If I was calling the shots at Mchip, I'd confine the programming support
    products to the lowest common denominator, DOS programs running on XTs
    with 256k ram and a floppy disk drive, programming adaptors on the printer
    port and still compatible with W95.  That way they'd get the widest
    possible customer base while minimizing their support expenses.

Maybe.  Who wants customers who can't afford $1000 for a new PC every 5
years? (and that's for "current generation" technology.  You can upgrade to
a reasonable 486 system for considerably less (~$90 for motherboard and
cpu), and I bought a used 386sx w VGA and 40Mb hard drive for under $40.))
I don't believe that this would actually minimize support costs, given that:

        1) there are more versions of DOS than of windows.
        2) part of what windows does is insulate you from a
           wider variety of hardware than DOS does.  Writing any
           sort of screen-oriented software for DOS is a pain.
           Serial support sucks too.
        3) people will complain that it doesn't work in their linux
           DOS window, or their Mac SOFTPC window, etc, etc...

BillW