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Linux PCs Discontinued at Wal-Mart Stores
eldavojohn writes "The $200 Linux PCs discussed earlier last year have been discontinued for sale at Wal-Mart's physical locations, though they will remain for sale at walmart.com. All this despite the systems repeatedly selling out. From the article, 'Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores.'"
There's no reason you need to buy a "Linux PC". It's not like there's some logo organization that is in charge of approving "Linux-capable" PCs like there is for Vista.
Just go get the cheapest Windows PC you can find (they have a sticker that says "Vista Capable" or "Vista Ready") and install Linux. It's cheaper than buying a dedicated Linux machine.
Don't Walmart bring products in and out all the time, I fail to see the "omg linux failure" here..
right, must be evil Microsoft. Let's what else can people figure out on slashdot.
why bribe? when your average user take that shiny Linux PC home and can't find Microsoft Word or paly any games on it or do anything that he/she did on Windows. Don't see the point of MS bribing anyone. Linux still have a long way to go before replacing Windows.
I see were you are going with that now, replace the word "effective" with "profitable"
In any case, I think part of the problem is that most people I know wouldn't envision Wal-Mart as a PC retailer. Be it my computer-illiterate neighbor whose spyware I'm constantly removing or my grandparents who only use their computer for occasional e-mail, I'd bet the majority would go to an electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City over a general retailer like Wal-Mart for a purchase that big. Wal-Mart may not be a bad place for cheap groceries or clothing, but the employees there won't know jack about the computers they're selling...and even if that's also true at the local electronics chain store, the perception that they know at least something about computers can make all the difference.
Goo goo g'joob.
No. That would be the Walmart management that prevailed. Walmart don't care if those Linux systems sell out all the time, because selling these systems in preference to a Windows PC ends up costing them money.
While the Linux users are off using apt-get to download all their packages, Windows users have to return to the store to buy their Anti-virus software, Office packages, games etc. Windows users will continue to generate income long after they have got their neighbor's kid to setup the PC for them.
Sure, there are some Windows users who know about all the free software available for that platform. These people won't generate any extra income for the retailer, but they would not have anyway, so they are out of the equation.
Finally, I have always wondered how many returns they get from people who thought that the computer was faulty because it would not run all their software they already owned. It is possible that Walmart wants to avoid losing good will of their less technically inclined customers who think that they are selling broken PCs
The "repeatedly sold out" link is a little misleading, too. It isn't exactly a solid list of endorsements -- well, it seems a lot of people bought it and then promptly returned to the website to bitch it didn't come with Windows. In short: it flopped.
I do have to wonder -- and this will certainly invite some livid replies -- solid engineering is great, but I always seem to get the sense that solid marketing and solid sales practices aren't valued in the same way by the F/OSS community, and if it doesn't fail to gain them any ground, it might actually hurt them, as well. I mean, that stuff doesn't have value because people like wasting money. Packaging and naming and charm and all of that has value. WTF is a gOS?
you should be modded up into the stratosphere.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
It may be because they don't want the average Walmart employee having to sell / support Linux. We don't have any Walmarts here, but what are they like with Windows? Could they handle Linux and the type of people who buy the 'cheap' computer and then can't install their 'borrowed' copy of Office / Madden / Whatever.
As an aside, I went and bought myself an eee PC. The sales guy was clumsily trying to explain that it didn't run Windows. He seemed relieved when I told him I knew it ran Linux and it wasn't a problem.
Exactly. This is business. Kudos to Walmart for even trying to sell Linux PCs. They realized it was not a viable business decision and moved on.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
since over 50% of hosts are running apache, i suspect your stats might be a bit off.
I sell 'em. Make a good bit of money doing so. Care to explain why my business is, in defiance of all evidence to the contrary, not viable?
Possibly because it doesnt scale up?...
I would assume that you are more of a specialty shop right?... computers (or electronics) only... those 3 Linux based PC's you sold last month probably made you around $1,000... but you probably only had 4 of them... WalMart on the other hand probably ordered in 50 of them... and still only sold 3... whereas WalMart may have ordered in 200 Windows based PC's and sold 125 of them...
Or they ordered X of them and sold X, since the article clearly says they sold out.
c++;
Finally, I have always wondered how many returns they get from people who thought that the computer was faulty because it would not run all their software they already owned. It is possible that Walmart wants to avoid losing good will of their less technically inclined customers who think that they are selling broken PCs
I really think that any user who has, in this day and age, actually bought and installed software from external media, understands the concept of "this software runs on Windows" well enough not to confuse OS incompatibility with faulty hardware, and the be aware of it when buying the PC.
