pageman has a [dead] reply below linking to http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905109_... — claiming that the price disparity was IBM's doing, intended to drive the cross-platform CP/M out of the market while still 'supporting' it.

It looks like pageman got hellbanned 2 years ago for participating in one of the erlang frenzies. I went to email him about it, but it looks like I'd already done so 1.5 years ago!