CD-ROMs can't be edited, and when it comes to looking back into history, that is their most commendable property...
If you’ve ever wondered why there was such an explosion in Internet use forward from the Christmas of 1998, the artefact I’m talking about is this post serves as a perfect illustration. It’s called Internet on a CD, and it was the home PC vendor Packard Bell’s bid to turn each computer sale into a recurring revenue stream.
Internet on a CD was given away to purchasers of new Packard Bell PCs in the run up to Christmas 1998. I got mine with a Club 30 model. The concept of the CD was to collect a representative cross section of websites, put their pages onto local media, and reassign their internal links so that clicking them served the new page from the CD rather than from the Web. Essentially just give consumers the feel of using the Internet. Get them hooked. Add to that a front end comprising Packard Bell’s own introductory and tutorial material, and you had something along the lines of…