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AOL's $299 PC
cmj writes "Internet.com reports 'Looking to attract households that still aren't online, AOL is offering new customers a $299 PC system if they sign a one-year $23.90 dial-up Internet service contract.' A click through AOL's ecommerce site reveals the the specs as 1.7 GHz Celeron with 256 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, 56K modem, 10/100ethernet card, 17" monitor and Lexmark printer. The PC is running Windows XP, and includes 'AOL Office Powered by Sun'. Also of note is the fact that the $299 appears to be financed at around 22%. The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges. Setting aside the question of whether this is a good deal or not, one has to wonder whether AOL is desperate for new customers and resorting to bribery, or just progressing to the next step of branding. With this action AOL controls everything from the OS to the Word Processor to the web sites their customers browse."
"controling"?
How are they controling you? Do they prohibit you from visiting other sites or installing another OS/Apps? Just because they install some default image, that doesn't mean they're controling what you do with the system.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
AOL is a big company, why don't they just make thier own distro of Linux and slap in this computer???
Well, this might be exploitable by the tech-savvy... especially since I believe AOL has negotiated a branded version of StarOffice to round it out. Keep what you want, put up with the ISP solution for a while. Worth it for a year for many families, I suppose. Whether the retention rate will be sufficient, given AOL's service record (presumably software [i]isn't[/i] going to time out or require frequent net connectivity, though I wouldn't put it past them)... only time will tell.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
The math ( (12*23.90)+299 ) seems to suggest that you can get a $699 computer for $585.80 plus any finance charges.
More like More like $399
$699 will buy a P4 3.0GHz that's better in most other respects too
What year is whoever submitted that in?
Jason
ProfQuotes
I think with them shipping this with StarOffice that ARE that much closer. Word is that they already have an Linux-based distro but have been sitting on it. You would think that with their fortunes failing, this might be a good time to try a new approach. With this $299 deal, I think only MS will make any real profit.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Seems to me like AOL is trying to pursue a strategy (at least in regards to this latest offering) similar to Nintendo's...
Charge cheap for something the user needs to use the company's products, then hope that the customer stays on board and buys more products from the company.
Will this work? I doubt it.. IMO they will lose tons of cash.. But hey, the real beneficiaries of this are the customers, so I'm all for it.
webmaster shirts and more
Not really major super proof of their money hungryness, but Winamp5, which is created by nullsoft, who is owned by AOL time warner is going to have a "pro" version that will cost money.
Being that I sort of know the nullsoft crew, I know they probably didn't like having to do this.
I guess AOL had to make money on those cool CD tins they were shipping out last year.
No, that's not quite what happened. AppleLink was the service that eventually became AOL. E-World was a separate, later attempt at an Apple-branded online service; not least because AOL was already well-established by the time e-World was created, it sank like a rock. This was in the mid-Nineties. Not sure of the exact timeframe, but I know that when I bought my first Mac ca. 1995, it came with e-World preinstalled. I never used it, but it had a neat icon. ;)
Note that I said "online service," not ISP. E-World's mistake, IMO, and the mistake made by the other big players in the online service world at the time (Prodigy, Compuserve, GEnie) was in not taking the Internet seriously enough. They were all advertising themselves on the basis of proprietary content and services at a time when most people wanted to get on this thing they'd heard about called "the Web." AOL pushed (and still pushes) its proprietary content too, of course; but they positioned themselves as a value-added ISP, rather than a proprietary service with true Internet access as an afterthought, much faster than the others, and reaped the benefits.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I have before, it's not too hard at all.
In fact there is a small tutorial on how to connect to AOL with Linux.
I wonder if this offer is valid with AOL Broadband, that way you could be on Broadband, and still have a cheap PC.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
> I guess what I'm talking about are OPTIONS. No, Lindows won't be for everyone either. OTOH, maybe someone would like to have a computer cost $199 instead of $299 and be willing to learn.
It wouldn't be that cheap even without XP. Buying XP as an OEM entitles you to huge discounts, I am positive AOL isn't paying retail for XP. The Walmart PC's aren't even that cheap after Monitor/Printer and they have less ram and cpu speed.
> And what's the big dealio about Lindows defaulting root for the primary user? So what? So does XP! This can now be changed in Lindows 4.0 just as easily as creating a user in XP. Problem solved.
The big deal is that Lindows defaulting to root is worse than XP defaulting to Administrator. Windows "Administrator" is not the same as root on Linux. "System" on Windows is probably closer.
It doesn't take much, especially with all the underlying scriptable languages, to write a quick shell script to own computers. There have been bugs in Mozilla where you can execute stuff remotely, had there been a large installed base of Lindows I assure you that would be much worse of a problem than what went on with a lot of Microsoft Trojans. A user level DDoS would not be able to generate packets nearly as crazy as a root level DDoS.
In addition, being a regular user protects the user from themselves. Most people aren't capable of being an Administrator and the system should recognize that. What's wrong with using a wrapper that asks for the root password, which MUST be set during install, whenever you need root priveleges. It works for Mac OS X.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
And what's the big dealio about Lindows defaulting root for the primary user?
The difference is that one has to install all sorts of third party tools and stuff (i.e. Interix and/or Cygwin) to make an XP machine as powerful and dangerous a box for a cracker to break into and use as an attack base. And people who install Interix and/or Cygwin on their XP box aren't the target demographic that Lindows is marketed at.
