Started in the 90s was wildly successful at selling home computers to the UK public. However the company went into administration in 2002 due to the inability to sell anymore computers because well... No one needed a new computer. (Capitalism is an efficient system)
I remember playing age of empires on one of these things.
Their PCs for general home computing lasted at least until the late XP and vista era. Our one saw 95, 98, ME and XP before it finally got replaced with a Dell.
Their kit was decent and partially upgradable which is why they saw quite a long lifespan. But Dell/HP took over pretty quickly releasing smaller and cheaper devices to schools and businesses which was a market Tiny never managed to enter afaik. Commercial areas were dominated by IBM devices at the time then switching to Dell/HP. The home market was never really that lucrative since home users rarely replace computers unlike businesses who throw them into landfill for fun.
I remember running xp on hardware made for 9x, it sucked shit.
It did but it could still check email and thats as far as most people would go. I don't have any distinct memories of how well the PC performed but i do remember waiting literal hours for age of empires to install.
Also the full Tiny home PC kit was like £1000 back then which was A LOT of money so many people were reluctant to replace. Also the concept of replacing tech for upgrades wasn't even established in the general concious yet as it was more common to use something till it breaks.
A machine that started on 95 wouldn't even have any USB ports.
I'd sooner believe that they failed because of trying to just serve the small and irrelevant UK market than because people just didn't need new computers in 2002.
You say this but I was still using floppies in the early 2000s and didn't really start using USB until i got my "vista ready" laptop in 2007. The mouse and keyboard outlasted the Tiny PC as well staying until they basically dissolved. Even the printer stuck around for a while until it became unusable
But yes also not expanding outside the UK market didn't help at all
terf island L tbh