... I'd feel better if his history was right. Sure, the cost of delivering a single copy of software to a given customer was relatively inexpensive. But Craig is talking about how, in the absence of the internet or other easy customer acquisition and distribution methods, the way you used to get your software to customers was by making thousands of physical copies, boxing them up in a nice shiny box with manuals, and have computer software and electronics stores display your software on their physical store shelves. And that's quite a bite of money to have tied up in inventory even though a single piece of media itself was relatively inexpensive.