As of Monday December 21, buyers of Dimension and Inspiron systems from Dell Computer Corp will get free CDs of AOL 4.0 software with 100 free hours. The catch is that those hours have to be used in the first month of membership. From early next year, AOL software will be pre-installed and customized for Dell PCs, featuring links to Dell’s own web services as part of the company’s ConnectDirect program. AOL evidently considers this a minor coup. Having onscreen real estate on new PCs is a reasonably important generator of traffic to sites. The question of who gets their icon displayed has been a contentious one since at least 1995 – most recently surfacing in the Microsoft antitrust trial. The benefits for Dell are no less compelling. The deal could make it easier for first-time PC buyers to find their way onto the web. Our goal is to enable Dell customers to be on the internet within minutes of turning on their machines, said chairman and CEO Michael Dell, in perhaps conscious imitation of Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs’ pitch for his new consumer-class iMac computer.