And conversely, any user without that level of comprehension (who would try to return the PC) probably doesn't even understand that the software they already own on CD-ROM can be installed in a different machine and would never even think of trying it ; new computer means all new software -- I mean, isn't software part of the computer? Or more likely, the only software they "own" is stuff that was pre-installed on their previous computer with no source media and thus couldn't be reinstalled on a new machine even if they wanted to.
To the "less technically inclined customer" that might buy this PC without understanding that it doesn't run Windows, it doesn't even matter because all he needs is a web browser and mail client, both of which are available and installed (with the Linux version automatically selected) from the internet.
So... they ordered 3... and sold 3... lol :P
Did microsoft have anything to do with this?
In am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but have we forgotten how Microsoft became a monopoly in the first place? It bullied all its retailers to drop alternatives. On the surface this is exactly the type of press that the consumers were fed. Yet at the end of the day, no one was left standing but Microsoft, and only then did we start asking the right questions and figured out how it happened. By then it was too late.
There are many "possible" reasons why the Linux box was dropped, and some are more convincing than others. But the bottomline is, they simply aren't telling us the sales figures, aren't revealing that there were any increases in support costs, that returns were a problem, or that Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
All we know is that they dropped Linux, that they are a huge Windows retailer, and that some MS rep near Walmart headquarters has them on speed dial.
Everyone seems to be blaming Walmart's management or Microsoft for the decision that the gPC isn't worth selling in stores.
A while back, there was a slashdot-linked PC Magazin review of that box - and it didn't do so well. Granted, the review might have been a little biased, but not enough to dismiss it entirely.
I imagine that might be a big part of why they're not sold in stores anymore.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
Of course, to be fair with all OSes, they do not sell computers anymore in stores... Of course, they sell *all* their computers online... And indeed, GNU/Linux OSes exposure in store was not "efficient", let them be sold only online. I hope I'm right... but, I really don't know why, something tells me it's not that simple...
(I should link to that naked, bearded fat guy sitting in front of a computer...) But can't be bothered.
To take this post slightly on topic, I see no conspiracy here. The decision process for a huge retailer like Wal-mart is likely quite complex, not to mention unsentimental so if the business-case changes they will re-appear in the physical stores.
Does anyone btw own one of these machines? Are $200 good value for money?
-Queen of the Kung-Fu fairies
They only stopped selling them in stores, which sounds to me they will still offer them online.
It seems it was not that much of a non-viable business decision; it merely suffered from anomalies.
Low-end Linux PCs are a rather non-standard item, and my best guess is that most people who'd bought them were geeks who'd wanted a cheap Linux toy. Or to give a computer-illiterate family member a low-end computer.
And they bought them online.
Thus there was a significant disproportion in the numbers of sales — most units were sold online, so of course the execs deemed the online market more profitable for this kind of article. That may prove to be a misguided long-term decision, but it makes perfect sense in short term.
Ignore this signature. By order.
It isn't about customer service. The most valuable asset in the physical store is shelf space. The profit margin on these cannot be that much, let alone to the profits to be made filling shelves with more game cartridges.
Remember back to the stories about Wal-Mart's push into CFLs and how the person at Wal-Mart pushing these had to make a case to get shelf space. They had to present a case and prove themselves.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
From the specs, and the reviews I've read, it was a lousy computer. When you put Linux on a lousy computer, you have...a lousy computer with Linux it.
I don't understand why so many in the Linux community were pleased by this. Having Linux associated with low-end machines that people buy because they can't afford what the really want does not help Linux. We shouldn't be promoting Linux as the OS for those who have to settle for less.
Obviously they confused "market share" with "desktop share" and might not know what a server even is...(queue joke regarding the newbie who thought MS made a server OS).
Since when is "selling out a product" not a viable business decision? Was their profit margin too small? Well, the answer to that might have been adding 20 bucks to the price.
There's more here than meets the eye.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The "Linare" linux distro on it did NOT include gcc (or any compiler), the only drivers for its modem and NIC were partial source for WINDOWS drivers. Their tech support was one guy who was obviously NOT in the US. He had to "call his supervisor" cuz he didn't know what Linux was or why windows drivers wouldn't work with it. After several phone calls, he email me a broken rpm file. I loaded Knoppix, got it working fine and overwrote "Linare". A coupla months later, the power caps popcorned.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614
Not Sold Online.
Huh?
Did Walmart really want to sell the Linux PCs in the first place? If they did, then why were the Linux PCs so hard to find at Walmarts?
