How long did CP/M have a hold before MS-DOS became a thing

[Quagmire]

There are articles about this in contemporary magazines and they generally referred to this sort of thing as “grey market”. This kind of thing was still going on into the 2000’s; a lot of companies (Fry’s electronics, for instance) had some legally dubious policies where they’d sell you an OEM copy of Windows XP consisting of a disc and a sticker for a *substantial* discount if you bought it at the same time as almost any piece of hardware. You can call that “retail” too, but… was it really?

I mean, it was definitely not *impossible* to pay money for a copy of DOS. Companies like IBM and Compaq sold boxed DOS separately for upgrades, etc, and it’s not like they carded you. The first XT clone my family owned (which we bought lightly used) came with a boxed copy of IBM DOS 3.1, but the previous owner had yoinked a copy of GW-BASIC from a Compaq DOS disk because IBM DOS came with the version of BASICA that relied on BASIC in ROM.

That OEM retail thing is still going on. Earlier this year I bought a legal copy of what I thought was W10, and it was, but the when the setup completed it was actually W11. Turns out it's actually an Enterprise setup.

 

[Unknown_K]

Some places were selling legit W7 OEM serials as Windows 10 because they worked.

Most of the 386 and up motherboards I used to buy new back in the day from magazines were plain boxed OEM ones which had all the disks but not retail boxes, same with video cards. The only time you really seen retail video cards were at computer shows and they were more money.

 

[cj7hawk]

Some places were selling legit W7 OEM serials as Windows 10 because they worked.

If it works, it's legit. That's Microsoft's position.

I don't think Microsoft care too much about the few people who get a good deal through a clever way. They probably know exactly how many of them there are.

I don't imagine anything would shake them except for losing a key element of marketplace OS requirements. A few things might shake that up too. AI, VR/AR, Mobile services.

If you think about it, Microsoft has been worried about mobile services for a long time, but it's an area they simply don't do well in.

Since it's a relevant question, are "Windows Mobile" devices considered "Vintage Computers" yet?