Slashdot Mirror
Free IBM Computers For UK Households
Albanach writes "The Scotland on Sunday newspaper is reporting that UK firm Metronomy are offering 200,000 IBM PCs free of charge to UK households. Of course, there is a catch - advertising. Accepting the terms and conditions will get users a free IBM PC running Windows XP, but they will also be required to watch three minutes of TV style advertising for every hour of computer use and undertake to use the PC for a minimum of 30 hours per month."
"The economy in the U.K. is horrid right now. Nobody has any money or work and everyone is on welfare."
Oh, come on, it's not that bad. If people have no money, how come house prices have risen by about 40% in the last two years ?
"What use is advertising to "poor" people if they can't buy most of the crap you are hawking?"
Come off it, this is still a pretty wealthy country, on world-wide basis. It remains to be seen whether this is a good idea, but I'm sure IBM have done their sums, and a bit of research.
"I would have picked Germany, at least they have money. Seig Heil!"
Stop being a prick.
"Oh, in case you are wondering I'm British."
Yep - and the kind of Brit that the rest of us are ashamed about.
What does a cheap PC cost? $299? $200? If I offered you $200 would you take it? I hope you would.
/. readers, they're not for our parents either. These are for people who know *nobody* who knows about computers. All they know is that it's 2003 and everybody is supposed to have a computer in their home. And this one is free. It's like a free gift of $200. And they have to watch some ads. For you and me that's a dealbreaker but not for some people.
These PCs are not for
Get off your high horse. Some people *like* the idea of a free couple of hundred dollars. It's nice that you don't but don't condemn other people for liking free money.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
In much the same way that they get TV shows in return for those shows being periodically interrupted by advertisements.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Depends on what you're advertising. If you're selling luxury cars or high end home cinema systems then probably not. If you're selling soap powder, high interest loans for people with debt problems or tins of baked beans then probably you would. Also bear in mind that there will probably be some sort of spyware either in the PCs or in the adverts themselves that will allow the people sending the ads out to target the ads. If they see someone searching the web for bridging loans then their next ad break will probably contain at least one ad for a finance comapny or a debt councelling service, if they spend at lot of time on the Autotrader web site then their next ad break will have an advert for "Yes! Car Credit". A targeted and well defined audience for your ads, being able to get your ad infront of people who you already know are interested in your product, is a total dream for advertisers.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Well...because we can, and it makes an interesting afternoon...:)
But damn, people. All the suggestions of "2nd hard drive" "boot into Knoppix" "VMWare and run XP in the background" "hack this, hack that"
WHY BOTHER?
This machine is not aimed at you, nor anyone you know( ok...maybe your granny. but if you were a good grandson, you'd have hooked her up by now.). This is aimed at the current non-PC people. And as a way to get them into the virtual world, it's OK.
If/when a way is found to circumvent the adware, phone home routine, etc...the advertisers will get no return on their money. One by one, they will pull out, Metronomy will kill the program for lack of funds, and a lot of people will never get their free PC. The only ones that may possibly benefit will be the ones that get in early, as they may be allowed to keep the machine after Metonomy goes under.
Let's leave this one alone to sink or swim on its own accord. Personally, I think it'll sink, but we don't need to push it off the end of the pier.
There were a couple of companies that tried this. I got a free computer through FreePC.com back in '99.
I had just gotten out of college and had no computer at the time (and was pretty broke)... plus I had a strong suspicion that the company would go out of business... so I signed up on FreePC.com and got a free Compaq Presario.
Not a great computer, mind you -- 32 meg ram, 2 gig harddrive (I think.. maybe 1.5), 333 mhz cyrix processor, win 98, dial-up internet access included. But I added another 56mb RAM to make it useable and used a shareware tool called WinSniper to hide the ad windows (which were in a border around the screen, at all times). I still didn't have the whole screen to work on, which was unfortunate, but I didn't want to disable the software altogether, since it reported back to their site when I logged onto the internet.
So it was a subpar experience... but after a few months the company folded (as I had expected), I removed their software, and that was my computer for a year or two. Now it's retired. I keep meaning to install some variant of Linux on it, but never quite get around to it.
Anyway, this British program sounds like a similar scheme... I'm hoping they did a lot of research into why their predecessors failed so miserably before they launched this company. Yes, computers are cheap, but you need to get a lot of ad revenue to cover salaries for all the *support* personnel you will need. Plus, the demographics they're hitting are all bass-ackwards; advertisers want to pitch to people who are ready to *spend* money on new stuff... NOT people who are willing to suffer just so they can *avoid* paying a few hundred bucks for an inexpensive computer. Think about it.
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There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.