My experience is the very top management at Walmart is sharp, but the middle management is very YMMV and store management is internally promoted so there is usually one that's sharp, two that are average and the rest show signs of to much inbreeding. From that perspective it's easy to see that a $200.00 PC just isn't going to give them the profit/Ft^2 unless they turnover a lot of them which isn't sustainable. Also Everex isn't going to be in a position to offer incentives to Walmart to secure shelf-space like the others probably do, so the result is if you want one, order online and pick-up at your local store. The added advantage of this scheme is the machines isn't in the store, so Billy-Bob isn't going to buy one, fill the hard-disk with Kiddy-Porn picture of him and his wife, then return it because mozilla on Linux don't handle .wmf files out of the box; only to have the computer be illegally re-boxed and sold as new for someone daughter's use.
lets see
1 insult Walmart management
2 add slightly insightfull comment on-topic
3 imply consiracy against Linux on the desktop
4 insult stereo-typical Walmart customers
5 complain about M$ patented technology
6 get +5 insightfull mod woohooo
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
So they don't have margins to adjust for the sale to turn up profit? That means hardware is sold at no margin, and money is done on AV and proprietary software, even once you factor in the cost of a windows OEM license? hmmmmmmmmmmm
Well, to be precise, it says, "Wal-Mart sold out the in-store gPC inventory but decided not to restock..." from which one can infer... nothing. They might have sold them below cost to rid the stores of the last few boxes. Or it may have taken 6 months to move 5 units. Or they could have simply keep them in the store because it might not have been cost effective to pack them up and ship them back.
They also could have gotten in 5 units and sold 5 units in a single day... not. Because if that were the case they'd keep selling them. Or they could have sold 5 and gotten 4 back once the user found it couldn't run Word and most games, which I could attribute to "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for..."
But the lead says it best. "Computers that run the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows didn't attract enough attention from Wal-Mart customers, and the chain has stopped selling them in stores..."
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
If a Vista PC costs $278, then I would not there is much difference in profit margin.
Maybe the offline PCs were selling out, but not fast enough? This may be a slow time of year for PC sales.
Walmart tends to pressure vendors to regularly reduce their prices.. and helpfully suggest to some that they produce a substandard model just for walmart if it will help them to reduce prices... so what may have happened simply was that the manufacturer of the computer just couldnt get the price low enough for Walmart on the second round.
ariven.com
Having a Wal-Mart as the ONLY place for electronics in my town, and having even worked there at one point in my life, I must say I think a lot of people on here must never have been to one. For starters, there is no "support" or training at Wal-Mart. Stuff comes in on a pallet, they set it in the floor in the middle of the night, and someone stocks the shelf. If you are lucky enough to find an employee in the day time, about the best you will get from them is where the product is located. That is how they keep prices low. There is no support or training. From time to time, you will find someone in electronics that knows a little something, as I even worked in electronics from time to time...but let me assure you, they don't go out of the way for that to happen.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
If Walmart decided to discontinue it because of the lack of demand, that's fair game.
I'd agree, if that's really what's going on. But if Wal-Mart sold out of the units in all their stores, what metrics are they using to justify a lack of demand? Returns? Rain checks? Or Microsoft offering them a deal they can't refuse to discontinue selling them?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The exec's used skewed information.
Almost ALL locations that had them in the stores only stocked 1 or 2. They also did not display them so they were tucked away when they had them. Most of the time they were sold out and the local store manager never had it set up to restock very often so therefore the sales pace in store was slow. Mostly from raw incompetence. I watched 6 local stores around here trying to get one because I was too lazy to buy online and ship to local store. They NEVER had them in stock.
Typical retail games and retail executives making decisions based on bad information created by their own management team.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Games come on cartridges? Are these the same kind of cartridges you put in your inkjet printer? What do you do if your game runs out of ink?
...not sure how walmart handles these, but although they take up a lot of shelf space on the shelves in the stores, they tend to be vacuum-packed and sealed on the shelves in storage. All the shelf-stocker staff has to do is rip a sticker off to let air in and vavoom.. fluffy pillow/comforter.
And yes, this is indeed very similar to those annoying home-shopping commercials where you can actually buy bags that work much the same where you stick your own vacuum cleaner on top of some manner of valve.
