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Free-PC Bites the Dust
Jade & eann write, "Not too long ago, we signed up for Free-PC, mainly to see if we could find a way around their ads. :) It ends up we just had to be patient. After the merger with emachines, they've discontinued the FreePC program and their Internet service this past week: the details are here. If you have one of these systems, it's now yours to keep. They're not even bothering to have people send back the machines."
Anyone care to find out if Linux or Free BSD will run on one of these beasts?
It somehow seems a proper thing to do.
>i think of it now as the pinnacle of consumer internet business model madness....R.I.P.
>Theses types of companies really will not make it in the long term that just try to get users
>with no idea of what value they provide or why anyone should use them...
I don't know that you're right, there. I think they did have a good idea, they just got out-competed. Outfits like NetZero or Altavista are proving that better-financed operations will probably succeed using similar (some would say opposite) financing methods. And as far as I'm concerned, I had no beef with them (sheesh, why not have some advertiser I've never met pay for my internet? They pay for my TV). There's probably still room for more variations on this business model as PCs get stripped down to "internet appliance" levels and the cost of buying and keeping paying customers becomes prohibitive.
The overweening commercialism AOL model may grate on Slashdotters, but it's been very successful. And there seem to be millions of potential customers who are perfectly happy with that model. Let 'em have it...
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
If you were to get one of these free pc's, you should follow their wishes.
By bypassing the ad's, you are effectively stealing from them. The only other moral option is to not take part in the promotion at all. But since morality is scarce in the world, the company goes under. Imagine how many people who couldn't afford a pc, being able to get one. They would simply have to trade their time to watch ads in return. Its a simple exchange.
It's not "free"
Its only an exchange of a different commodity.
They also have the option not to take part in the offer.
It's sad that an idea such as this goes down the toilet.
I don't support it, but I think it should be available for those you do.
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Full version: Pay for it.
Free version: Agree to have ads *in the software's window*
Free version with no ads: Fewer features.
With "free hardware incl. ads" going down the drain, I wonder if Eudora's business model will be more successful.
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You may like my a cappella music
Does anyone know when this announcement was made? February 14 has already come and gone, so either this is old news or they really didn't play nice with their customers on the email part -- it couldn't be too hard to set up a temporary forwarding service. I suppose they just expect their customers not to complain after getting to keep the machine for free, eh?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
This is a sign of bigger things to come. Granted, this was a dumb idea to begin with, but it's an example of how paying for everything with advertising doesn't always work. Yes, it does work often, take broadcast television for example, or radio, but it can also fail miserably. Just think of all these wonderful internet services that we enjoy free of charge, possibly providing only a modicum of information about ourselves. Now think about how many of those companies are making money. Some of them that are not may still, but some of them will be doomed just like FreePC. We might have to *shudder* pay for things. That might require *shudder* identifying ourselves. Anonymity as we know it could be ending. Anarchists of the world unite!
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
While I can't directly comment on your case, I have worked on a couple dozen shared-memory SiS SS7 mobo's with the same problem. The odd display lag was fixed by going to good PC100 memory. Yes, the memory is only ever clocked at 66, (same as the retarded AGP implementation) but most of the 'PC66' out there is pure crap.
That or disable the onboard video and stick a PCI videocard in it.
.sig: Now legally binding!
I saw a documentary the other day about a soup kitchen in Silicon Valley.
.com startups.
.......
.It's boast was that its clients had the highest IQs amongst 'down and outs'. Most of these people were either coders who had burnt out, been put out to grass (for being too old), or had lost their shirts (and houses) in failed
Reading this article, it figures. Wonder if I saw any Free PC execs in the queue ?
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
The problem with shareware was that too many not-so-good programs were distributed that asked for far too high prices. These died out and only few shareware authors remained, but those that did are alive and well.
The same thing is happening on Palm Pilot now. There are a lot of small hacks that ask for a ridiculous 50$ registration fee. Those will fade and be forgotten, but those other Palm shareware software applications, those that are worth registering, will continue to exist.
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You may like my a cappella music
Right. And they already do. Just look at billboards around you.
An increasing number of billboards say "your ad could be here!" these days. Sometimes you will see posters for charity. these posters are not free advertisement by the billboard owner to the charity organization. These are just a way to hide that this billboard was not sold for "normal" advertisement.
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You may like my a cappella music
It was announced several weeks ago. I recall reading about it in NYT's "Circuits" section. I don't know why I didn't submit it.
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"
Karma: T-rexcellent.
The things that people don't get is that advertising viewership has always been the same.
