In the early days of the graphics business, back when we had Adage displays and huge Tektronix storage tubes and other things that cost large amounts of money, they were bought by the very first high-end CAD users.
If you have lots of money and are very patient, you can get a stereo lithography system, set it up on your desk, build a 3D model of something, push a button, and after an embarrassingly long time, get a piece of plastic that is a 3D, faithful-within-the-resolution-constraints-of-this-device technology.
I remember years ago I heard George Morrow speak, and he said, ``You know, I thought this computing stuff was really complicated, but you've never really done anything until you've punched a hole in a piece of metal.''
I think part of what's happened is that the kinds of things we vendors had the audacity of selling for money four and five years ago are what you expect out of a public domain program now.
Q: A lot of vendors go into, say, the Japanese market, where there's about twelve different operating systems running on PCs and have a hard time getting past that fact--``Do I write for the NEC, or DOS/V, or AX, or...?''