On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:33:32 -0500, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote:

On 10/18/2011 9:56 AM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:34:11 -0500, Leonlcb11211@swbelldotnet wrote:

On 10/17/2011 10:45 PM, Jack wrote:
On 10/17/2011 4:20 PM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
Jack wrote:

True, they were found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust act, in
court. My guess is that had them on pins and needles when they opened
the PC/DT market.

They were on "pins and needles" in every market. It wasn't because of the
CDC, and like, suits, though. The '56 consent decree really
handicapped them.
It wasn't removed until '00, or there abouts.

The reason monopolies like MS are bad is by definition,
competition is excluded via control of the market. When competition is
stifled by a monopoly, progress stops, quality stagnates and people
are
forced to pay what the monopoly says they will pay. MS is a perfect
example of this, providing crap at a 30% mark up to over 90% of the
market.

...and just what 90% of the market wants.

And you know this how?

People voting with their wallets, AKA market penetration.You couldn't
give
OS/2 away (sadly) and still can't give Linux away.

It was next to impossible to buy a copy of OS/2. Most every PC was sold
with DOS/WIN installed.


You could NOT get anything else installed unless
you bought from some geek down the street. Retailers did not install
OS/2 or anything else, and if they tried, MS would pull their license or
remove the fake discount MS gave them. Worse, the retailers rarely had
copies of OS/2 to sell, either because IBM didn't provide them copies,
or, because again, fear of MS punishing anyone that sold something other
than MS OS.


You might want to think further back. Initial PC's had no OS installed.

Define "OS". ROM BASIC was installed on all IBM PCs. If "OS" == Disk, then
you're obviously right.

OS that which you entered commands that the computer could understand,

ROM BASIC qualified that far.

yes the one on a disk.

Well, ROM BASIC wasn't on a disk. ;-)

Back in the mid 80's PC/DOS not to be confused with MS/DOS was a very
common OS that came with many if not most, if they were not IBM PC's.
My ATT 6300 came with that software. Also, many comnputers back then
only had floppy drives, a 10 meg HD was a $500 option,

Early PC/DOS *was* MS/DOS. There was a split, later, but up until at least
V3, they were identical. The best version was IBM's DOS7.

Don't doubt that since both were nearly identical.

There were a few commands, and later shells that differed. Just enough to
differentiate the two. OTOH, there was a pretty big difference between MS/DOS
6.x and PC/DOS 7.x.

IIRC MS/DOS was only coming on IBM and Windows did not start showing up
on PC's until hard drives were common and version 3.0 came out.

IBM sold PC/DOS. Some dealers may have sold MS/DOS instead. There were
Windows versions before 1.0, but didn't sell well.

Really, I thought that IBM was only coming with the MS version.

PC/DOS was IBM's brand for DOS. After 3x (IIRC) they were rather different
things.

I do recall buying a different OS back then that was about $25 IIRC.

Which OS? IIRC, PC/DOS was about $50.

I really cannot remember for sure but .... DR DOS may be??? I guessing
here. I did not use it past trying it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS

Could be, later. Later on, DR-DOS was free and was often shipped with tools.