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--A PC in every pot
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Aug. 19, 1999 |
Much ado has been made about the free-PC movement, which promises, with Hoover-like grandiosity, to put a computer in every home at bargain-basement prices. Since February, more than a dozen deals have been announced -- from national chains like Circuit City and unknowns like Enchilada -- that offer up white-box or brand-name computers for nominal fees, or free, in exchange for a subscription to an Internet access service. More than 1 million people have already signed up for computers from Free-PC, 250,000 went for a FreeMac -- and that's just the beginning. The popularity of free PCs is galvanizing the computer industry to ponder a near future when computers could literally be as ubiquitous as household appliances. Chasing this new vision, some computer manufacturers are even redesigning their products to look more like appliances -- building stripped-down boxes with button interfaces and one-click access to rudimentary software, like e-mail or calendar programs. The operating system behind those buttons, increasingly, is not Windows, but Be, Linux or Amiga -- alternative operating systems which are known for their simplicity and stability, and are often cheaper than Windows. The "free" (or, to be more honest, "real cheap") PC and computer-appliance market may just give these alternative operating systems a chance to cut into Windows' dominance of the desktop. The first of the free PCs to use alternative operating systems -- the PIA, the iToaster and the Be iDot -- will become available this month. "I do think that the emergence of the appliance market changes the market for operating systems," explains Frank Boosman, vice president of development for Be Inc. "If you have a variety of vendors all over the world building all sorts of devices targeted at all sorts of uses, it's reasonable to expect that different operating systems will have an opportunity on those devices." Remember when the computer industry, just a year or two ago, was crowing about breaking the $1,000 price barrier? Today, they are talking about the sub-$600 PC market; according to various analyst reports, these low-end computers already make up 11 percent to 21 percent of the market, and are growing fast. Other reports rank eMachines, the inexpensive PC company whose computers start at $399 and top out at $799, as the fourth-largest vendor of PCs in retail space. This is the market that the "free PC" companies are stepping into, believing that if they take those prices even lower -- perhaps to the point of "free" -- that they can woo the final 50 percent of American households that don't yet possess a computer. Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch -- manufacturers expect to recover the cost of the PCs, and then some, through other fees. Typically, free PC users commit to a three-year subscription to CompuServe, Prodigy, DirectWeb, EarthLink or one of a host of other ISPs that hope to lock consumers in to 1999 prices. Or, in the case of Free-PC, consumers agree to see ads on the computer desktop and provide market research data in return for a computer. Other companies have settled for selling the computers for $199 to $399; not "free" exactly, but less than half as much as a low-end retail computer. | ||
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