My 3 years working in tech support beg to differ. Frequently (at least once or twice a week), I'd receive a call which basically boiled down to the customer being down right ticked off because they had been trying to install their printer software using the disc clearly labeled "Macintosh" on their Windows XP/Vista computer. They would then blame us because our computer was faulty, because the manufacturer of the printer told them so. I haven't worked in tech support for over a year, but I still hear my friends laughing about hours these people supposedly spend resolving issues that could have easily been solved by reading the manual, or heaven forbid... the quick start instructions designed to get you up and running in as little as possible.
Ah.
GIGO, as always.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I've long wanted to convert my firewall systems to something Via based, partly for their low power consumption, partly for the Padlock crypto engine. It's only recently that Via boards have hit price points appropriate to their performance levels. The premium associated with a specialty board always canceled out the lower cost of the chips it contained.
The existing via is much like a 1.5GHz 486 with a handful of special purpose accelerators. The upcoming Isaiah (one source suggests availability June 2008) should finally kick via up into the 1.5GHz PIII range, at which point, for many purposes, performance is no longer a limiting factor. The rumour is that this new Via offers twice the performance/watt in a drop-in, pin-compatible package.
At long last, these low-end carcasses are becoming quite the interesting niche.
It's one thing to offer them online if the majority of sales have been through that channel, it's another thing to make it difficult to find. I went on the walmart.com site looking for it. If you don't know it's an Everex machine and/or don't know it runs gOS, you can't find it easily: you'd think that the search query "linux pc" would bring it up, but no dice. So what if geeks are the ones buying it and know exaaaaaaactly what they are looking for? Why not make it a liiiiiitle easier to find?
One more whine: maybe I'm getting sucked into the whole consumerismness of the iPhone/MBA, but the gPC is butt-ugly...
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
The advantage of working for one of the *big* fish, then, I guess. Customers who are that naive tend to be the ones who think that you absolutely *must* have a Dell printer if you've got a Dell computer, or HP with HP....
I worked tech. support for Compaq for 4 years. On the Canadian Bilingual queue, we did everything... printers, computers, laptops; only networking and servers were done at a different location. Not once did I ever have a call like you're describing. About the closest to that I ever got was in the early days of Windows XP... a customer had just bought a Compaq computer after literally throwing his brand new HP out the 3rd floor window. Why? Because HP tech. support couldn't get his printer working... they hadn't come up with XP drivers for it yet. The funny part? With my supervisor's permission, I gave it a "best effort", and told him to download the Windows 2000 drivers... they worked, and his computer, printer and all, was up and running in the time it took him to download them from the website. The *truly* funny part? Shortly thereafter we were bought out by HP and my job was moved to India. Ahh, Carly Fiorina, how we love you.... >.>
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Of course it is more effective to sell online - than WHEN YOU NEVER HAVE ANY STOCK IN THE STORE. I went into several area Walmarts, just to see what the hype was all about - and never got to see any Linux box.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
"...because I was too lazy to buy online..."
Damn, I don't even know how I could make a better joke than you did already.
I have this computer. It's not lousy at all.
I've built machines with 16 cores, 40GB of RAM and scores of U320 drives. You know what? Those machines don't browse the Internet, send email or load office programs any faster than the $200 gPC you can get at Walmart. They do however sound like a blow drier on high, which might distract my kids while they're doing their homework.
They're tools. Use the right tool for the job.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I went to three local Dallas/Fort Worth-area WalMarts trying to find the Everex gOS desktop. Not only did none of those three carry it, the newest store (a regional "showcase" store according to a friend who delivers there as a supplier) carried no desktops at all, whether Windows or Linux. They had exactly two laptops. They had a pathetic stock of hardware (network cards, hard drives, printers) and virtually no software. The other two stores have cut back shelf space radically on software as well. The store closest to me has gone from what I'd estimate was 50 shelf-feet of boxed software 5 years ago to around 6 feet now. At all three stores, space taken away from computer products has gone to console games, cell phones, MP3 players and cameras. Interestingly enough, the printers and cameras seem to be slowly working their ways towards each other as they no longer need a computer in between to work together.
So apparently, Windows PCs and software in general aren't selling well enough to maintain shelf space against, say, music players and cell phones, whose areas are growing rapidly I notice.
* * * * *
"A man's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another drink."
—W.C. Fields
All true but Walmart is missing a great opportunity at the same time.
Yes there is a lot of free software for Windows and for Linux and frankly a lot of it is the same software. Thunderbird, Firefox, GIMP, Audacity, VLC and OpenOffice run on both platforms. What I can not get for free on Windows I also can not get for free on Linux or at all.
TurboTax and or Taxcut, Qicken, and a lot of games.
