Saturday, October 17, 2009

Update: Never thought I would see the day…

Update: saw a link on the 10.18.2009 – TechBlog linkpost that validates what I was seeing in this post:

Looks like Thursday will be the day to hit the big-box stores for the very latest in computer system hardware/software thrills and chills. -- cv

On a beautifully cool and refreshing fall Saturday, Alvis and I ran some errands around town.

She needed to cobble together the components to make her Halloween costume; a Tour Guide Barbie (from Toy Story 2).  Her other high-school friends are also adopting the characters of Toy Story.  Ought to be fun.

Since we were in the neighborhood and neither of us was quite ready to head home, we dropped in to Best Buy to look for an Enchanted DVD (found), and see what other goodies were to be had.

While I was there price comparing a 2.5” IDE 350 GB laptop drive ($110) against the NewEgg one I’ve been eyeing ($90) for a pre-Win7 upgrade, I was really blown away by what I didn’t see.

Almost no laptops or PC’s were available or on display.

Normally when I have been in Best Buy, just about every horizontal surface in the computer area is covered by laptops or desktop.  Today?  Only four netbooks and two full size laptops.  I saw only two desktop systems.

When we dropped in to Office Depot it was even worse.  Two laptops and no desktops on display.

Is the economy that bad that no-one even wants to carry this merchandise on the shelves?  It was really funny seeing how BB was trying to hide the missing items with all kinds of mice, USB sticks and other small-box products artfully arranged on all the surfaces.

No.

I suspect that all these (Vista) systems have been pulled and I am only observing the lull before the Windows 7 release storm.

I imagine that by next weekend the shelves will be full again, but this time with newly deployed laptops and desktops armed with Windows 7 operating systems.  They are probably already in the back waiting deployment.  No doubt the crack team of sales specialists have been hard at work training on the finer selling points for Windows 7.

It was just kinda freaky to walk into these spaces and not see hardly any computers this go round.

Really freaky.

--Claus V.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, cool weather. What a concept it is over 100 here in Chandler. So have they already 'clearance' the old Vista systems? Kinda seems surprising they would have already removed them. However, I would not be surprised if you were to return tomorrow (since the new 'sale' starts on Sundays) and see all new Windows 7 computers.

Absoblogginlutely! said...

i was in walmart on Saturday last weekend and they had no machines on display either. Guess this week would suck for a computer crash!