In my early days at Elbo I was treated to many conspiracy theories about Windows and DOS.
Well, the "conspiracy" was that Microsoft was trying to move everyone off DOS and onto Windows.
For some reason, crackpots felt it necessary to rant at software store employees about Microsoft's plans for world domination.
Key to these plans was the gradual phasing-out of DOS.
According to these prophets the very existence of DOS somehow threatened
Microsoft's scheme.
When I use terms like "crackpot" and "rant" I'm not stretching the truth even slightly.
These were grown men, usually early middle-aged, that sounded like a college feminist at an anti-Bush rally.
The Microsoft "conspiracy" started in March 1993 with the release of MS-DOS 6.0.
Later in the year they released an update that was labeled 6.2.
Since IBM's version of MS-DOS was 6.1 they had to stay one number ahead.
Yes, consumers fell for this all the time.
If there were two nearly identical products to choose from, the one with the higher version number typically won out.
Microsoft used this same strategy when they upgraded from Office 4.3 to 7.0, one higher than WordPerfect 6.0.
That worked too. A couple years later there would be similar version number battles between Microsoft and Netscape.
One of the new features in MS-DOS 6.0/6.2 was disk compression.
They used a technology called DoubleSpace to do this.
Hard drives used to be small and expensive, a couple of products were released to address this problem by offering drive compression.
The most successful one was Stacker.
Microsoft briefly entertained the idea of buying out their parent company but opted to develop their own disk compression technology.
Stacker sued Microsoft for patent infringement and won on most of their claims.
Microsoft was forced to release a MS-DOS 6.21 "upgrade" that removed DriveSpace.
We were shipped a counter display stand that held about 20 cardboard envelopes containing the "upgrade".
These envelopes held a single 3.5" disk and sold for $5.
Needless to say, they weren't a big seller.
There was also a regular size package to upgrade 6.0 to 6.21.
That one was picked-up by users who wanted SCANDISK (which was in 6.2 but not 6.0) but didn't use DoubleSpace.
By the summer of 1994 Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.22.
This included a non-copyright-infringing compression tool called DriveSpace.
It was also packaged in both $5 envelopes and full-size boxes.
With Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 also in the mix, many customers were left confused.
I distinctly recall one gentleman who was genuinely baffled:
Microsoft had a very generous purchase program for retailers.
We were able to buy virtually any Microsoft program for pennies on the dollar.
Their intent was to get their products in our hands so we could use and recommend them.
Since the average retail employee makes beans they had to offer extremely low prices.
I don't know if they still have this program in place.
This purchase program was key to my eventual exit from retail.
I used it to buy a full version of Visual Basic 4 for $20 in 1996 (original retail price ~$300).
I spent a lot of my free time learning the language and pounding out various small programs.
Despite having no practical experience, I was easily able to get a job as a Visual Basic developer.
People may look at this kind of Microsoft program cynically.
Microsoft wasn't giving away cheap software out of the kindness of their heart; they wanted to make money.
Why is this a bad thing?
Microsoft certainly increased their sales while inadvertently widening the skill set of lowly retail employees.
In my case it was a contributing factor to advancing to a better career, a career that has used countless Microsoft products.
Each side of this equation benefited greatly.