If Walmart could get software companies to offer those programs for Linux then they might make even more money from a Linux box than from a Windows Machine. apt-get is great use it to SELL software for Linux machines. Create an iTunes like store for Linux software. Sell webcams, soundcards, music players, and printers that all work with the Linux machines that Walmart is selling.
I don't think Walmart really wants to go that far but it could work well for them. And no it isn't an original idea Linspire has the same plan but Walmart might have the size to pull it off.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have yet to see anyone post actual numbers for gPC sales through Walmart - a "sell out" tells me nothing if I don't know how many items you had for sale.
But this wouldn't be the first time, or the second, that OEM Linux has tanked at Walmart. Walmart has tried every incarnation of OEM Linux known to man and not one has gone the distance.
The failure of the $200 PC at Walmart is telling.
It is another black mark for the "web appliance." It suggests that the low-income buyer can't afford a PC at any price - or that they are paying garage sale prices for the older but still capable Windows PC.
It suggests that the middle class buyer, the non-technical user, doesn't trust the bottom-feeder - and let's be clear about this, it is Linux and not Vista Basic that is identified with the deep-discount no-name PC.
The PC with the Linux distro unfamiliar even to the Geek.
The PC tha ships without a functional modem. The PC that is sold without a matching printer.
I point you to this comment, http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=483066&cid=22712872, which supports the notion that people were returning these machines in droves, which is what caused WalMart to discontinue them.
You won't be replacing Vista, you will be dual-booting, You will be buying a machine with extended service and support. You will getting OEM Windows and Linux for the price of a single pair of ink jet cartridges.
You can be playing iTunes. Fallout. System Shock 2.
Connect the dots. It's very likely that Linux was dropped from retail stores because it was successful, not because it was a failure. Wal-Mart was one of the few companies to go on the record in favor of Microsoft's patent pact with Novell. Wal-Mart never goes on the record for IT purchases. There's clearly a very chummy relationship between Wal-Mart and Microsoft at the most senior levels. I'd say it was news of Linux's success that prompted Microsoft to pressure Wal-Mart on this issue, not Linux's failure to sell.
The average Wal-Mart customer is just lookign for the cheapest deal available. When they see a $199 PC, they will get it without wondering if I runs/comes with Windows. That would be like asking if a TV had a US power outlet connector. It doesn't even cross their minds.
As you can guess, they would get it home and it doesn't look like the Windows they know from work and their old computer. To top that, they can't install Quicken, Civ II, or any other software they bought at the SAME Wal-Mart. I would think that would prompt a lot of returns to show back up at the store.
And regards to many comments about how Wal-Mart doesn't want its staff stuck supporting Linux, do you at all feel they are currently able to support Windows in any capacity?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Wasn't too hard, I tried to go at it like a consumer might browsing the physical or online store, with no searching and simply narrowing it by clicking through categories.
Main Page >> Electronics >> Computers >> Desktops
From here, the gPC shows up on the first page if you click "Desktops without monitors", or "See all desktops" followed by clicking on the lowest price range, $150-$250 (I would assume a typical customer would check out this range for the cost if they really wanted something on a budget). Buried, maybe, but no more than Wal-Mart's other products, even the Windows-based computers.
Registered Linux User #449434
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Not to mention the lack of shovelware for Linux.
Obviously, you've never worked in any kind of support scenario -- absolutely none of the assumptions you made are anywhere near correct.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
Wait, how could you shop online to buy a computer if you didn't have one in the first place? chicken and egg!?!?
aaaaahhh *head explodes*
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
What with their room temperature IQ's, hangovers and general apathy and language barriers. They can barely sweep the bar code over the scanner so asking them what's the difference between Linux and Winderz is a waste of time.
Grandparent is exactly right. It's time for a brief lesson in big-box retail.
1. Profit is measured in square feet. If something is more profitable to Walmart than an Everex pc. Goodbye Everex.
2. Vendors need to be able to afford Walmart's promotional costs. Vendors must be able to afford the other costs of being in the retailer. There are many. Verrry many.
3. A $299 PC relies on accessories to make the sale profitable. Otherwise it's a loss-leader that drags down the whole category. Maybe Walmart wasn't getting the accessory sales.
Economic reality is such that it may not make sense for Everex or Walmart to keep a $299 PC. I don't know if a $299 PC would make much sense at most retailers brick-and-mortar or even online without higher margin accessories.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
I would be interested to see what the return rate has been for these computers.
It doesn't matter how ofter you sell out if 40% are returned because a person finds out he can't run his favorite windows app.
