Microsoft to Open Stores, Hires Retail Hand

Dino: Don't worry, be happy. You think I have insulted wal mart? Ain't even started yet. Both m$ and w-m use the same slash and burn type of market control. They both sell shoddy.

Maybe the w-m shoppers are stuck in the same trap that the m$ shoppers are?

So who is going to open the Tux store, where they sell all kinds of different linux powered products, cell phones, routers, Tivos, computers of all kinds, watches, Stuffed versions of every ones favorite penguin, etc. You could even build the stores so they look like Tux.

TC- I wont be holding my breath for the store to succeed, but you know pigs do grow wings every now and again.

Don't criticize Walmart shoppers, that includes me! You can disagree with Walmart's goals, but they are very, very good at what they do. Ballmer wouldn't even last a week as the supervisor of the cereal aisle at Walmart.

[quote]Ballmer wouldn't even last a week as the supervisor of the cereal aisle at Walmart.[quote]

Because he would through it at the customers when they asked him for assistance.

Quoting:Both m$ and w-m

Would you please stop mentioning m$ and my window manager in one sentence, I feel insulted!

Quoting:So who is going to open the Tux store

I think the Salvation Army?

Serious, this whole Microstore is done to compete against Apple, not against Linux. Selling Apple is like selling "ladies behind windows": You should first make people horny by making them look at certain things they probably even don't need, and after they stopped thinking you can empty their wallets. Microsoft only used to did the latter, and now that business model doesn't seem to work anymore they have to do more effort and do the first one too I assume. The only difference being that nobody becomes horny when looking at MS products of course; unless paid to do otherwise.

One of my friends just sent me this link:

http://www.macworld.com/article/138831/2009/02/microsoft_sto...

Well played.

Well to be honest that list did miss one important point.

Will offer identical hardware to the mac, and even after virii/malware/office applications, will still come in under the mac price.

and

A decent place to get hardware to put Linux on.

lol. That would be fun...walk into the MS store, boot all the machines off Linux Livecds.

techiem2 you almost owed me a new keyboard.

No need to reboot. Just drop in a CD or plug in a thumb drive with an auto-play setup, to show a video about the virtues of Open Source.

If the ms folk open up a store near me, I'll drop by with an ubuntu disk, looking for hardware to test...

> Both m$ and w-m use the same slash and burn type of market control. They both sell shoddy.

But the Walmart merchandise is priced accordingly. You can't say that about Microsoft's products. And it's a mistake to think people always need top line merchandise. How good does your kitchen sponge or trash can have to be?

Bigg: Not about shoppers or users.

Winders users just don't know they have choices. Many of the Linux people on this forum have to use Winders in their work. Wal-mart shoppers in many cases have no other choice for shopping. Many people who shop at W-M are much better off than you would think.

BUT, that does not exempt corporations from being good citizens.

> that does not exempt corporations from being good citizens.

My single objection to WalMart is that they will gladly use eminent domain to acquire land for their stores, rather than pay the owner's price.

Theft, pure and simple.

BR --

I wasn't aware of the eminent domain issue. If true, I agree. It is theft.

Dino, WalMart did it in PHX too, if the owner doesn't give them the price they want, which is almost always way too low anyway. They just use their lawyers to to get what they want. Walmart is designed to service just the Walton family, all others are gull feed to them.

Hmmmph.

Hope you really love your liberal SCOTUS justices now.

> Hope you really love your liberal SCOTUS justices now.

But Dino, aren't the liberals always for the little guy?

jd ... dont do that, I had coffee in my mouth.

What? A political discussion where I'm not a) rabid, b) wrong?

Dino, yes, it's happened several to many times. Search Walmart on Mises.org for some rundowns if you're interested.

From the Yahoo! Tech News piece 'Microsoft to open own stores, take on Apple' via Reuters at http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090213/tc_nm/us_microsoft

Quoting:Microsoft, bruised by the poor reception of its latest Vista operating system, is facing increased competition from Apple, which is eating into the personal computer market and dominates the personal digital music player market with its iPod line.

From this, Yahoo knows quite well how far its former would-be purchaser has fallen. Again, Microsoft has all but admitted how poorly it has fared with Vista sales.

Will be the final outcome of the ex-DreamWorker's (David Porter's) Microsoft Retail Sales initiative be a mere pipe Dream -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_dream ??

Or, Yahoo is driving down Microsoft stock to ward off another buy-out attempt.