Tuesday, February 10, 2009

What if software still shipped on 3.5'' disks?

Remember the days when installing a program on your computer required you to use several different floppy disks (usually between 3 and 5) in sequence? Now imagine that CD/DVDs hadn't been invented yet and Internet is still a mirage and you had to install all your programs using these floppy disks that could only store around 1,5 MB. Let's see what that means for current popular programs:

  • The "lightweight" browser Firefox - 36 disks
  • iTunes - 46 disks
  • Adobe Photoshop CS4 - 358 disks
  • Sims 3 - 1760 disks
Now imagine that you would pile up all these floppy disks. Just for the sake of curiosity, the Sims 3 packaging of 1760 disks would be as tall as 19 feet (more or less 5 and half meters).

Have some more interesting items to add to this list? Comments are welcome!

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