-Digital Research launched their [DR-DOS], which was better and cheaper than [MS-DOS] 5 and received favourable reviews all around. [Microsoft] then released a beta of Windows 3.1 that produced a warning message when run under [DR-DOS], and announced [MS-DOS] 6, which would do [DR-DOS] did and more. In reality, [MS-DOS] 6 was vapourware at the time, and it is questionable whether the materialized product was better than [DR-DOS]. However , everyone was saying that [DR-DOS ] is great but you may have problems running Windows on it, and together with a dealer package designed to make it cheaper to bundle [MS-DOS] and Windows , [DR-DOS] was dead in the water. This may have been the making of the [Microsoft] monopoly. 

-AMSTRAD was a UK consumer electronics manufacturer who product design rationalization allowed them to sell decent electronics at rock-bottom prices. When they decided to launch a range of home consumer [PC]s, they found a 35W [PSU] to be sufficient even with a HardDisk and tape streamer attached (low end [PC]s of the time usually came with twin floppy drives), so they decided to upgrade the monitor [PSU] and supply the entire computer from it . Since there was no [PSU] in the computer case and its electronics only dissipated about 20W, AMSTRAD PCs required no fan in the case and so were quieter. They were a great success -- so great that they began to find their way into offices where equivalent 'traditional' models typically cost 50-100% more and made a lot of noise. So the [FUD] spread: "The AMSTRAD has no cooling fan! With a hard disk it'll melt! Your crashes are because your AMSTRAD is overheating!" That was easily refuted since AMSTRADs worked well, and the case would be cool even after using them all day. New customers were still getting scared away because AMSTRAD PCs had no fan when all others did. So in the end AMSTRAD fitted useless fans in the back of the case where the PSU normally goes, and everybody was happy. People in the know cut the wires to the fan and never had any problems, but the majority just accepted the constant fan noise as a necessity.