Nothing new here. They used to load adware on computers to sell them cheaper in the 90s. Adware and an internet 2 year subscription, and your computer was free ($200 or cheaper depending upon location, income, which company was selling it, etc..)
Yo! I used to sell those computers, working for Circuit City. $400 dollars off, with a 4-year AOL/Compuserve subscription. If you bought the lowest-level eMachines, you could get a new (pretty bad, but still) desktop for $99. Thing is, we did the rebate at the store, not mail-in. So, I mean, wow. Computer for a hundred bucks.
This made it hard to actually make money selling computers, since you made next-to-nothing unless you were selling $1k+ machines plus printer plus printer cable plus paper etc etc. Then came the extended warranties, and it all went to shit anyway.
My niece and nephew's grandma got them an emachine in 99. What a piece of shit, but it worked. Windows 98 was the bomb until Windows Millennium, then XP. That was the best. It's been weak ever since.
With one caveat. The original release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 nearly destroyed XP with consumers. It broke so many things that you might still be able to find mainstream media releases about it. Most of Microsoft's problems with people upgrading come from laziness. The 2nd most common problem comes from people who are terrified of upgrading and losing shit. They can always point to XP Sp2 for that, because they were there, it happened to them, and they are still angry.
Oh yes. My XP computer came with a great photo editor. XP service pack fucked it up, I thought I had a virus, and used the reinstall discs. Gone. The editor was replaced with some basic bitch microsoft bullshit, and had to reinstall the fucking XP 2 thing. Then the endless updates. The virus scanner not working, new scanner, it stopped working, virus after virus. $200 on top of $75 repair cost, it just stopped being worth the fucking effort. God, I hated windows 7 when it came out, and that was only because my mum bought a new HP for my dad and it was on it and it was so fucking different, and basic. No fucking frills or features.
XP was my OS of choice. I'm chugging along with 7.1, but it's harder and harder to keep it going, as support continues to drop off.
I'm sure those super-discounted computers probably exacerbated Eternal September. And I have a feeling people probably weren't so happy 2 years into a 4-year dial-up internet subscription.
Nothing new here. They used to load adware on computers to sell them cheaper in the 90s. Adware and an internet 2 year subscription, and your computer was free ($200 or cheaper depending upon location, income, which company was selling it, etc..)
that wasnt adware, it was promotional software.
Yo! I used to sell those computers, working for Circuit City. $400 dollars off, with a 4-year AOL/Compuserve subscription. If you bought the lowest-level eMachines, you could get a new (pretty bad, but still) desktop for $99. Thing is, we did the rebate at the store, not mail-in. So, I mean, wow. Computer for a hundred bucks.
This made it hard to actually make money selling computers, since you made next-to-nothing unless you were selling $1k+ machines plus printer plus printer cable plus paper etc etc. Then came the extended warranties, and it all went to shit anyway.
My niece and nephew's grandma got them an emachine in 99. What a piece of shit, but it worked. Windows 98 was the bomb until Windows Millennium, then XP. That was the best. It's been weak ever since.
With one caveat. The original release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 nearly destroyed XP with consumers. It broke so many things that you might still be able to find mainstream media releases about it. Most of Microsoft's problems with people upgrading come from laziness. The 2nd most common problem comes from people who are terrified of upgrading and losing shit. They can always point to XP Sp2 for that, because they were there, it happened to them, and they are still angry.
Oh yes. My XP computer came with a great photo editor. XP service pack fucked it up, I thought I had a virus, and used the reinstall discs. Gone. The editor was replaced with some basic bitch microsoft bullshit, and had to reinstall the fucking XP 2 thing. Then the endless updates. The virus scanner not working, new scanner, it stopped working, virus after virus. $200 on top of $75 repair cost, it just stopped being worth the fucking effort. God, I hated windows 7 when it came out, and that was only because my mum bought a new HP for my dad and it was on it and it was so fucking different, and basic. No fucking frills or features.
XP was my OS of choice. I'm chugging along with 7.1, but it's harder and harder to keep it going, as support continues to drop off.
I'm sure those super-discounted computers probably exacerbated Eternal September. And I have a feeling people probably weren't so happy 2 years into a 4-year dial-up internet subscription.
Oh god, yes.
My dad was pretty cheap, so eMachines with OS's like Windows ME were my childhood.