Let's take a look at the traditional model vs. the internet model for a moment. The traditional model (television/radio) sends out advertisements to the viewership in hopes that it will boost product sales. The internet does the same, except that they look for website readership. So what's the real difference? Website click-throughs can be tracked. TV ads cannot.
Advertisers assume that if an ad is played during a show that people watch, then the people see it. You and I know this, but the Advertising exec's have yet to get it. Websites have the technology to realize that this is absolutely false. Almost nobody watches ads, TV or otherwise, but until there is a way to track TV views physical viewing and comprehending of an ad (designated by a click-through online), the execs will never know that the ads they spend so much money on are simply not effective.
Anybody use this freewwweb service? I signed up
for it last week (under Windows), and have yet
to see an ad, or even receive an advert email.
I was even reading on an NG where people use the
service under Linux.... How the hell do these
people make money? Is my Windows install messed up
or something? I figured on having to look at some
kind of ever-present floater ad, like I hear
Netzero, etc, uses. I'm not bitching, mind you...
I just find it a little strange in this day and age
of ever-present advertising that I'm getting
something for *free*, no strings attached. Am I
going to be tracked down, and brainwashed into
joining a Seinfeldian cult of carpet cleaners?
Boot to DOS, cd into Program Files, FreePC (IIRC). Locate the Freepc executable and delete it. Machine will boot 98 normally & you'll have to set up a dialup networking option. While you're at it, have a look at config.sys/autoexec.bat to get rid of the stupidities. When you're in Doze, be sure to get rid of all the stupid Compaq maintenance/troubleshooting nonsense- the machine is actually pretty nice once all the garbage is unloaded.
Gregm
I reported this 2 weeks ago when I got notification from E-Machines that it was being discontinued.....why is it I find I am always ignored by the people who run Slashdot?
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
If your submissions are any good, lots of other people will also be submitting them, and eventually in about 2 weeks one of them will luck out and get a story in :)
that, and the audience they attracted were (no offense to those here who may have gotten them) bottom feeders... If they're going to get a free celeron 333 system with a 15" monitor with a free internet account and try to ignore the ad window, that's not really a market that many advertisers really *want* to reach.
That page has a few executables for removing the ad software from the machines.
The reason they took people's credit card information was because they wanted insurance against people breaking it, or not using it often enough (i.e. not seeing the ads often enough to make money for Free-PC). I don't have the paperwork here, but the agreement was that if you broke your Free-PC or didn't use it enough, they would take the computer back from you. However, if you wanted to keep the computer, you could buy it from them. The price you would pay was on a sliding scale based on how long you had it. For example, if I had the machine for a year, but they wanted it back because I didn't use it, I could elect to buy it from them for, say, 50% of the market price. If I had it for 2 years and I wanted to buy it, I would only pay maybe 15% of the price. Eventually, after three years (I think) the price would fall to $0 and the machine was free for you to keep at no cost.
www.poak.net
This may be slightly off-topic.
Can you distinctly remember one internet ad that really stuck in your mind like a tv ad sometimes can do? Such as the bud commericals. I really can't. Is this because of the lack of quality of the ads? or the medium? somthing to think about.
Actually, advertising is a rather exact science. There is one parameter to be maximized: profit. If a company invests in advertising, and this increases sales enough to bring more profit than what the advertising cost, it worked.
Profit is the only parameter that matters to the advertiser. However, it's a different matter to the broadcaster. TV networks are _very_ interested in demonstrating to their advertisers what the audience was. They do not try to infer that any of the viewers actually *saw* those ads. What they want to do is to show what share of the total number of customers saw their program, compared to other advertisements. Remember that companies usually don't rely on a single medium for their ads. What audience research methods try to do is evaluate the relative merits of different media. Counting clicks in internet banners is a relatively easy and accurate method of evaluating this.
Moderators, take note:
1)Read the moderation guidelines before moderating anything
I think this one eluded me till now. it would always be nice to have a free PC :), even if its to late, I was wondering what were the complete specs on the machines that they were supplying I heard someone mention K6-2 chips, could anyone tell me the complete package of what they "gave" to people hardware wise? thnx in advance
I snipped out the links because they contained my user id. Subject: FREE-PC PROGRAM TO BE DISCONTINUED
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Dear david,
As part of our recent merger with eMachines, we have decided to terminate the Free-PC program. It was a difficult decision for us, but it's important for us to focus our resources on providing new desktop software applications for eMachines PCs.
