Saved Altair 4K BASIC

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Tue Nov 10 19:56:06 1998

Sam posted a copy of Mike Hayes' reply to Bill Gates' famous open letter
about piracy of Microsoft BASIC. Mike Hayes wrote:
> I congratulate you and MITS upon being major influences in the founding of
> the computer hobby market. It's too bad you didn't get the profit from
> your efforts that they did from theirs, but that's YOUR fault, not theirs
> or the hobbyists. You underpriced your product.

I think Mike reached exactly the opposite conclusion that I did. Bill
priced BASIC too high. If the various versions had ranged in price from
(say) $50 to $150, instead of $150 to $350, I think he would have found
a lot more takers.

Chuck <cswiger_at_wilma.widomaker.com> posted a price list which contained
(in addition to three versions of Microsoft BASIC) the following item:

> Altair DOS - $500
> w/ purchase - $150

Did that actually exist? Was it written by Microsoft?

What made people think that a good BASIC interpreter and a Disk Operating
System were worth $350 and $500, respectively? Seems ludicrous even in
in 1998 dollars; in 1976 dollars that was utterly insane.

Eric
Received on Tue Nov 10 1998 - 19:56:06 GMT