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Wal-Mart to Offer Components for DIY Computers
FearTheFrail writes "Reuters reports that Wal-Mart is preparing to put "build your own computer counters" in 1200 of its 3200 stores, with plans to do so in at least 1400 by the end of the year. Maybe this will bring on an influx of new hardware enthusiasts, along with plenty of horror stories about attempted computer assembly. Do you think this will have an effect on the OEM parts market? And what about the operating systems to be offered? Will Wal-Mart shoppers migrate to Linux in order to save a hundred bucks or more, or will they even have the chance?"
The good news is that Walmart porbably can. The bad news is that the standard will likely suck.
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I used to love that kind of idiot. When I was working retail, there was a 30$ assembly charge for any PC, big or small. A lot of the white-trash movie-copying crowd were so cheap they'd take their 199$ PC in parts and build it themselves. A lot of them came back the next day with an improperly mounted and very dead board. I had one guy who left the CPU fan unplugged "because it was too noisy", then accused me of selling him an overclocked CPU "because only overclocked chips overheat". I took his invoice, wrote "CPU improperly installed by user" in big red letters, kindly dialed Intel's customer service and handed him the phone.
I think Walmart should stay the hell away from computers. They've already destroyed countless suppliers in other markets, that were much stronger business than any asian budget-brand PC supplier. Hell, most of those companies can't even afford basic quality control practices.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This is good news on two major fronts:
1) Computer parts source that's open 24/7. There have been many times when I needed a part urgently in the middle of the night or even on weekends when the local computer stores, Frys, Compusa, etc, just are not open. Walmart never closes.
2) Price competition. I support my local computer shop when I can but he wants $80 for the same PSU Newegg sells for $40. Frys will sell me one for $60, if they actually have it in stock. Walmart is likely to bring parts to market at the lower end of that price scale and there won't be shipping costs.
Now before people jump up and down and say that doesn't support the local guy, yeah, I agree. But he's already priced himself out of the market when I can order the same thing from Newegg and pay for next-day shipping and still get it it for less money -and get it delivered early in the AM before the local store even opens.
The main question is, WHAT brands is Walmart going to sell. If they go low-end, then it will only be useful for basic parts. I'm not going to buy much less use a no-name $15 PSU. Fans and parts, OK, but I want decent brands for drives, cases, motherboards, videocards, etc.
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Reason 1 -- WalMart may not want most customers using Linux because Linux hardware support and detection still is somewhere between Windows 95 and Windows 98 in terms of maturity. That's not all that good. Poor Plug and Play means returns and that costs money. Maybe, if they make it clear that they do not support equipment not purchased from WalMart, they can offer a Linux distribution that is tested with the hardware they sell.
My last experience with Installing Linux -- Slackware 10.2
IMO **ANY** of the above except maybe the Intel QX3 which is a discontinued product that a non-geek probably wouldn't expect to work would be enough to think twice about selling non-geeks Linux over the counter.
Reason 2 -- Boxed software products like TaxCut, games, mapping programs often won't run on Linux even if it has WINE. Explaining to customers why not would be painful and many wouldn't understand. Why ask for pain?
I'm not against selling Linux to non-geeks, but I think that the right place to start is single purpose machines -- e.g. A real cheap web browsing PC with a bundled printer.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
To me (I'm from Germany) this sounds funny. I did some shopping in Walmart before, but comparing the prices there are much more affordable offers from other competitors. Walmart prices just can't compete in most cases with Aldi, Kaufland, Real or Lidel. No wonder it's losing market share here. Now I just wonder if Walmart is more expensive here than it is in USA or if there are not so many competing discounters in USA?
Oh, by the way: I was mainly comparing products of their brand SmartPrice to similar products. For other brands they give a price guarantee: If You find another seller offering the same product for a lower price they will go down to the same offer. Unfortunately this does not mean that Walmart takes care to always have the best offer by default, as many customers assume. It's still up to the customer to run around and collect the price lists of the competitors.
Trolling is a art!
This isn't always the case! One example of this not working to the customer's advantage is the 1/2 pound bar of Jaques Belgian chocolate Wal*mart used to sell. Months ago (probably over a year by now, I've lost track), they suddenly stopped carrying it, replacing it with a generic "Sam's Choice" thing.
Since chocolate is one of those things you just do not skimp on, I decided immediately not to bother trying it, at least for a while. The thing is, it wasn't until I got a (very quick) reponse to my email to the Jaques chocolate company, that I learned that that generic chocolate was in fact Jaques brand. The representative said that they had signed a contract with Wal*Mart so they could continue selling it for cheap, or some such.
It was at that point that I started buying the generic. It was introduced at the same price ($2/pound) as the branded version, but now, ironically, the generic-labelled version is about 76 cents a pound more expensive, at least in this area. So much for prices going down when you go generic!