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.
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 dad was pretty cheap, so eMachines with OS's like Windows ME were my childhood.