As a result, we are going to transfer title of your PC to you. This means that the PC is now yours free and clear. We will be destroying your credit card information, and we will be sending you written confirmation of this as well as the title transfer. We are also including instructions at the conclusion of this email so that you can remove the Free-PC Resource Center (the advertising display and utility buttons) from your screen. Of course, your warranty is still valid, and you can continue to receive technical support on your PC by dialing the appropriate number below:
For Compaq Computers: (281) 927-5272
For Dell Computers: (888) 560-8324
As part of this change, we will be discontinuing our free Internet access service effective February 14, 2000. Between now and then, we encourage you to look into alternatives for connecting to the Internet. We'd like your transition to be as smooth as possible, so we've listed a few of the most popular free Internet service providers below, along with links to Web pages where you can sign up for their service. We'll also be sending additional information on each of these providers in separate emails. After February 14, our local dial-up numbers will no longer work. At that time, all @freepcmail.com accounts will also be shut down. All of the Internet service providers listed below can provide you with new email addresses. We encourage you to notify your family, friends and associates with whom you correspond about your new email address prior to February 14.
AltaVista
snip
BlueLight
snip
WorldSpy
snip
For those of you who specifically requested that we send you occasional offers or information on particular subjects you were interested in, we will continue to pass along those offers as they come in. In fact, those offers may become even more attractive as we are able to negotiate even better deals now that we are representing literally millions of eMachines users as well. As always, if you find that these offers are no longer of interest, there are instructions within each email on how to remove your name from the mailing list for that topic.
Finally, we would very much like to stay in touch with you and ask your opinion about the new software programs we are designing. If you would be willing to occasionally look at new programs and give us feedback, please click on the following link mailto:betatest@emachinesinc.com to send us an email letting us know.
It has been our sincere pleasure to provide you with your Free-PC. We hope you will continue to get many hours of enjoyment from it. If you have any further questions, please visit our Web site at snip
Sincerely,
eMachines Customer Support
**INSTRUCTIONS FOR REMOVING YOUR FREE-PC RESOURCE CENTER**
*Be sure you have signed up with a new Internet service provider before you do the following!*
1. Turn on your computer.
2. When the red COMPAQ or blue DELL logo appears, immediately press and hold the left SHIFT key.
3. Keep holding down the key until you see the message "WINDOWS is running in safe mode".
4. Release the SHIFT key, and click on the "OK" button.
5. Once the computer has completely turned on, double click the icon "My Computer".
6. When the "My Computer" window opens, double click the folder called "Program Files".
7. Delete the "PC" folder by left clicking it so that it is highlighted and then press the "DELETE" key on the keyboard.
8. Click "OK" if prompted.
9. Click the "START" button on the lower left side of your screen, select "Shutdown" and restart the computer.
-------------------------------------------------
Although we sent this e-mail to you, eMachines makes no warranties or guarantees about the products or services advertised. If you do not wish to receive special offer emails from eMachines, click here snip to unsubscribe or update your interest profile.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Here's what I don't get. If someone can't afford a computer and an internet connection (That's about 300$ to start with and 13.95$/month) then how is this someone a viable target for advertising! I mean how much money can this poor person spend on the products advertised on his screen(to make up for the cost of the computer and the internet connection) if he can't even afford that 300$ computer! This idea doesn't work for poor people. It works for people who have the money, but wouldn't bother otherwise.. Maybe all the poor people got one of these and the advertisers didn't get anything in return(That 300$ they had to spend on the computer).. maybe it got discontinued because of this..
I signed up to get one of those just after they started the program.. I got an e-mail to sign up again a couple of months ago, which I did.. Still never got the system... Oh well. Missed the boat.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
They wanted your credit card info because the computer was "worth" $500 the day it was delivered to you. Every month that you abided by their usage policy, it would be "worth" $10 less. So after a year, the computer would be "worth" $380... meaning that if you didn't abide by the usage policy and they wanted the computer back, you could either ship it back to them (at your expense) or pay $380 for it. Eventually, the $10/month would add up your owning the computer free and clear.
Work is for people who lack the imagination to play.
yes, there will always be cracks around the banner ads.
.dll that makes the banner ad window not display.Which isn't to say people won't make the cracked .dll version anyway; a lot of the time defeating copy protection is done sheerly for the challenge and fun of it, not to actually use the program in question. Basically the more complex the copy protection is to break, the more interesting to break it is and thus the more likely it is to get broken by somebody. I know this one old guy who's been an expert at cracking software protection since he started doing it on the apple //.. these days he actually goes and buys all his software legally, but once he's bought it he goes and finds or figures out a way around the copy protection, just because that's more fun than actually putting the real S/N in the dialog box.
but the thing is they [qualcomm] aren't exactly _losing_ anything by releasing a banner ad version. look at it this way; anyone who would be willing to download a crack for the full w/ads version so they didn't have to look at the banner ads would be just as willing to just warez the normal, pay full version with no banner ads by default.
