Indie voices
On Monday we published an open letter to Microsoft from independent retailer Matthew Woolley in which he called for a low-cost Windows OS, like XP Home, to be made available to the channel.
We subsequently asked the Brigantia indie PC retailer community for their thoughts on the matter and it looks like they’re all in agreement. Here are the thoughts of several indie retailers and a Microsoft authorised distributor.
I tend to agree with Matt on this, if Microsoft
wants the indies to help in the fight against piracy then we need the tools to
do it i.e. Windows XP. We charge £65 for a copy of OEM and £45 to load it, if
they don’t want to buy a copy then we turn them away.
Removal of this from sale will force people with old kit not capable of running XP in to the hands of the kitchen sink merchants who don’t care. Should it be harder to buy a copy than to download it from bit torrents? The price of Windows is less of an issue than availability because for some the price will always be too high regardless.
David – independent retailer
I'm finding that the
majority of the public with Vista that I meet regret the purchase they made, but
they felt they had no option. It comes across that a lot of people are
making do and the word on the street is "stay away".
A friendly young journalist :) once advised me “you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink”. Fortunately some plump for XP Professional based systems even though the expense is greater. Others pay for downgrading Vista Business. Others, well the credit crunch will shrink product sales whilst boosting need for service.
By discontinuing XP Home Microsoft is cutting off its own leg. It will push the market toward Linux and when it does the flagship Office will go back west with it. If it has read the signs that seem clear to everyone else, it wouldn't take the many steps it has to alienate the independent sector.
Hendy – independent retailer