Microsoft Surface to hit third-party stores on Wednesday
Microsoft has confirmed that it has ramped up production of its Surface fondleslabs in advance of a new global retail sales push, one that should see the devices hit third-party retail store shelves as early as this Wednesday. "The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see," Surface general manager Panos Panay said in …
Re: So, it's official
Oz is the 52nd, the UK is the USA's bottom bitch. Although the UK has played up of late, it's going to need a bit of slapping to brought back into line.
Re: So, it's official
You know, I'm thinking that a symbolic dumping of a crapload of Nike, Adidas, McDonalds and other branded goods into Liverpool Harbour would be amusingly ironic around now.
Re: So, it's official
Downvote, because we all know that Canada is the 51st state/
Re: So, it's official
If it makes you feel any better for some time now the US has been Israel's bottom bitch.
Re: So, it's official
Canada is America's hat. Duh. Free holiday gift idea for the redneck on your shopping list.
http://www.zazzle.co.uk/canada_americas_tuque_trucker_hat-148672137412867523
"Microsoft has confirmed that it has ramped up production of its Surface fondleslabs in advance of a new global retail sales push, one that should see the devices hit third-party retail store shelves as early as this Wednesday."
So they halved production only to ramp it up again in a new marketing push? Yep, that sounds like great management at work.
The hilarious bit is this -
and every one of its pop-up stores opened within a mile's distance of the nearest Apple Store, with most located just up the road – or down the mall corridor.
because obviously that's just a ripoff and MS should actually be opening stores up mountains or at the bottom of the sea in order to gain customers rather than where there's consumers who want to buy tech.
/snark
Re: The hilarious bit is this -
I agree, MS obviously is just copying Apple - it couldn't be that demographic and market reasearch told them Apple had got it right witht he locations of their stores, now could it? I think Apple should sue for brand infringement!
Late
With less than 2 weeks to Christmas, Microsoft is a little late. And selling them at Staples - an office supply store chain - not exactly a hotbed of consumer electronics.
Re: Late
That could work. Lots of people (especially guys) do their Christmas shopping within 24 hours of Christmas.
Re: Late
Surely that's what a 24 hr petrol station is for?
What woman would want a litre of Multigrade Oil, a set of wiperblades and a scrawny bunch of flowers for Christmas?
Mine's the one with the wife's Christmas list in the pocket.
Re: Late
Late because it's an act of last minute, knee jerk desperation - it wasn't planned. See my post further down the thread. Something has gone horribly horribly wrong.
I'm Confused
Are there any MS stores in Australia? Who has been selling the Surface in Australia up to this point?
MS have been heavily advertising the surface for several weeks already.
Am I to understand that anybody who may have been tempted to purchase one by those adverts would not have been able to do so until now?
Re: I'm Confused
You could only get it from the online shop, which is really daft considering that even the 5 people sold on the spec would still want to pick one up in the flesh before handing over the hard earned.
Re: I'm Confused
A Touch device that you can't touch...
Re: I'm Confused
"sold on the spec would still want to pick one up in the flesh before handing over the hard earned."
No, you are wrong. RICHTO bought one mail-order and that went well - oh wait
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/1645572
Re: I'm Confused
Still going through the chargeback process on that one FYI....Bought one new off eBay instead for 2/3 the price...and got better service...
Does have to be said that Surface tabs are very good in terms of design / functionality....even if the Microsoft Store does suck for customer service...
Re: I'm Confused
@RICHTO - MS treated you like sh** and yet you rebuke me every time I say anything that is critical of Microsoft! You got burned, so surely you should be agreeing with me! You are Microsoft's "useful idiot".
Re: I'm Confused
"Bought one new off eBay instead for 2/3 the price...and got better service..."
So the price has plummeted then !
Re: I'm Confused
@Edon - That's probably because all you ever say is critical of MS, there is never any balance...
Re: I'm Confused
To be honest, after you've been around long enough to see how Microsoft operate, it's difficult to have any kind of positive attitude toward them.
Re: I'm Confused
That's the Microsoft UK store which seems to be outsourced to a 3rd world country. Or maybe it was Wembley. Anyway, easy enough to avoid now I know. I have no problem saying when Microsoft do something badly.
Generally Microsoft support is from 1st world countries and is usually very good - as anyone who has called Premier Support could attest to...
Re: I'm Confused
@RICHTO Red flag - you obviously have to call microsoft support a lot! Their software must be reliable then...
Re: I'm Confused
No, not very often versus thousands of Microsoft desktops, applications and servers in an enterprise. But when you do, the service is generally very good.
Australian Outlet...
Harvey Norman has been confirmed as one of the Australian Outlets
Re: Australian Outlet...
And it was a waste of time sending their staff on "special Windows 8" training if they are now to be sold in other high street stores. Wonder if the special training they had included being honest with the customer about real storage capacity of these toys?
but nothing in the UK
went into London a week or so ago and was visually assaulted by adverts for the surface but not a sign of it on Tottenham court road, oxford street, or any where else.
mail order only in the UK must = fail!
expanding the ways in which customers can interact with Surface
This sounds exciting. What are these new interaction opportunities?
Re: expanding the ways in which customers can interact with Surface
Apparently, tests show its performance as a frisbee exceeds all other tablets
Re: expanding the ways in which customers can interact with Surface
apparently mrfill doesn't know how to use a tablet!
what wank.
