I used to be a retail PC service tech back when these things were new. I remember scoffing at the “never obsolete” tag. They were obsolete while still new in the box.
During the era it wasn’t rare to upgrade components on the motherboard and ISA/PCI bus cards. We’d had some relatively stable CPU socket standards and you’d do things like change out CPU and ram for upgrades.
Was this a stupid marketing gimmick? Oh yeah. Was it unreasonable to talk about upgrading a system at home? Not really. We did do it for a while.
me: “It’s pretty slow now, if you keep it a couple years, you get to buy someone else’s post upgrade for cheap assuming the company is still around, you don’t get the replacement from us”
I used to be a retail PC service tech back when these things were new. I remember scoffing at the “never obsolete” tag. They were obsolete while still new in the box.
It’s literally a computer. In your home. What would you even upgrade? Get two of them maybe?
During the era it wasn’t rare to upgrade components on the motherboard and ISA/PCI bus cards. We’d had some relatively stable CPU socket standards and you’d do things like change out CPU and ram for upgrades.
Was this a stupid marketing gimmick? Oh yeah. Was it unreasonable to talk about upgrading a system at home? Not really. We did do it for a while.
I worked in retail sales at the time.
customer: “What’s the catch?”
me: “It’s pretty slow now, if you keep it a couple years, you get to buy someone else’s post upgrade for cheap assuming the company is still around, you don’t get the replacement from us”
customer: “So what about those Compaq’s?”