[LINK] Hard disk storage: 8 GB costs as much as a roll of toilet paper

[Fernando Cassia]

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 2:07 AM, Robin Whittle <rw at firstpr.com.au> wrote:
> Fernando, I don't know enough about the history of OS/2, but a quick
> look at:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2
>
> made me think that the dominance of Windows was sealed once it was
> being sold already installed on PCs, and with most peripheral
> manufacturers creating device drivers for Windows rather than OS/2.

That helped, too.

> Nonetheless, different arrival times of cheaper RAM and better CPUs
> could have changed computing profoundly.

That was my point. IBM spent three years "shrinking" 32-bit OS/2 2.x.
so that it could fit into 4 megabyte RAM systems (run at least). When
Warp 3.0 was released in 1994, it was a big hit, IBM sold millions of
copies, specially to the home users,  but Microsoft had Windows 95
already in the wings and a big vaporware advertising blitz  (PCWorld's
"Chicago, it's here!. See what Windows 4.0 will bring" cover, one year
and a half before Win95 actually shipped).

Had systems shipped with 8 megabytes of ram as the default
configuration by 1992-1994, the choice of  32-bit OS/2 2.x over
DOS+Windows would have been a no-brainer for PC manufacturers.

But that's beside the point. Sorry for hijacking this thread with my
os/2 nostalgia. I just saw the mention on the price of RAM and wanted
to add the snippet about the Japanese fire and ram shortage
incident...

FC