Re: expanding the ways in which customers can interact with Surface
"interaction opportunities" are - customer pokes at the fugly Win8 screen, thinking, WTF??. Customer can't seem to find the start button. Thinks, WTF^2? After a few frustrated minutes he gives up and goes out to buy an iPad or Nexus or some such.
Re: expanding the ways in which customers can interact with Surface
Well it works very well as a skateboard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkSVIgtqr9U
And its good for breaking other devices with....
numbers game?
Only offering the Surface via retailers when it is part-way through the festive season will make it really hard to work out its adoption rate vs. the competition (and thus assess success or failure), at least until the next quarter.
Re: numbers game?
i think its safe to assume it is/will be a failure.
Plan to fail
Of course it will be a failure - then Microsoft can (a) slash the price of these and "legitimately" gain market share because they are so cheap and (b) introduce the Surface 2 in about, oh, February, back at the original price so that (c) consumers will then buy the new one.
Any fule kno this
Re: Plan to fail
@Purlieu, you might be right, but if MS do that, they will kill of any hope of OEM's building future Win8 mobile devices by competing directly a lower price range. But it might be the only hope they have left. If that is true, then they will fail anyway AND then at the same time have furious OEM's on their hands (not that they are not already furious) who do not want to make Win 8 desktops.
And...
They will sell about three of these surface things, if they're lucky. I'd love to know what "incentives" the salesmen have to shift a few!
This is a PR disaster for Microsoft, they make a machine supposedly as a reference platform, and now they're desperately trying to sell them. If they do not, then they have scared away the OEM's from making win 8 based kit, which would be the very definition of irony.
Re: And...
yes... interesting dilemma.
* If the sales are poor, the OEM's will see there's not much hope of significant sales, even with a huuuge marketing push
* if they're popular the OEMs will be fed up at getting undercut by their software supplier.
It won't scare OEMs off W8 + x86 tablets though, that is likely to do comparatively well in the corporate market. And WinRT is not of much value to a business anyway, as the bundled MS Office cannot be used for work unless separately licensed for that purpose.
I suspect NOTRO apps will become the new ActiveX, something that is adopted with great enthusiasm by nobody-got-fired-for-buying-MS types, internal business software will be ported to it, and the investment will be so huge that they cannot afford to move to any other platform.
Re: And...
@AC 10.37 - Corps are writing enterprise apps as web apps now that work in standards compliant browsers such as Chrome and Firefox.
The last thing corporations will do is build a Win8 specific thick client. If you suggested such a thing, you will get laughed at then fired. The days when you couldn't get fired for going with Microsoft are long over, it is starting to be the other way around - how can you justify the huge licence fees and vendor lock-in when creditable alternatives exist?
The world has moved on from thick client windows apps. Microsoft are praying that you are correct, but enterprise architects have long been thinking in terms of cloud like systems running on Linux VMs and, similarly, web apps with a Java/Linux based enterprise back end engines running on top of Oracle or possibly open source databases. Oracle has survived amazingly well, thinking about it. They definitely have an advantage with being influential via the Java serverside stack. (JEE/JBoss/Weblogic/Websphere/Spring/Hibernate/JDBC etc).
Windows is only really needed for Office / Exchange and, for the poor devils that got sold it, Sharepoint.
Re: And...The same applies to their WinPhone8 offering
Heard in the boardroom during a meeting with our telecom operator of choice a week ago.
Telecom operator guy:
"You know those W8 Phones are great as an alternative to your blackberries"
response from the IT Director:
" We've been screwed over by MS for so long and have to deal every day with their shit on our PC , there is no way I'll let this thing touch our phones".
What a change from just 5 years ago..
Re: And...The same applies to their WinPhone8 offering
As per usual, IT director who knows F all!
Re: And...The same applies to their WinPhone8 offering
On the contrary, when I used to work for a certain purple-uniformed big brand computer retail company, I got questions from a fair few people along the lines of "Do you do Linux?"
When they weren't the usual neckbeards, it was nearly always suited and booted business types fed up with Microsoft's license fees and/or bullying.
Having to sell in retail tells a fun tale of FAIL!
The idea was for Win8 RT Surface to sell out via MS stores and MS's website
That Surface did not sell out, even in the modest quantities that were built, and despite all the hype, advertising and publicity, means that now MS has to sell these things in shops.
Obviously the very fact MS is trying to sell Surface RT in retail (why would you do that with a supposed "Reference Platform" shows that Surface sales have fallen way below Microsoft's expectations, and this retail plan is plan B.
As people in the know long predicted, Surface is a disaster, a kind of Zune on steroids.
MS need to dumb down to catch prospective apple purchasers. Shiny shop, clone army, done.
MS purchasers know what they are getting.
Special New Year deals..
It'll be two for the price of one in New Year sales....
Decision and push is late and not properly thought out, irrespective of any positives or negatives the product has. This has hallmarks of scampering up a slippery riverbank and sliding back to where one started.
It's such a shame
If MS have given us full windows arm, or at least a version of visual studio for Win rt and not charged and insane price, the surface could have worked.
Charging £500 for something that does less than a CHROMEBOOK (chromeos has a remote desktop client through chrome and SSH built in) is just beyond stupid with android and iOS already dominant.
It's a shame, I actually like windows and C# for several things. Not everything, but the user interface is nice.
Re: It's such a shame
Not sure where you got that idea, but Surface already does a lot more in V1.0 than Chrome, Android or the iPad.....
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