Will You Shop At A Microsoft Store?

Note that I did not say buy. No, I am wondering if you would be brought into a Microsoft store by curiosity, or perhaps the ability to examine a piece of Microsoft hardware close up. No matter how egregious the mistakes made with software, I believe that Microsoft has consistently made the best mice in the last 20+ years.

I know that I’ll be tempted to go there, any time that a product that is announced, and yet I know it won’t be widely available at other stores, either because of some imagined exclusivity or perhaps limited audience appeal.

The stores, which are confirmed, and will surely be open before the release of Windows 7, on October 22, might be fairly cool places to hang out. I know that long time plans for the complete line of Microsoft products have been made, meaning that all the Xbox offerings will be there.

That will be of interest to my son, but for me, it will be the ability to get my fingers and palms on the latest Microsoft mice, and possibly keyboards.

The thing about this is, we all know that Microsoft will be selling at full retail, with special pricings coming few and far between. This will have to be so that the partners don’t stop carrying the products.

So, unless a great buy happens to coincide with my trip to the store, I’ll be a shopper, and not a buyer – though if I like what I see, Microsoft will get the sale, just not at the Microsoft store. I doubt I’ll be the only one of this bent, as the Microsoft store is a place among other places to see Microsoft stuff, whereas the Apple store is frequently the only store to see Apple stuff. The only way this will change will be if Microsoft reduces its products retail presence drastically, and that won’t happen anytime soon.

I wonder if Mr. Ballmer will be content to use the stores as advertising sites.

from Tech Connect

Microsoft announced its plans to go retail in February and yesterday, at the Worldwide Partner Conference, the company’s COO Kevin Turner has confirmed that the offensive will start this fall. Turner didn’t really go into any detail as to how the stores will look like but he dropped a small bomb by saying that some of them will open right next to Apple stores.

Headed by ex-DreamWorks exec David Porter, Microsoft’s retail endeavor is planned to provide a better retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide. What this means, we’ll see this fall, probably around or before Windows 7’s release, which is scheduled for October 22nd.

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Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. - Thomas H. Huxley

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