in fact this kind of person has probably _already_ warezed the normal full version, and is unaffected by the announcement of the banner-ad version.
anyway i'm sure it's easier to write an s/n generator for the full version than a cracked
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
FreePC failed for the same reason that any number of web startups are going to fail. They gave away PCs to just anybody, hoping that the add click through rates would pay to support the business. There is no way this will work unless you either have a truly gigantic audience, or a small targeted audience that you can also target adds to. You really have to have adds that your targets are likely to click on, rather than just radom stuff you are trying to sell them. An execellent discussion of this is in one of Robert Cringley's recent columns at. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000203
He describes a company he consulted with that had a very similar business model to FreePC and failed in a very similar way.
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't even paid attention to the fact that Slashdot had ads in the first place. No joke.
The advertisement industry is dying in part because of the Internet, but not because advertising is cheap. The industry is dying because many of the people who actually buy things are using the Internet. Yet these very same people have gotten so completely sick of the ads that they ignore them. Eventually these people get sick of privacy-violating trash like Doubleclick, loads of cookies being blasted into their machines, annoying web sites which are purposefully designed so that you can't back out of them in Netscape, web sites which open new windows for no reason, annoying animated GIFs, porn advertisements, stupid pop up ads, USENET spam, and Email spam.
Not only do I block advertisements, but I make value judgements on companies based on how annoying their ads are. If it's related to computers and they do something that really grates my nerves, I will never buy from that company if I have a choice. If they're popping up stupid ads in new windows, I will not give my business to that company.
In some cases the ads are offensive. In many cases the ads are stupid. In almost all cases the ads are annoying. In the majority of cases the ads take up far more bandwidth than they're worth. Therefore, I block dedicated ad sites using Junkbuster. I block cookies except from some sites. I don't visit sites which are incompetently designed (e.g. using Java all over the place for no good reason) or which are designed to be annoying (e.g. opening every clicked link in a new browser window). If I keep seeing the same ad many times, I block that ad specifically.
If the advertisement and website industries don't like this, then they can fix the problems without violating my privacy. I don't know how they'll do it, and I don't want to waste the energy thinking about it. Only very rarely do I buy a product because it's advertised on the TV or radio, and I have never bought a product bceause of an annoying pop-up or banner ad.
This, methinks, is totally out of bound with the prevailing sentiment- but I think the advertising thing has been blown a little out of proportion. I hate annoying and intrusive ads, and I really hate spam email... but generally advertising does have a useful purpose. Namely, to let me know about things I might want. While I am scared shitless of people having too much personal information about me, I can't say that the ostensible goal - that is to customize ad messages to the people who are most likely to benefit from them - is all bad. I mean... i think most of us spend a huge portion of our time buying stuff and thinking about buying stuff... and if people want to let me know about how to buy stuff i want more or are paying less for then I'm a little disingenuous to bitch endlessly right?
It's more the privacy issues and the annoying/intrusive stuff that everyone has a problem with methinks. I mean... advertisements are information... selling stuff makes up the economy... and this is the information economy right? It's making all the geeks rich, we can't complain too much.....
alt.tv is a huge billboard on the corner of the busiest intersection in Melbourne (AU, not FL). It shows video images, sound, and newsbites scrolling along the bottom. The screen is probably at least 30' x 30'...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
How can the banks make something 'illegal'. They could try to say that it was against their merchant policy, but that's about it.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I must say though that I've never actually seen any cow-orker purchase anything, so how can I say why they do it.
All I know is that the stuff I buy has enough technical content that I have to have fairly particular items to do what I want. Or it's chosen for artistic, stylistic reasons (or both, eg; my 8810).
Although it might interfere with my recovery, I can at least admit to having seen the innards of countless Compaqs. Based on my experience, I think that the Compaq engineers are forced to design their systems to the following specifications:
1. Every PC must be built around a new form factor. Designs may not be reused, and should change faster than the model numbers.
2. All power supplies and motherboards must use unique power connectors that vary from model to model.
3. Motherboards may only include three of the following:
a. CPU Socket
b. SIMM/DIMM slots
c. PCI/ISA slots
d. IDE/Floppy connectors
Everything else must be placed on a daughtercard. Extra points for including more than one daughtercard in a system.
4. Adding a drive must involve the removal of one of the following:
a. Motherboard
b. Daughtercard
c. Secret Panel
d. All of the Above (preferred)
5. The case must not be penetrable by anyone (except its designer) in less than 20 minutes. A minimum of five removable panels should be utilized. One of the panels should not look like it could possibly ever be removed. The chief case engineer must have completed a terminal degree in Chinese Puzzle Box Design, with emphasis in Sadism.
