The total cost of the shipment was around $18,000, academy officials said, and the loaded pallet of 10 shrink-wrapped boxes weighed more than 450 pounds.

But the big revenue driver has turned out to be a software product, Traffic Server, which Inktomi sells the old-fashioned way, in a shrink-wrapped box.

Shrinkware is the older name given to consumer-purchased software, because it was often sold in retail stores in a shrink-wrapped box.

HOWARD Christian held up the shrink-wrapped box and regarded the toy robot inside.

The team makes the assumption that the product will be sold in a shrink-wrapped box, and their task is to design the product box front and back.

For example, most computer users do not purchase Windows directly from retail software stores in shrink-wrapped boxes.

The surprise is how few of the sales were shrink-wrapped boxes and how many were preloaded.

First came the shrink-wrapped boxes with a CD-ROM or two inside.

But although it was packaged in shrink-wrapped boxes and sold alongside those products, dBase was never a ready-to-run application.