Sure, you can go to a real life, brick-and-mortar store and find a box of software. The odds are better, however, that the software you obtain for your computer came over the Internet. Even if you get a “box” of software, it’s tiny and probably contains only a download link and code. Times have changed.

Decades ago, the software box was the big deal.

A default software box size existed. It was about 2½-to-3-inches wide, 7 or 8 inches deep, and about 10 inches tall. It was just about the size of those thick-ass computer books back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Some software boxes were a little bigger. Some were a little smaller. They all had that same software box look-and-feel, as if some developer somewhere along the line had the “ideal size” box and everyone else was compelled to copy it.

Oh, and I’m sure the effort to copy the box was decided upon in a series of active meetings involving middle management types who knew nothing about computers. Some fool in a suit would say, “Lotus 1-2-3 sells really well and their box is this size. If our product has the same size box, it will sell well, too!”

Don’t laugh.

Part of the reason the boxes were about the size of a computer book is that — surprise! — pretty much all of them came with a manual. Yep, real documentation. A nice, thick manual accompanied several floppy diskettes. Other papers and offers filled the box, justifying the size completely.

Eventually, the penny pinchers figured out that manuals cost money and, well, people hate them anyway. So why not save a ton of money by not printing the manual and firing the guy who wrote it? That happened.

Despite losing the manual, the software boxes stayed the same size. At the time, the joke was that Microsoft (or whoever) was selling you a lot of air in the box. The motivation to keep the box the same size was, firstly, that people associated value with size, but more importantly you didn’t want your competition to “push you off the shelf.”

Yeah, that was a legitimate concern.

Software boxes got slimmer when the software started coming on optical discs. You’d still find a lot of air in the box, no manual, and a few offers. The software store was going away, however, so competition was getting smaller and with broadband Internet, it was no longer really necessary to distribute software using physical media.

As a trivial aside, the biggest and heaviest software box I ever purchased was Borland’s Turbo C compiler. The box was nearly the size of a commercial cinder block and just about as heavy. Why? Because it contained a dozen books — manuals and documentation. I hung on to that material for a long time because it was my only C Library reference. So, yes, it was valuable to me — and worth whatever I paid for all that bulk.