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.
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..)
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.
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.