So Lindows is basically an OS that provides a powerfully dangerous base for crackers, and marketed and provideed to exactly the last kind of people who should not be bumbling around on the net with such a system.
Actually, it's a rebranded StarOffice, which is a rebranded and enhanced (aka much faster) closed source OpenOffice.org.
I don't think that Windows XP is any better. What I really think is that computers just shouldn't default to root. As someone else mentioned, Mac OS X is the one consumer OS that gets this right: root isn't even enabled by default, and sudo is the only way to act as root without mucking around with NetInfo. If Lindows didn't have that stupid security flaw, it would be a better choice for machines like AOL's.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
They can probably put that machine together for about $200-250.
$200-$250, for which they charge $299. OK, i'm alright with that. Keep in mind, they're buying in bulk and they still have to put the thing together, or pay someone else to. In your own figures you're assuming your time is worth nothing.
Also, you can't go with $200-250 vs. actual income of $408, because then profit is (408-250-(cost of 1 year internet access)). Internet access is not free, not even to AOL. They pay for bandwidth, they pay hosting fees to MAE-east, and, more costly, they pay tech support staff (i've called aol at 4am and gotten someone who actually knew what to do, too - granted this was 4 years ago).
So, no offense, mate, but a comptuer that's got "$200-250" worth of parts + assembly for $300 isn't really all that bad. Especially if it's closer to $250.
~Will
sig?
It comes to prove IMHO that AOL's current positioning in the US market is a "path dependent" phenomenon, coming to be by a succession of (unlikely) historic events, and by no means natural. I do not fear AOL controling or dominating anything. It seems to me the only thing they are trying to do is to control their downhill slide.
One last thing. I thought you would be interested to know that AOL Brasil has a Linux download area, and that they are recommending Netscape 7.0 as a browser. I'm not sure, but I believe this has no parallel in AOL other markets.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
uhhh what's to stop someone from doing 'sudo bash'?
Seems pretty easy to me....
You laugh, but a justifiable argument can be made for such an arangement. A "safe" car[1] with "low cost" of repair[2] for about five years sounds about right.
[1] Less chance of a claim (your health insurance may want in on this).
[2] Less cost to them to have your car repaired.
I visited the website and noticed it looked oddly familiar. Did a whois on it, and it showed up as being registered to online computer merchant tigerdirect.com . It's interesting that TigerDirect isn't mentioned anywhere on the page, nor do they mention it on their main page.
Seems like it's almost more that Tigerdirect wants to sell more machines than AOL trying to get more users.
299pcdeal.com
Domain name: 299pcdeal.com
Registrant Contact:
tigerdirect.com
Domain Admin (lonny.paul@tigerdirect.com)
-
Fax: none
7795 W Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33144
USA
Administrative Contact:
tigerdirect.com
Domain Admin (lonny.paul@tigerdirect.com)
-
Fax: none
7795 W Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33144
USA
Technical Contact:
tigerdirect.com
Domain Admin (lonny.paul@tigerdirect.com)
-
Fax: none
7795 W Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33144
USA
Billing Contact:
tigerdirect.com
Domain Admin (lonny.paul@tigerdirect.com)
-
Fax: none
7795 W Flagler Street
Miami, FL 33144
USA
Status: active
Name Servers:
ns1.domain19.net
ns2.domain19.net
Creation date: 11 Sep 2003 20:56:47
Expiration date: 11 Sep 2004 20:56:47
I have blog like everyone else
Why would AOL care? AOL saves money if you pay $24/mo for the service and don't use it. No support costs. I know this is Slashdot, and hence everything not open source is an evil corporate conspiracy, but seriously...
Its a cheap machine. We know this without seeing it. Maybe they will try to establish a brand and these will be quality PC's. If you're AOL you might figure you'll get 60% retention when the contract expires, 20% who just aren't using it, and 20% who move on to other services. Now think about what it costs to attract new customers to AOL. What it will cost to let those non-traditional users know about the program. What it will cost to support all those non-traditional users
Yeah baby, AOL's going to be riding the gravy train to bankrupcity!
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
OTOH, maybe someone would like to have a computer cost $199 instead of $299 and be willing to learn.
Um... I have negioted deals for XP in bulk before, and, it is not $100 more expensive than Lindows. Windows XP home in bulk does not cost $199 retail or $99 retail that you see in stores. If you buy 10,000 copies you can get it for about $42. I am sure Lindows is cheaper, but not enough to lower the price $100 per unit...
Actually, now I'm starting to wonder how cheap an internet connection IS for AOL. If there are plenty of ISPs out there selling service for $9.99 a month, it makes you wonder what AOL's profit margin is on that.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It worked for my home loan & saved me many 10s of thousands of dollars.
This is right in line with their per-user marketing budget. I remember talking to one of their marketing drones back in my .com days and he babbled on and on that the rule of thumb there is to spend $115 marketing dollars for each user they get. I'd actually be surprised if the $699 computer for $585.80 (~$115 difference) was a stupid coincidence and not a key point on a white board somewhere.
I am heavy Linux user and I bought one.
You ask why? Well, my in-laws need a computer, and they need internet access for that computer.
I could have built them a computer, but it would be hard for me to build something reasonable for a decent price and still pay for Windows XP. Yes, I personally use Linux, but I can't expect the in-laws to use Linux. They have never owned a computer in their life. They are in their 60s and this would be their first computer.
So, they get a decent computer with internet access (which I am paying for) for 1 year with AOL service.
After 1 year, they could switch to the econo-AOL service, or another cheap ISP.