Office Depot: Windows XP Apps Must Be Microsoft-Approved

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at The Inquirer, by May 30th Office Depot will only be carrying computer products that have been certified by Microsoft and carry the 'Designed for Windows XP' logo. This may be an initial glimpse at how Microsoft could introduce Digital Restrictions Management by ensuring all retail hardware and software products are approved by Redmond."

Comments

Conflict...Hmm

[dmp123]

I detect a small conflict brewing between the last two stories...

Ofice Depot will only sell Designed for Windows XP products, yet the redhat.com page says RedHat Linux 9.0 will be available from.....(you guessed it!) Office Depot!

Well, this IS a turn-up for the books - who thought RH would manage to get a "Designed for Windows XP" certification!

David

Re:I'm sure everyone's knees will jerk.

[Computer!]

From the article:


Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer and Notebook Computer must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores.


I have never bought software from an Office Depot, but doesn't this mean that no MacOS or Linux products can be bought or sold there? That's a little alarming.

Nobody else is going to do this

[n1ywb]

I don't have an Office Depot near me, so I don't know what they're selling right now. I do know that if you walk into Staples, Circuit City, or Best Buy, they have a TON of crap that "connects" to computers. They will NEVER follow Office Depot's example, they would lose a SHITLOAD of business. Do you really think that they'll pull every keyboard, joystick, printer, stick of RAM, etc that isn't XP certified? What about multimedia speaker systems? Are Alienware cases supposed to get XP certification?

Another good example is Radio Shack. Shit, are they supposed to get every FAN and HEATSINK and power supply Y-cable M$ certified for XP? Right... Office Depot is going to be the loser here. Nobody else is going to go along with this steaming pile of crap.

Re:Nobody else is going to do this

[luzrek]

Good point. I would agree that the loss of "non-certified" hardware is a much bigger deal than the loss of "non-certified" software. Especially since the vast majority of commercial software is already designed for MS Windows.

However, I'ld bet this is the beginning of the end for Office Despot (err depot). For a while now they have been competeing agains such big-box retailers such as CompUSA, BestBuy, and Walmart. CompUSA is probably hurting their computer sales all over, but especially at the "mom and pop" business and geek level. BestBuy and Walmart have been underpricing everyone for a long time now and are probably killing off the "just need x peice of hardware" market. Office Depot has neither the knowledgeable staff of CompUSA, nor the low prices of BestBuy and Walmart.

All in all though, this isn't likely to affect anyone in the /. community very much. Office Depot, Staples, and OfficeMax have traditionally had very high prices and very limited selections for computer hardware anyway.

Re:Well...

[91degrees]

Walmart vs. Microsoft - Always interesting when an unstoppable force comes up against an imovable object:)

It's true. Both are big campanies, capable of and willing to use exactly the same dirty tricks as each other.

Office depot sounds like they're onto a loser here. If the customer wants goods that MS would prefer they didn't have, the customer will get it from somewhere else. It's in the interests of retailers to satisfy the customer, not their supplier. The customer is the only one that will give them money after all.

Re:Looks like it's for hardware ONLY

[Keith Russell]

...so that customers aren't scared when they bring home their products and get the "unsigned driver" alert.

If this really is targeted at hardware (which I doubt, IMHO), then good luck to Office Depot. I've noticed an increasing number of hardware products whose quick install guides include a passage that says, in so many words:

While installing the drivers for this product, Windows is going to pop up an "error" message designed to scare the pants off of you. Well, screw Microsoft. We know damn well that our drivers work. We don't have time to wait for Microsoft to rubber-stamp them, and neither do you, so just click "Continue Anyway".

If Microsoft wants to combat that attitude, they're better off quietly tightening the screws on those hardware manufacturers who tell users to blow off the "unsigned driver" warning.

Hardware or software, if this is motivated by Microsoft, it can't be anything more than a trial balloon. This is most likely some middle-manager at Office Depot demonstrating symptoms of clue-deficiency. That's assuming The Inquirer report is accurate to begin with. I rank those guys somewhere between The Register and the Weekly World News on the journalistic integrity scale.

This is great!!

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

I don't want to buy a CD burner that says it works on XP when it won't without having to jump through tons of hoops.

I'm having a problem with an MP3 Player at the moment that has a USB interface. If I move this USB interface to any other USB port other than the one I installed the MP3 Drivers on, the MP3 Player won't work. It's clearly a software issue and this product isn't cleared as 'official' XP hardware.

The Manufacturer's suggestion on how to resolve this issue is not 'wait for the next version of the drivers' but install the drivers on each individual USB port. I've got 7 ports and I'll be damned if I'm going to install the drivers 7 times.

Dolemite

Re:I work at the Depot

[chriso11]

If anything, this is just going to be an incentive for companies like HP, Canon, Lexmark, Epson etc to get off of their asses and fix all of the broken drivers that we see daily.

I respectfully disagree - if there is a subtle bug, that gets through the certification, then there is less incentive to fix the bug cause releasing a new certified driver is a lot more work now.