Maybe they sold a lot in the store, but how many were returned by people who didn't even read the packaging, or when their friend's pirated copy of some Windows app wouldn't install on their system, and their friend said "Dude, you got ripped off."
Online retailers have always had an edge over brick-n-mortar stores in terms of customer satisfaction. Why? Because the average intelligence (or at least knowledge) of the online buyer is way above that of the person who walks into CompUSA to buy one. (Okay, can't use that one anymore; if you try to walk into a CompUSA building today expecting to buy one, chances are good that you're REALLY lacking intelligence!)
IT'S WAL-MART. The employees selling the junk in the electronics department don't even know what the ESRB rating system is and they had them try and sell a off-brand PC loaded with Linux. WTH comes to mind on that one. Anyone who would resonably know what Linux is, would not buy a off-brand workstation at Wal-Mart. Who were they selling to? People who know Intel and Windows and HP and buy computers off of Home Shopping Network or off the back of the Parade Magazine, wrong group.
First of all, 1.3 is ancient, and should not be used. Let it die!
Secondly, Apache on Windows is a pain. I know from experience.
Thirdly, Apache is overwhelmingly on UNIX or UNIX-like systems.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
When in order to do so you have to price them below cost.
Which would only serve to reduce sales even further.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
I id'd the Walmart PC I bought as a "Linare" of the variety they sold from their website at one time. What I posted was absolute truth, not flamebait or trolling. I didn't say "down with Microsoft" or "up with Linux" or "I hate =insert company name here=" or any crap like that. Apparently your experience was difference; both yours and mine together may help others decide what they want.
As for your comments on my post:
1. I personally downloaded...
I couldn't, cuz no working drivers were included with the Linare Linux box, neither for the modem or the built in NIC card.
2.It is quite plausible that there was no gcc....They were only as far away as their repository though.
See my reply to your comment 1. The repository is really really far away if your modem don't work.
3.Their tech support may actually be one guy...
My complaint wasn't so much that there is only one guy, but that he didn't know what Linux was or how to support the box. in other words, the vendor couldn't pass it off as "he's a new guy" or my phone call was "misdirected". The vendor had failed to provide even a marginally acceptable level of support for the product.
Your request for someone to mod me down is unreasonable.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
If that was your worst (most naive/ignorant) customer you ever had to deal with then consider yourself extremely lucky.
I worked for Gateway and later for Dell (on their Dell On Call) campaign. For both companies I handled only American customers, and I found that users of both brands tended to make the same mistakes. Dell On Call was only software support that had already been escalated by hardware techs (almost all of which were in India), which I suppose in some cases added to the customer's aggravation making them seem more hostile. I've had tons of customer's refer to their monitors as the "TV part" the computer as the "Hard Drive". I've dealt with people that refuse to believe that the internet is not part of Windows and all sorts of other crazy situations where you can't understand how a customer could believe what they did.
The impression I get based on my experience is that a large percentage of people would probably buy Windows software (at least once) and try to run it on a cheap Linux PC they picked up at Wallmart (assuming they just grabbed the cheapest machine without consulting a Wallmat associate about it first).
I also get the impression amongst peers and (even here on slashdot) that most tech savvy people seem to overestimate the computer proficiency of people who have nothing to do with IT.
I guess you and I have simply seen very different sides of the same coin.
Because you clearly do not understand the PC business, the article, or the events in question, allow me to point out a few small facts you appear to have overlooked:
1) PCs are a commodity business. You don't stick around selling 3 of them in a month.
2) If you're making $1000 off of 3 PCs, I want whoever your marketing guy is.
3) Wal-Mart doesn't order things in 50s. It orders them in thousands.
4) TFA clearly states that Wal-Mart repeatedly sold out of the machines.
Put it together. Wal-Mart has sold thousands of these machines out repeatedly- which means that it has a product whose supplier cannot meet demand. If you're a company that size and want to lose a lot of money, the way to do it is to have to deal with somebody else's god awful supply chain.
It's ok, but it would improve if you sold Windows-based PCs instead Lot of competition in that space. On the low end machines, a quarter of the cost can be software licensing. My experience is that that cost has to be passed on to the customer, and that it leads to lost sales. Your mileage may vary, of course.
At the Wal-Mart scale, it's millions more to make by axing the Linux PC in favor of cheap, Windows-based machines, so it becomes a simple business decision I don't dispute that Wal-Mart is making a business decision here, or that it's a simple one, but I think people are overlooking the probable reason- Wal-Mart loves good suppliers, and hates bad ones. It wouldn't be the first time Wal-Mart axed a profitable product because the supply chain just wasn't able to support demand, and TFA clearly states that these repeatedly sold out.
