“Wireless networking firm Abrocour is giving away 50,000 home entertainment PC systems in a bid to convert new homes to wireless,” Daniel Thomas reports for vnunet.com. “The company claims that it will connect a third of all new UK homes built in 2004 using wireless broadband access.”
“It is giving away the Windows XP Media Center PCs with 32in flat screen displays to housing developers which install them in new homes. Abrocour’s Openhome entertainment package includes a broadband internet connection, wireless network and home monitoring system,” Thomas reports. ‘Housing developers will also be able to differentiate themselves to new home buyers,’ said Sam Sethi, chief executive at Abrocour.”
“New home buyers will have a year’s free broadband access, but will have to pay subscription fees to Abrocour after that. Abrocour has joined forces with BT, Elonex, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft and hopes to kit out 100,000 new homes by the end of 2004, including the Chelsea Bridge Wharf development in London,” Thomas reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s one way to lock people into the “Microsoft solution,” we suppose. No word yet on whether the homes’ walls will be painted blue to match Windows’ preferred screen color or if the homes themselves will also be constructed without door and window locks.
Pest services should be also included. Those homes are going to need serious worm-proofing!
I fail to see how 50,000 free toilets is a bad thing for UK home buyers.
All 50,000 of these homes come with their front and back doors wide open, of course. If they even come with doors at all.
Poor bastards! Of course, they won’t need furnaces – the inefficient CPUs in those things will be more than adequate.
Every light switch in the home is unique, requiring the owner to figure out how to operate each one every time they need to turn on a light. It’s an effort to maintain maximum interface disharmony throughout the home, so that when the PC is used, it won’t seem out of the ordinary.
Obviously low income housing.
I spoke to the builder. Each house is built upon a creaky, shaky foundation – they bought the design for a song, but they plan to make millions from it. On top of this rickety base, they will try to build a facsimile of a quality house, but they don’t really care if they get it right since they know suckers will snap them up anyway thanks to their massive marketing efforts.
That’s one way to spread the monopoly butter ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue laugh” style=”border:0;” />
I wonder if the ISP requires the user to use Windoze. Can the home owner install a flavour (for those UK folks) of Linux, or even trash the PC and use the 32 inch monitor with their new G5?
Poor bastards.
Microsoft thinks it is slick.
Sounds like an easy way to get a free big screen tv, and then just sell the pc on ebay and use the money towards a G5.
If Apple had any gumption, they would have thought of it first. Apple needs to get aggressive and tell in their advertising why they’re the best. Then we users wouldn’t need to whine. (Mac user for as long as I can remember).
I think I read on a Mac site somewhere that G5s were being included in some high-end housing communities here in California. I hope those UK home buyers have an option to upgrade to Macs. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
I bet this Abrocour is offering tech support as well. What better to guarantee job security. ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
After six months, you’ll notice when you turn on a light switch, water comes out the faucets. You ring the doorbell, and the toilets flush.
At that point, you’ll need to bulldoze and rebuild the home. Plan on doing this yearly.
Seriously, given the quality of a significant level of the UK home construction industry – anyone remember The Money Pit, or the infinitely funnier Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House – this is a quite smart move by the developer.
The owners of these properties will spend so much time trying to work out what the fsck is going on with Windows that they won’t notice the sub-standard plasterwork or the fact that there are only a handful of perpindicular angles in the whole property.
And another thing:
Elonex – like Gateway, but without the quality engineering (!)
Thank heavens those clearly astute guys at Abrocour gave the overpriced, badly built, always having parts fall apart CRAPPLE G5’s a very wide berth and went with the sane, sensible choice of chosing the superb Windows XP Media Center Edition.
This goes to show that like most of the pc using population of the world (some 96 % and growing), Abrocour has plenty of sense, and is not interested in wasting their money on some overpriced CRAPPE JUNK!
Smithy…you’re a riot ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Hey Smithy, better get back to the counter at your job at 7-11 – looks like someone wants to buy a Pepsi to win free iTunes. One day, maybe you’ll make more than minimum wage and understand the idea of buying quality Apple parts, rather than those from Dell or Gateway, who spell quality with a ‘k’.
You, like most of the PC sheep in the world, will continue to wallow in mediocrity.
Smithy is on one side of the coin, the rest of you on the other. Boooooorrrring. This rather dwarfs the few thousand macs that some school districts have acquired recently, but its the same giveaway bs, and doesn’t make much difference in the big picture.
One thing I don’t get. The article claims these things are worth 5k bp (almost 9k$). For that price I want my lady tech to show up in a thong.
Mdn’s reference to the color blue is outdated of course. I haven’t seen a bsod since I installed w2000 on our stuff a couple years ago. But that is anecdotal, subject to derision, and would only make the gang here doubt their worth, so I withdraw it.
You have performed an illegal action. The refrigerator will now shut down.
Telephone DLL not found. Please locate this and try again.
You do not have the proper drivers to turn on the heat.
But hey! Wanna play a game?
Now a hacker can defrost your entire freezer from the other side of the planet.
Oh joy!
Girl friend kills boyfriend with iPod
” Property developers can quickly recoup costs by submerging the expense into the price of the house, according to Abrocour.”
How is that “free” when the house buyers actually pay for it in the end?