On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Manar Hussain wrote:

> >If anyone is interested in a zip disc of everything needed to install let
> >me know and I might be able sort something out.  Note that this is just an
> >idea but depending on interest I might do it.  For now though I suggest
> >people wait till AW97 and the CD. 
> 
> Doesn't a ZIP disk cost a fair bit more than a Gold CD. Or even for that
> matter - doesn't a Gold CD cost less than one way postage of a zip disk?
> About the only advantage of ZIP disks I reckon is the fact that more people
> can write ZIP disks than CDs ...

I'm not too sure on this, but Having a quick look at a price list reveals
that zip discs cost about 70.50 for 6 (about 12 pounds each)[1] The time
to copy them isn't much and posting is probably no more than for a CD so
they possibly work out cheaper, and can be reused when they're finished
with.  So at a rough estimate charging 20 pounds would cover time, copying
checking and posting, the buyer gets a zip disc with riscbsd on and can
reuse it when it becomes out of date, whereas it's about 25 pounds for a
CD that can't be reused (although that has the advantage of being harder
to damage/loose the data, and more people have CD-Rom drives...) 

So which is better is harder to say, it's just an idea.

Cheers,
Chris

[1] Price taken from Ian Copenstake Software web pages about 10 minutes
ago, and you can probably get them cheaper from a PC dealer...