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

OfficeDepot UK, not US, decision

[isdnip]

Note that the initial article came from a British paper, indeed a very good one which I, like many on the left side of the puddle, read regularly. The article refers to Office Depot's UK stores, which have adopted the policy. It also suggests that US stores haven't yet done so, though they might at some point in the future.

I don't know how autonomous the different Office Depot divisions are, but many companies give a lot of autonomy to national divisions.

I sit two doors away from a Staples so I don't really go into an Office Depot much anyway....

Please, RTFA, and then THINK about it, too

[Rary]

Okay people, first, take a valium. Next, recognize a couple of important points here:

• This is an Office Depot decision, not a Microsoft decision.
• It does not necessarily mean they won't carry non-Windows software (ie. Red Hat Linux), just that all Windows software will have to be XP-certified.
• Consider the source of this information. It's not exactly a shining example of quality journalism. Reading the "memo" in the article, there are a couple things that pop out that make it sound a bit like a fake, written to get all the ABMers riled up (and if so, it clearly worked).

But it might be

[FuzzyDaddy]

It might work, but you will get one scary-ass warning from Windows. I installed a new ethernet card in an older system, and there was a slip of paper which showed the message that would pop up if installed on XP. I wish I could remember exactly what it said now, but it would certainly have made me think twice about the software.

Remember the EULA on windows from two years back? It said "This product cannot be used in life-critical applications, because it contains Java from Sun Microsystems." Don't underestimate the damage a sinister sounding warning message can cause.

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.

I work at the Depot

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually posting this message from a Computer located inside of an Office Depot location. I have been working at the depot for 4 years now, and I personally consider this to be a good thing, although I do have some reservations.

Consider the current retail culture in this world, sales are down, margins are slim and overall, profits are down. Office Depot is in a position where something has to be done to distinguish themselves from our competitors. Staples, Office Max and Grand & Toy (in canada) as well as whatever other retailers in the states are out there, make for a very competitive selling atmosphere, and with margins being as slim as they are, you cannot compete on price, what you have left is customer service, selection, and reliability. Most of the items that are going to be affected by this are the cheap little invoicing programs that no one buys anyway, that all get returned to the vendor after a year of not being on the shelf. Also consider that your typical customer at the depot, is not as computer savvy as you, or I am. Our typical customer is the home user, who is upgrading their early pentium box, and places constant phone calls to the store, whenever "This Driver is not digitally signed" comes up, or even today, the lady that called to ask how to find the CD Key for her Black ICE Defender. These are the type of people who NEED everything to work as smoothly out of the box as possible, with few or no questions.

Just because all of the itmes that we will now carry must be supported my XP, does not mean that those items will not work in alternate OS's...it just means that if an item is not 100% XP compliant, we won't carry it. 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.

Disclaimer. I'm personally an avid OSS user, including Debian and FreeBSD. My home network has been windows free for 3 years now, and I could not be happier. However, I realize that 99% of the people that I see on a daily basis at my store, are using XP, or are upgrading to XP in the near future. From the standpoint of my employer, this makes sense, and I agree with them.

Where can I get

[certsoft]

A "Not designed for Windows XP" logo?

From an employee

[MaestroRC]

I've worked at Office Depot for about the last year and a half, in the Technology department. We sell a little of everything, including games and other software, and it is mostly (95%) oriented towards Windows. The only real Linux software that we carry in-store is RHx, and I'm quite sure we will continue to carry it. And for the mac stuff, well, as said previously, we only carry TurboTax and Quicken, and again, that will probably stay.

What this policy is affecting most is going to be the bargain software as well as the cheapo hardware. From the perspective I see from working there, it is most definately a wise move, since most of the time when a piece of software or hardware does not carry the logo, it is much more difficult to install/use, and is prone to return (Example: Lexmark... who here HASN'T had problems installing their shitty inkjets?). It is unreal how many people buy something, can't get it to work without tweaking something that they dont know how to change, and take it back, even if there is a big "DO NOT RETURN TO STORE" sticker on it. Most of these products get return to "DND", which is either returned to the vendor for repair or destroyed; but either way it costs the store money. I think the biggest company this will hurt is Lexmark, unless they can get their certification soon. The bargain software, in my opinion, is good riddance.

How Do We Know Inquirer Isn't Lieing?

[reallocate]

The Inquirer piece abruptly concludes with an alleged Office Depot memo to suppliers. The Inquirer neither explains the circumstance by which they came into possession of this alleged memo nor does it even bother to asert that the "journalist" whose name bylines the story made an attempt to contact Office Depot to verify it's veracity and authenticity.

So much for journalistic credibility. Slashdot has neither the interest or the ethics to verify facts (hiding behind their "we just post other peoples' stuff" alibi), but I guess we can now add another source to the list of online rubbish vendors.