6. If opening the case is a tooless operation, three different obscure fasteners must secure everything inside. If case design includes traditional screws, they must be of mixed types and too numerous to count.
7. Access to the drives should be obscured by at least one sliding plastic door. Bonus points for using multiple doors, or very brittle plastics.
8. Every obscure multimedia connector known to man must extend from the front of the case. These are never intended for use, but are mandated by the marketing department. Proceed accordingly.
9. All power control functions should be performed by the software. No button on the front of the case may do anything more drastic than put the PC in sleep mode. Reviving from sleep mode should take longer than a reboot, and cause random errors.
10. Not all systems may follow these guidelines. Select at random which rules apply to your current design. Invention of new design criteria are encouraged, so long as they do not match any published specifications.
Glad you folks are getting these boxen for free. Working on a Compaq plus being forced to view advertising may lead to insanity.
Dell on the other hand tends to make fairly good PCs that use standard components. There may have been a time before the end of the 486 epoch that things were messier. ISTR that early pentiums could have had their own quirks as well, but my memory is a bit foggy. Glad its not my problem anymore...
-BW
First of all, Slashdot doesn't operate on a clickthrough basis, they operate on an impression basis. They get paid for you seeing the ad whether you click on it or not. Therefore, the 1/1000 part doesn't apply in this case. They only will need 109,000 hits per day to pay the 400k
per year, assuming the $0.01 per ad impression
rate, which is typical. Judging by the average
slashdot effect, I'd say that 109,000 hits is
easily in the bag.
However, in the case of clickthroughs, they generally pay 10x as much since they have a better chance to profit from the ad if someone actually clicks on it then if they glance on it and never go anywhere with it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I don't understand it either, but the success of cubic zirconia jewellery sold on the Home Shopping Channel would seem to prove us both wrong. Who buys tacky crap from the Franklin Mint ? Maybe it looks nicer in trailers or something, but it certainly isn't me buying it.
Poor people still spend money -- and much of it is spent on trash.
well, that's a pretty retarded way of looking at the demise of "wonderful" shareware. did you ever think that if a concept can't stand up to the fact that there are HUGE numbers of people in the world that have absolutely no problem with acting "dishonestly" if it's goign to benefit them (and, at the same time, not goign to involve taking a large risk), then the concept is weak and doomed to die?
what makes shareware so wonderful? that it _assumes_ everyone is honest? that's a tragic flaw in the concept, not a strength. same goes for free-PC's-if-you-watch-our-advertizing. terrible, terrible idea to base your business on the assumption that everyone in the world is making decisions based on the moral values that you employ.
it's only sad to the people who don't take advantage of situations where it's easy to get away with something. why should your "morality" dictate the choices I make? if you leave yourself wide open to being taken advantage of, you deserve what you get.
hmm, ran out of letters in the title :)
Speaking from my observations of people while practicing law for five years, the real dividing line between the middle & lower slasses is not income, but the planning horizon--and part of this comes from how you were brought up.
For the middle class, saving, grabbing the better price, and a lng planning horizon is just part of life. "impulse" purchases exist, but in smaller quantities. Buy the $100 package now (even though it means doing without something else) rather than spend $10/month for a year. Plan your income over several months, rather than paycheck to paycheck (thought this isn't necessarily possible).
I struggled taking economics (I have a Ph.D and am a professor of the subject) because of the notions of "rationality"--it just doesn't describe how a large portion of the population acts. We make models that describe how behavior changes when the interest rate changes, but for those who carry balances on credit charge, it's not the interest rate that tends to matter, or the price of the object, but the monthly payment. Taken to the extreme, $30/month forever looks better than $50 once.
About once a month, I had the same conversation about Sear's cards with prosepective bankruptcy clients (many of whom didn't understand why *I* wouldn't let them make payments).
"Here's my Sears bill, but it's wrong. It's the same as when I bought it two years."
"How much do you pay each month."
"THe payment they show me."
"That's the minimum payment. And you have a late charge every month."
The minimum payment is 2%, the interest rate 1.75%. That's a 400 month amortization schedule . . . (actually longer, because the payment drops over time).
They blink. And there aren't many places where you find larger concentrations of folks annoyed by blinking than here.
I don't block ads per se. I block anything that blinks at me . . .
if I put myself into a situation where it is likely that I will get shot and I'm not wearing a bulletproof vest, I would be at least partially responsible for any injuries I sustained.
if you go driving around with no seatbelt and I slam into your car and you die, don't you think you're somewhat at fault?