> at a time when phones were dumb and hardly anyone had a PC It was a time when "LAN house" were common here in Brazil. Think of them as the Internet equivalen

> at a time when phones were dumb and hardly anyone had a PC It was a time when "LAN house" were common here in Brazil. Think of them as the Internet equivalent of public payphones: a "LAN house" is a place with several computers, networked together in a LAN (thus the name; LAN-networked games like Doom or Quake were huge back then), with Internet access, often with several software pre-installed (including games), and paid by the hour. There were also other factors. It was not long after Plano Real, which not only fixed the hyperinflation we had before, but also (as part of its mechanics) temporarily fixed the exchange rate at 1 USD, so importing PCs became cheaper; and also not long after the import restrictions ("reserva de mercado") for computers had ended. Each family having its own PC back then was not as uncommon as you might think.