Going by the specs (and the DVD + AOL 5.0 sticker) this particular PC was released in 1999. eMachines lasted until 2013, therefore if you paid the subscription fee, you could have owned seven new PCs over the course of a decade and a half for under $700. That's an insanely good deal. I imagine that they could recoup the funds by recycling the old machine and also counting on a lot of people paying the fee and then never upgrading (like how gym memberships work. The more people that sign up and then never go to the gym, the better).