Version 5.0 of Microsoft's flagship spreadsheet program Excel came out in
1993. It was positively huge: it required a whole 15 megabytes of hard drive
space. In those days we could still remember our first 20MB PC hard drives
(around 1985) and so 15MB sure seemed like a lot. By the time Excel 2000 came
out, it required a whopping 146MB ... almost a tenfold increase! Dang those
sloppy Microsoft programmers, right?
Wrong.
In 1993, given the cost of hard drives in those days, Microsoft Excel 5.0
took up about $36 worth of hard drive space. In 2000, given the cost of hard
drives in 2000, Microsoft Excel 2000 takes up about $1.03 in hard drive
space. (These figures are adjusted for inflation and based on hard drive
price data from here.)
In real terms, it's almost like Excel is actually getting smaller!
Joel Spolsky
"Starategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth"
