EMachines never obsolete PCs: More than a meme

Wow someone else from St. Louis? Found this blast from the past too: https://dfarq.homeip.net/building-a-computer-in-the-90s/

I only remembered a couple CompUSAs, Circuit City, and Best Buy selling computers growing up. I don't remember visiting any independent computer stores in the mid 90s.

But talking to those in my parents' generation, most of them bought their computers from some local small shop (and sometimes went back there for computer training!).

I count St. Louis lucky for at least having a Micro Center today, otherwise all my parts would have to come from online stores.

They were ok for the price... I think they were probably the most responsible for squeezing every bit of profitability from independent builders though. It really became a race to the bottom, combined with more interest in mobile/laptop computers.

I remember in the mid to late 90's, you could build a computer for someone and walk away with enough for an upgraded system for yourself. Of course the churn on performance was very real. IIRC, 1992 maxed out with a 486 DX2 @66mhz. Around 2000 we crossed the 1ghz mark from both Intel and AMD. We went from OG Doom that couldn't cut it full screen, to Half Life and Quake 3 Arena on Voodoo 3 and early NVidia cards.

So if they're never obsolete because you can always get a $99 replacement, where should I send my 486 to trade it for a Ryzen 7?

This era reminds me of the time that my grandmother (in same house) got a new Compaq with a CD burner. It was running windows ME. My dumb ass thought that because a had disk drive could be mounted as a volume over the network, a burner could too. Turns out you can sort-of network mount a CD drive but its not usable. The days and hours I wasted on this project, including convincing my mom to take me to Fry's in Burbank to get a Netgear hub (not switch!) to glue everything together.

Wow that's certainly a blast from the past. Even had one for a while.

Ahh I remember that little white desktop

The author mentions Packard-Bell which always just had the whiff of 2 legit companies and was enough to trick uninformed shoppers at Walmart that they were buying high end. Remember in 1999 if you didn't read Computer Shopper the only thing you knew about PCs was what you saw in TV ads.

$99 never obsolete offer was very clever considering they probably had access to longer Intel roadmap. Starting with 1998 Intel was releasing Celerons with cheapest one always around $100. Even the earliest "never obsolete" systems could be upgraded to 766 MHz Cpu, with later 810 up to $103 1100 MHz.

Now add money they were making on those mandatory dialup subscriptions and you got a money printer.