Wal-Mart to Offer Wal-Mart Notebooks

ducomputergeek writes "Cnet News.com is running an article that Wal-Mart plans to launch its own line of notebook computers. I wonder if these will run Lindows or XP. We've purchased a couple low cost boxes with no OS's for cheap file servers and they've worked pretty well."

Comments

Cheap Notebooks

[Detritus]

I think there is a market for cheap notebooks, although I wouldn't call $750 cheap.

I don't care if it isn't able to run the latest video games. I'd like to see a sturdy notebook computer that has good battery life and a price under $500.

won't work

[b17bmbr]

most people who purchase laptops are not purchasing their first machine. onw, where most people who buy the emachines $399 at best buy, or the microtel (?) special at wal-mart for $199 are not going to jump on a $799 laptop. in some markets, price is everything, like gasoline. but in some markets, there are other intangible factors. not the least of course is the fact that going into most laptop type environs (offices, coffee shops, college classrooms, etc.) there will be a stigma.

let me give you an example. in william grieder's book "secrets of the temple" about the federal reserve, (great book), he tells the story of bluefish. now, for those of you who don't kow much about bluefish, it is plentiful on the east coast, but not the best eating fish. but, when bluefish prices were higher, it sold more. as it price dropped, it actually sold less. why? well, it became a "cheap" fish. when it's price went back up, its sales did too. with the laptops, apple is selling tons, and they are not the cheapest. i don't think wal-mart will sell lots of laptops. people are looking for something a little more. for me, the clincher on the ibook was the screen. i couldn't deal with the cheaper laptop screens. my guess is that most laptop buyers are a little more discriminatory.

In Germany, this rocked the retail PC market

[Hanno]

Selling PCs at supermarkets has rocked the German PC market.

ALDI (a very popular discount retailer, similar to Wal-Mart) began selling computers a few years back, both desktop PCs and laptops. They still do so on a regular basis and just this week they had a not-too-bad all-in-one all-purpose PC for home users.

These computers are special time-limited offers, marketed in large quantities over a few days, about twice a year. So limited that when the first series was sold in 1997, one customer tried to secure his PC using a gun.

Aldi has become so successful that its main supplier Medion has slowly become the #1 computer manufacturer in Germany (although it is unclear wether it can hold that spot - the company is struggling, too).

Several other competing supermarket chains have joined the market with their own line of bargain PCs and now there are a number of "Schnappchen PC" offers popping up in several supermarkets chains before Christmas every year. You pick up your fully-installed, ready-to-go PC right next to your milk, bread and toilet paper.

Although computer pros initially laughed at the thought of buying an ALDI PC, it turned out to be a pretty good offer. Thanks to huge numbers of absolutely identical PCs to be sold, the company preparing these boxes had time to slash prices and still do the configuration better than what you'd often get at the likes of Dell or your local selfmade-PC-shop.

The ALDI PC is targeted at home users and its first versions were quite well thought-out and sold like crazy. (See gun story, linked above.)

These days, customers aren't that mad about the ALDI PC anymore, it seems. The recent offerings were more and more prone to feature-overload. The current ALDI PC comes with everything and a kite: Next to the standard stuff it includes a universal card drive, a TV-in card, a remote control, wireless keyboard and mouse, wireless LAN and a DVD burner on top of the DVD read only drive...

But still, ALDI teared down the wall, put massive price pressure on everyone else and literally brought the multimedia PC to the masses with a PC that's actually really ok.

Re:They can choose to not do bussiness with WalMar

[ragnar]

You may want to read the following article to get a more clear picture of how wal-mart operates. I read the article this morning, and it happens to be very timely.