🚀 go-pugleaf

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 2:16:41 AM UTC-4, Dave Garland wrote:

> If you're asking why buy a computer with bundled software instead of 
> just buying the software for the computer you already had, mostly the 
> buyer didn't have a computer already. At least not one available to 
> the buyer. (At my PPOE, accounting had just bought a mini, but that 
> was only for accounting and nobody else touched it, including the 
> boss.) Osborne's marketing gimmick was, "everything you need except a 
> printer is in the box, you don't need to know anything about 
> computers". Buying software retail wasn't cheap. The original price 
> for WordStar was $495 plus $40 for the printed manual; Visicalc 
> (similar to the SuperCalc spreadsheet bundled with Osbornes) was 
> around $100; I can't find a price for MBASIC (CP/M computers mostly 
> did not have BASIC in ROM). But Osborne's price at $1795 included all 
> that, and even better it was already configured to go with the 
> hardware. CP/M hardware was not standardized except for the CPU chip, 
> you couldn't just buy software and load it in, because every company 
> used a different format for floppies. (I had a program named UniForm, 
> that could read/write/format around 100 different formats, but that 
> was only for soft-sectored disks, not for drives where the floppies 
> were hard-sectored.) And even if you could read the disks, it probably 
> wouldn't work well without telling it things like the escape sequences 
> to move the cursor on the screen, do a highlight, etc. Bundling turned 
> out to be a very successful marketing strategy, and was copied by the 
> competition (other stand-alone single-board CP/M computers like Kaypro 
> and Morrow). (Prices in 1983-ish dollars, multiply by 2.5 for today's 
> dollars.)

In addition to purchasing the hardware and software, there was also
the need to train everyone who would operate the computer.  Today,
we take computer operation for granted since almost everyone knows 
it, but back then, computers were totally new to most people and
they needed training on how to do every little thing.  Anyway, 
just the lost time of employees going to training and then getting
up to speed was an expense in itself.  I don't know if the computer
retailers back then offered training as part of the sale, or if that
was another cost.  (Yes, some users were pretty smart and could
figure out things for themselves, but most weren't like that
and needed to be taught things like how to save data, backup data,
and hit the return key after typing a line.)

There was also the cost, sometimes considerable, of typing in all of
the existing manual records into the computer.  Conversions are rarely
easy.


Until about the early 1970s, IBM bundled operating and application
software with its computers and tabulating machines*.  To fend
off anti-trust efforts, IBM decided to unbundle and sell software
separately.  This resulted in an explosion of software products.  
It seemed that every data center used SYNCSORT instead of the IBM
sort, for instance.

IBM had a detailed accounting package for hospitals, dating
from the 1401 era, and revised for S/360 and later.  AFAIK, it
was quite popular.

* For tabulating machines, IBM had an application description,
with suggested wiring of boards to accomplish various purposes.
For instance, in the 1930s, they had a very sophisticated
accounting system design for railroad needs.  It handled things
like freight car accounting and station revenue and expenses,
even handling things like the station agent selling newspapers
and candy, and rent from rented space.