Friday, July 22, 2005
Another Cringley article about Intel's relationship with Microsoft, and why their partnership with Apple might be to create a home media system.
One funny thing he mentioned was the $400 rebate Microsoft gave new PC buyers for joining MSN. In 1999 (.com boom), someone found a loophole that you could sign up for MSN to get the $400, cancel it, and keep the money. In fact, it wasn't even a rebate. You could go into certain stores and walk out with $400 in stuff.
This was my sophomore year at Stanford, and with the .com bubble fully expanded, we were always on watch for good deals, interesting companies, and other loopholes.
When we (myself, Nkhil, Jason Ahmad, David Salinas, others?) found out about this, we woke up ass early the next morning to get our hands on free stuff. First we headed to Office Depot where I picked up a sweet HP printer (the high end one, since I had $400 to blow). My parents still use it today.
Then we headed to Best Buy. The place looked like it had been looted. Basically every single item in the $300-$500 range was gone. Shelves were empty. The lines were ridiculously long with people buying anything they could find. There wasn't much interesting stuff left, so I filled a shopping cart with tons of CDs, DVDs, and other computer accessories.
It was totally crazy. I think I have a newspaper clipping from the event somewhere in my box of college memories. Of course, Microsoft figured out what was going on and stopped the deal, but it still gave people a couple of days to clean out Best Buy and other stores offering the deal.
I miss the .com bubble days :)
One funny thing he mentioned was the $400 rebate Microsoft gave new PC buyers for joining MSN. In 1999 (.com boom), someone found a loophole that you could sign up for MSN to get the $400, cancel it, and keep the money. In fact, it wasn't even a rebate. You could go into certain stores and walk out with $400 in stuff.
This was my sophomore year at Stanford, and with the .com bubble fully expanded, we were always on watch for good deals, interesting companies, and other loopholes.
When we (myself, Nkhil, Jason Ahmad, David Salinas, others?) found out about this, we woke up ass early the next morning to get our hands on free stuff. First we headed to Office Depot where I picked up a sweet HP printer (the high end one, since I had $400 to blow). My parents still use it today.
Then we headed to Best Buy. The place looked like it had been looted. Basically every single item in the $300-$500 range was gone. Shelves were empty. The lines were ridiculously long with people buying anything they could find. There wasn't much interesting stuff left, so I filled a shopping cart with tons of CDs, DVDs, and other computer accessories.
It was totally crazy. I think I have a newspaper clipping from the event somewhere in my box of college memories. Of course, Microsoft figured out what was going on and stopped the deal, but it still gave people a couple of days to clean out Best Buy and other stores offering the deal.
I miss the .com bubble days :)