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FUD Alert! Wal-Mart, Everex & Linux

Posted by Leonivek on · 5 comments
Linux FUD; By Brandon Brinkley 		Mail this story
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Press enforces FUD with misleading teaser headlines of story reporting Wal-Mart's decision to discontinue in-store sales of the gPCs.

Monday, the Associated Press released a story on Wal-Mart’s decision to discontinue the line of Everex Green gPCs in their brick-and-mortar stores. It appears that the retail giant has discovered that the demand for low-cost ($199USD) computers is much higher online than in the stores, so they decided to make the offering a web-only one, freeing up valuable floor and shelf space for other products that do sell well in the stores.

I have several news readers on my iGoogle homepage, and watched yesterday as the headline made it through each. I was intrigued by the way the story mutated as the day progressed. For example, the first headline I saw was from Yahoo! News, ” Wal-Mart ends test of Linux in stores“. LinuxInsider didn’t alter the story much, but the title was different, “Wal-Mart Yanks Linux PCs From Store Shelves“. The tone of the new title is not as objective, but slightly more disparaging. It gets deeper. According to Linux Loop, though Wal-Mart hasn’t given up on Linux completely, they have failed to “really give Linux a fair chance“. Actually, a search for Everex on the Wal-Mart website shows that the gPC is making way for the gPC2 and the Cloudbook and gBook laptops, all of which offer gOS Linux.

The worst headline I crossed was from Wired, “Middle America Hates Linux, Wal-Mart Discovers“. Following the link, the article title actually read, “Middle America ‘Rejects’ Wal-Mart Linux Experiment“. The link was obviously a teaser. Regardless, the article had a sarcastic tone, quite a departure from the original story. The main theme shifted from Wal-Mart customers are not buying gPCs from brick-and-mortar stores to Middle-America hates Linux. Come on now, get serious! ...

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Comments (5)

qcimushroom ·
That is many of the walk in customers that Wal-Mart attracts have no clue as to how different Linux is from Windows, nor would most of the sales staff. I see the potential for many returns and many unsatisfied customers, until a store has a Linux trained sales staff, a big box store is unlikely to succeed the way they expect it to.
jacog ·
qc, I agree with you about having trained staff. Why is it that retailers like that have never seemed to grasp this? This problem goes back as far as I can remember being a computerite.
Scott_Ruecker ·
Its a catch-22.

For most of the people who visit LXer Wal-mart is not a place they would buy a computer and Wal-mart does not have the focus of selling only technology products to have the need to train their staff in the way we think they should be.

So we don't shop there and wouldn't want to.

dinotrac ·
Scott -

PREEE-cisely.

Wal-Mart's business model is high volume at low margin. A trained sales staff doesn't fit that. Products that require a trained sales staff, therefore, are a bad fit.
NoDough ·
Scott and Dino,

I absolutely agree. Many have complained that Wal-Mart "didn't give Linux a chance." Wal-Mart is not in the business of building new markets for products. They sell products that already have a market. So, to expect them to give any product a chance is a little silly.

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