WalMart markets AOL Dial-Up Essentials to its senior, rural and small town customers who can't afford or can't get broadband service.
The gPc shipped without a working modem. It was sold without a link to a matching printer.
There wasn't a hint in the adds that additional free software was available online, much less how to download it. Linspire has been telling people for years that this is not the way to market the "alternative OS."
I bet Microsoft was threatening them.
Otherwise, what kind of business discontinues a product that sells out?
Business question for 3rd graders:
You run a lemonade stand. Your pink lemonade sells out every day. You:
A) Make more pink lemonade
B) Stop making pink lemonade
Explain your answer.
When a vendor chooses to sell his/her product in Walmart, they have to met very high expectations.
For example, if WM is unable to sell 100% of the product, the vendor has to buy the difference back (via store credit). Or if WM sells the product too quickly, the vendor has to be able to meet the demand. If Everex has problems meeting the demand of the supply, WM may choose to pull that product from it's shelves.
WM's press release may have very little to do with the real reason it was pulled.
Interesting WM story: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
Honestly, I love to bash Walmart probably more than I should, but in this case it sounds like they made a legitimate business decision.
If I understood the article correctly, the computers did sell out, but didn't sell as well as the same models that they had online. The decision here was to not dedicate the shelf space to the linux pcs. Which is perfectly reasonable, it's much harder to scale shelf space as demand goes up and down, ultimately the space has to come from somewhere. Selling online also has similar issues, but since the main issues are cost and the ability to track inventory, it's much less of an issue. And if you're already going to be shipping the items there's no reason why the new space needs to be in the same warehouse.
It appears to me that this was simply a decision to put the supply of the computers online where Walmart was selling them much more efficiently and somewhat more efficiently.
Honestly, it surprises me somewhat that the computers would be selling more online, as shipping is usually considerable, but if they're making more money doing it that way, that would imply that they shouldn't be taking up shelf space selling the computers locally.
Wait, wut? Apache on Windows was actually easier than IIS4 by a long shot.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Not my worst by a long shot. But the closest I've ever had to the problem you initially said happened on such a frequent basis.... Idiot users happen all the time. I dealt with them on a daily basis; working tech. support for Compaq, later for various ISPs, then for Dell (XPS support). And it continued, when I moved into Dell's sales department, though it was a different kind of ignorance. Now I'm in logistics, and thankfully there isn't nearly as much of it, but even here I have to deal with people who don't realize that we deliver product by courrier... every time somebody orders something through the website and puts in a PO box instead of their civic address, we have to call the customer up and correct it. And that's to say nothing of the other problems we face at a logistical level.... *shrugs*
But I chalk it up to inexperience. Not stupidity. I know things you don't. You know things that I don't. That's all part of the game. At the end of the day, you simply don't need to know some of the stuff I know, because it's not part of your job.
I'm gonna let you in on a secret... it's something that far too few people who work Tech. Support realize: those people you're making fun of? They're the reason you have a job. You have a choice to make. The only way you're going to survive in tech. support, and better still, move beyond tech. support into upper levels of the organization, is to stop treating them like a burden, and start treating them as a blessing. If you don't, you're going to burn out.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Yeah, because I never... uh... write stuff on my Linux machine. I certainly couldn't possibly play a game! And it's just so damn hard to find "word processor" in the menu! And it doesn't say "START" on it, ohnoes! How will I know how to start?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Not from Wal*Mart, but straight from the dealer. I needed to set my Mom up with a new pc with wireless capabilities. Out of the box, the card didn't work and I had to install Ubuntu to get it on the network. A success story in that it worked as advertised: all of the hardware was Linux-friendly...However, the hacked up E17-based gOS was almost unusable. I had planned to erase it anyway, but wanted to check it out. I appreciate Enlightenment (and think that E17 is pretty awesome), but their port of it was NOT user friendly.
A first-time Linux user would likely be lost with their "experience"....I'd go with Dell if you really need to verify that everything will work with Linux. (Beyond a completely home-brew machine.)
