Sunday Newspaper Ads
Checking out computer sales.
Monday, August 13, 2007 by Philly0381 | Discussion: Personal Computing
As I was doing the Sunday ritual, I noticed that I wasn't finding systems with Vista Ultimate loaded. Mostly the systems were loaded with Vista Home Preimum, a few with Vista Home Basic, even one with Vista Business. I knew this couldn't be right, so I went back through and did find three laptops (no desktops) with Ultimate loaded. Even more surprising, none of the stores were advertising that they had OS's for sale. Now I didn't go to their web sites to check. My thinking was if they were paying good money to advertise, why, if they had the items in the store wouldn't they be shown. I'm sure that if I went to the stores I would probably see Ultimate loaded on machines, or would I.
The stores, Staples, OfficeMax, Office Depot, Comp USA, Circuit City and Best Buy.
So I began wondering if this was a reflection of what people were buying, the makers of the computers had already sold all their Ultimate systems or MS was somehow involved because Ultimate doesn't deliver enough Ultimate experience?
So the question, is this what you are seeing where you live, and what are you thoughts?
Hey Stardock, what's you thoughts?
Reply #2 Monday, August 13, 2007 10:17 PM
Reply #3 Tuesday, August 14, 2007 11:41 AM
Reply #4 Tuesday, August 14, 2007 12:35 PM
The problem is that Vista isn't a clear enough value proposition for the sort of customer that shops for their PC at a local electronics store. These are the people who want to send email, surf the web and download pictures from a digital camera. For the last 6 years they've been using XP, and it does everything they need with minimal fuss. It's what they know. It's what they're comfortable with.
Vista changes just enough to confuse even the tech-savvy user, and in some cases adds features that get in the way of regular use (UAC).
So it changes behavior, and in some cases blocks the user. And it costs more. Even if it's technologically superior to XP, Vista just isn't worth it yet to the regular user.
And if you're a gamer, forget Vista for now. Bad 3D card driver support, no hardware 3D audio period, and DirectX 10 hardly works in the games that "support" it.
Reply #5 Tuesday, August 14, 2007 2:36 PM
I was really going after why there weren't more systems with Ultimate loaded on them, and why weren't the local stores advertising that they had Vista OS's for sale and what impact there was if any on Stardock if people weren't buying Vista Ultimate.
Reply #6 Tuesday, August 14, 2007 5:53 PM
Yep, it sounds crazy, but pre-built Dell, HP Compaq, Acer and other big brand PC's are often retailing with just 512mb of RAM (1gb being the minimum) and on-board GPU's that do not fully support Aero. It's no wonder so many people reckon Vista is crap...the machines they've bought with it pre-installed just aren't up to the task.
Furthermore, most stores do not stock Vista Ultimate or Business OSes, just Home Basic and Premium, and sometimes not even those....if you want one they have to order it in, and that can take up to...well who knows. My local PC store owner told me that it's not unusual for him to have 6 to 8 paid for machines at a time just waiting on the suppliers to deliver Vista, sometimes for weeks....and he IS one guy who would stock the various Vista editions if he could, but unfortunately the suppliers don't or won't keep up with the demand.
I know that if I were Microsoft, I'd be spewing at the way some suppliers/retailers are handling the sale (or should I say non-sale) of Vista in the standalone format, and furious at the mismanagement of pre-built machines/sales.
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Reply #1 Monday, August 13, 2007 10:12 PM