Slashdot Mirror
UK's Biggest Supermarket Challenges Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's equivalent of Walmart is taking on Microsoft in the software game. Tesco is famous for it's cheap 'value' food, but it's now offering 'value' alternatives to Microsoft's biggest products. From the article: 'Now, when you traverse the aisles in search of baked beans, sanitary towels and two-for-one packs of raw mince (hamburger), you can grab yourself a copy of Tesco Office (£20) — an alternative to the almost de-facto standard that is Microsoft Office — or Tesco Antivirus (£10), which is designed to keep your PC free of malware.' Tesco apparently 'takes one in every eight pounds spent in the UK'."
Has anyone been to a tesco and confirmed this? I checked their website and the nearest they had for office http://direct.tesco.com/search/default.aspx?search =office&confirm.x=0&confirm.y=0was office chairs. Google mentions press releases that confirm this, but no one seems to know exactly what the office suite contains, and most importantly I couldn't find any mention of compatability with MS Office. If it *is* compatible with Office, that'd be kind of neat.
Of course, I suspect, like many others, that's it's just repackaged OpenOffice.org, but we'll have to see.
How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
Having alternatives is nice, and I'm all for breaking MS's near-monopoly in this area, but the big question is about quality: do these products do the job, and do it well? Do they offer analogs to the features that many MS Office users have come to love and depend on? Do they read Office formats?
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Sounds like the companies that sell open source software should follow the lead.
That is, sell their own software in supermarkets.
It'll be a lot easier to make progress there than at hardware sellers (Dell, HP, etc.)
It just needs to be sold as a way to extend the life of old PCs.
I agree with you and think the company should offer whatever product it thinks will increase its customer base and profits. However it is a common phenomenon for large companies to have more money than they know what to do with. Investors only rarely get their money back in this way. In the early 80's companies figured out that people had stopped investing in companies and started trading stocks. This means people made money of the stock price not the actual return on investment so dividends dried up and the culture of short term gain for stock price goodness was born. Happily the dot com crash did bring the "investor" back into vogue and companies are starting to rediscover the wisdom of the build a strong business that returns its profits to investors strategy. If this continues we should see a decrease in market volitility in exchange for dividends being brought back and licked to actual profitablilty.
Anyway back to the point. Very large profitable companies (we should all have this problem) sometimes make more money than they have ideas to spend it on. Different companies handle this differently Wal Mart, Microsoft and the oil companies tend to store massive cash reserves and keep doing business as usual contributing to the stagnation of the economy. More resposable companies hire better management with new ideas and some companies like Google just throw money at every crazy Idea they can until something sticks and makes more money.
SO after that rambeling mess it currently is not popular to return money to investors and soemtimes it is just hard to spend the huge wave of cash that some large succesful businesses generate.
Although if they wish to remain on top they will need to distribute the money in reserve properly. Since this is Slashdot I should mention perhaps Microsoft should have spent a little more of that massive reserve on making Vista not suck.
If Tesco can do this in the U.K., why can't Wal-Mart do it here? Or Costco? Or BestBuy? Or Fry's?
Jes' thinkin'...
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
They're just as bad as Microsoft. They bought up a large section of London's Chinatown, under the guise of creating a massive supermarket in the centre. The shops were sold, their chinese tenants evicted, and then the shops were re-opened with much higher rent (which was far higher than could be paid by the current tenants), causing half of Chinatown to stop being Chinese. Fuck Tesco.
That is a damn fine idea. Sourceforge is a terrifying experience for even half-hardy users you've never been there. When I recently helped a friend install Inkscape, she ask "Why's it listing all these different countries, where do I click?" with mild panic. She has a PhD in engineering - she's just not familiar with open-source.
A simple site, aimed at your gran with her first computer, listing one package for each main task. Well, maybe three packages, but make it absolutely clear that they all work, and do the same thing. I like the firefox/thunderbird download sites that guess what OS you're using - fewer options is good here. Maybe something like freedesktop.org, but cross platform (i.e. you only get listed if you work on all of Linux/Mac/Windows).
Bah, this whole thread contains the wrong question. It's obvious why the supermarket shoppers aren't using free alternatives; a better question is, why isn't Tesco selling a CD with Free/Open Source software? Slap OOo on there and charge $20 for it. None of the supermarket shoppers would be the wiser, and it saves Tesco money.
Penny - plain text accounting
They also are told not to download lots of stuff online and be wary of software being offered for free. People don't expect quality software to come without a price tag and are suspicious of free office programs and free operating systems, thinkng they are loaded with spyware or unsecure in some other way.
Maybe what OSS needs to do is ironically enough, start charging people (even if it's just ten bucks) pool resources and lease some space on a grocery store display if they want to increase marketshare, rather than directing people to a free download.
It doesnt. I work there, believe me, it doesnt.
Wibble-Wobble, Wibble-Wobble, jelly on a plate