Welcome to the Wii. If you're selling out that fast, post your shipment estimates to get customers to come back every week for new shipments.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
This article quotes a Wal-Mart spokesperson as saying it was due to lack of demand. Hey, don't blame me, I'm just posting a link and summarizing it.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
wal-mart.com started something a while back, 'order it online, pick it up at your local wal-mart for free'
so, really all they've done is taken it off the store shelves, and people buying them online pick them up as a special item from guest services at their local wal-mart. this basically allows them to piggyback their e-store on the nationwide distribution channels of wal-mart, without having to dedicate any shelf space, and giving their guest service counter people more to do. The cost of shipping goods for wal-mart on their own semi's rival what even the best parcel service can offer, it's even lower than the USPS because the usps goes to people's homes, the wal-mart semi's only go to wal-marts, and usually loaded with the daily shipment of stuff.
of course, the down side is you have to pay sales tax when you order from wal-mart.com which many states completely leave up the the tax payer to report if they ordered online or through catalogs. but, technically you're supposed to pay tax no matter who ships it, it's just really easy to say, buy an lcd tv, and not pay that $1,000 dollars worth of taxes at all, because most states don't track or monitor those things.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
*sigh*
:)
The sad thing here is that you probably really believe this.
Walmart is in business to make money. That's the bottom line. That's what they do, and they are very good at it. If a product doesn't sell at Walmart, Walmart isn't going to continue to sell it because there is an opportunity cost that goes along with it.
Linux fanboys always, always, ALWAYS have an excuse. Linux was being sold in actual stores; people could walk into a well known, national chain and walk about with a PC with Linux on it. This was 'prime time' for Linux to shine.
And it flopped worse than Vista did.
And now, we can queue up the legions of Linux fans who are going to say all of the following and more....
This is MS'es fault...
The Linux distro used on these PCs weren't as cool as (insert distro of choice)...
Blame Walmart for secretly WANTING Linux to fail...
Call the execs at Walmart stupid...
Call the users/customers stupid...
All to get around the simple fact that Linux still can't compete with competition. What more could you ask for? Linux being pre-installed on a PC sold on the same shelves as PCs?
Personally, I couldn't care less about Linux, Windows, or how the sales at Walmart went; I'm just sick of hearing how great Linux is. I can find you articles from eight years ago that say how 'Linux is *finally* ready for mainstream, desktop use' and then the year after that, you get the same article.
Every year. All the time. Constantly. Linux fans are telling the world how great Linux is, how ready Linux is, how Linux can do everything you want....
Enjoy a cup of STFU
You don't hear people blaming a lack of sales of the Nintendo wii on a lack of availablity or shelf space, do you?
I learn a lot on Slashdot.
When it comes to knowing about Walmart random dude on the internet > Management at the #1 company in the US as ranked by Fortune Magazine.
You should totally be a CEO.
If you're putting a week's worth up and selling out in a day, that's not the end of the world. If you're putting two month's worth up and selling out that afternoon, you have a big problem.
Very sage advice, I agree wholeheartedly. It's the people who are miserable about helping someone who knows less than they do that stay on the floor the longest. I always treated my customers with respect and tried to explain things as best I could. I ultimately wound up with a few promotions and raises before I got my current job as a programmer.
Either way, call centers / tech support can be a pretty cut-throat business, no matter how you play the game. (At least in this area for said companies). I'm glad to be out of it.
Pewfff.. butterflies are for wussies, bumblebees, hornets and etc are much faster and far more challenging than butterflies. And if you screwup in your data handling calculations you may very well get stung... a lot. I have heard of some really serious basement freaks that "deposit" certain body fluids on a seriously overclocked CPU. The pheromones released attracts swams of horny killer honeybees which generate huge vivid displays the the data sets.
Personally I prefer dragonflies, mainly because they don't sting me. They are very challenging to observe, are several orders of magnitude faster than butterflies, capable of near zero time reference for directional flight vector changes thus providing awesome data display switching time, can fly with stability in multiples thus allowing for larger data sets, often fly in formation allowing for data stream pipe lining and kewlest of all they can hover which provides for very accurate data snapshots. Actually the kewlest thing is that they can mate while flying, of course butterflies can do that as well but not quite as vigorously. This is kinda like decoding and displaying encrypted porn on the "fly".
If you had any meta physical coding skills the next step in data display and analysis would be fairies. The data density of fairy grouping is unmatched, do you have any idea how many of these fit on the head of a pin? The resolution they are capable of rendering is far greater than the human eye can process. As entities of a higher dimensional state they are capable of making state transitions via quantum tunneling thus the effective display pixel flip is zero, faster even than the light they emit, chew on that for an while. They are capable of representing data from a quantum flux or entanglement, thus they can transmit and display data from anywhere or anytime and have perfect peer to peer data sharing abilities. Best of all some of the female fairies I have seen artwork renderings of are really really hot!
Wabi Sabi
Matthew