Fast-forward to 1984 and I don't know anyone who wasn't buying a 64 without a disk drive. I always believed Commodore made the tapes extra slow on purpose to get you to upgrade to a disk. 
In the UK owning a disk drive was uncommon. I never even saw a 1541 in the local shops. Sure hard core sceners had them, but there were far more people that bought a c64 & tape drive because they were cheap and the games were cheap.
I bought an oceanic drive in 1988 as that was the first time I had any real money.
