22 Jun
2001
22 Jun
'01
5:06 a.m.
Prior to 5.00, MS-DOS was, IN THEORY, available only
from OEMs. Yes,
there was such a giant gray market that nobody noticed the restriction.
There appears to have been a 10 year non-competition contract between
MICROS~1 and IBM, wherein MICROS~1 could sell to OEMs, but could not sell
DOS as a retail product. 5.00 was the first version where DOS was
available legitimately as a retail product. It was "NEW and IMPROVED!"
The "NEW and IMPROVED" consisted mostly of bug fixes to 4.00, plus
availability from MICROS~1.
NOTE: 5.00 has met the 10 year rule for over a month now. Windoze 3.10
has 2 more months to go, even for BETA.
Ah yes, DOS 5.0. The last time I felt I got my money's worth from
a Microsoft product. It was SO cool when you were used to whatever
3.3 copies you'd pilfered from wherever. Win95 came close to this
only when fresh out of the box installed with all protected mode
drivers. It was all downhill from there. I bought DOS 5.0
from one of the campus computing organizations at my
grad school.
It was expensive, if memory serves. But worth it.
---
Jim Strickland
jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com
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