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We ran a 12 million dollar parts room with a DOS/bBase system that would all fit on a diskette.
That's one of the things I detest about Windows software. It's just seems to eat storage space and everything is so bloated.

The system I mentioned above is a database for the local taxi company. It allows them to make bookings, assign drivers, enter fares when done, retrieve notes attached to any job (e.g. directions to find a house), keep track of all the weekly accounting for receiving the company's portion of the fares from the drivers, as well as a whole range of other auxiliary reports and functions. I've just added a section to do monthly invoicing for account customers. The compiled EXE file is still a shade under 200KB (written with Borland's Turbo Pascal 5.5). Last time I checked the system the complete set of data files was averaging about 230KB for the entire database -- And I don't consider that I even wrote the code to be especially efficient in storage space.

It's pretty much the same for the parts database and invoicing system for the place next door (the auto parts store with the bad wiring that I posted in Violations). Full database system to track stock levels, provide ordering lists, lookup of cost/trade/retail prices, barcoding, with on-the-spot invoicing and monthly customer statements, etc. EXE code is less than 120KB, and with about 2500 stock items and an account turnover of several hundred invoices per month the data files are currently using up barely 300KB of disk space.

If quickly written programs which aren't particularly optimized for minimal storage space can do that under DOS, why on earth does it take 2 gazillion bytes just to make Windows execute a "Hello World" program? [Linked Image]