re: Few large boxes, many small boxes...

Good points, but I contest the "because YOU wanted it, but the LARGE BOXES" part.

Twenty+ years ago if one wanted to use computers in a small or medium size business the mainframes (and minicomputers) were too expensive. God help you if you wanted a real operating system on your home computer.

In 1990 I learned a lot about UNIX (Sun OS) at Uni, saw it was much better than DOS/Win3.x. I called up Sun and asked what a workstation would cost me. The answer was from $12000Cdn up, depending on the features I wanted!

I plumped for Slackware on a 486 instead. It wasn't the most full featured OS, but it did the job. The machine - a Dell - cost me about $2000.00Cdn.

There was a solid monetary reason why mainframes and workstations got overtaken by PCs.