I wrote on Dell Inc.'s (NASDAQ: DELL) position as computer maker in search of a new image a few days ago, as its brand nameplate with the desktop PC segment is being left behind by other fast-moving competitors. With the "back to school" marketing season set to ramp into full mode (or wait, it's already there!), retailers and computer hardware makers are in advertising mode galore. Everyone is seeking to court parents buying PCs for all those millions of kids. Count Wal-Mart in, as the retailer is set to launch an ultra-cheap desktop PC soon, hopefully catching this in-progress buying wave.Is the desktop PC really dead, then? That depends on how you look at the PC breakdown by age and use, I think. Kids under 15 still living at home are generally just fine (well, most anyway) with a desktop PC. As kids reach the junior and senior years of high school, portable laptops become all-important for computing use. Of course, most college students these days would not be seen near a desktop PC unless it was in a university computer lab.
Although Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) states that it does not want to be known as just a "low price leader," the retailing giant is going for the low-price jugular by offering a sub-$300 desktop PC this shopping season. I'm confused on the timing though, as the unit needs to be on store shelves now or be relegated to the boring fall "normal" shopping season instead of the red-hot "back to school" shopping season.











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-27-2007 @ 4:39PM
William Martin said...
Points to Ponder:
Best Buy told me if I bought a computer with only the basic 512k memory it might take forever to boot up using the new Vista software. They are telling people to get the 1024k memory. They say they have had many problems with the 512k minimum.If this is true I hope Wal-Mart is aware of this with this $300 computer. I know nothing about computers and if someone has some input about this for me I would appreciate it.Thanks
7-27-2007 @ 7:28PM
pennyk said...
I guess the everx computer has 1GB of memory and not just 512. Not bad...
7-27-2007 @ 10:19PM
jay said...
I just tried asking best buy about downgrading my new brand new toshiba laptoop to xp pro, all I got was a bunch of grief and bs for even asking, probably will be the last sale they ever get out of me, talk about customer non-support, just to prove them wrong, I went next door to a competitor, bought a copy of xp pro, wiped vista from the face of the earth, and had no problems at all, despite all the 'helpful' doom and gloom advice from the clones at best buy insisting it couldn't be done...
7-27-2007 @ 10:44PM
Lisa said...
Best Buy sucks...they do not stand behind anything they sale..I know 5 people including myself that has made a major purchase there...never will it happen again...you get nothing but the runaround...
7-28-2007 @ 2:47AM
Joe said...
Not true to every Best Buy the franchise may be the same but the sales people are diffrent in every store so sorry to hear of your poor expierences ,the one I go to actually have people that will help you and know what they are talking about. The 512k for vista will be to slow to boot but if you have many start up programs that will cause your pc to slow down , disabeling some of them can help but yeah I would probaly just upgrade to the 1.24k for any future program installs and you can multitask without your pc slowing down much and rub programs a bit faster.
7-29-2007 @ 12:56AM
William Martin said...
I appreciate these comments and suggestions,2) thru 5). I will purchase one of these computers from WMT and never really considered purchasing another one from Best Buy as I did in '06. I to had problems with them when I tried using the extended warrant I bought with it. I could not believe it!! I question the integrity of upper management above the local store managers in the BEST BUY organization I don't have a problem buying a computer at Wal-Mart because I know they will take care of anything that's not right as they have every time I've ever had a problem with anything which hasn't been that often. Also WalMart-Mart does not charge a 15% restocking fee as does Best Buy and Circuit City on certain items. I am a shareholder in Best Buy but I am disappointed in them. Thanks again for all the good information reported.
7-30-2007 @ 2:39PM
Robert said...
Best Buy is the poorest excuse for an electronics retailer that I have ever had the misfortune to visit.I bought a HP printer from them and it did not work. When I returned it they balked because one piece of the plastic pccking was missing! No more!
7-30-2007 @ 11:55PM
David Pedjoe said...
Good Evening No.1 INTL Retailer: Wal*Mart Stores! Your Inventory List of 16,000 Discounted Products, Made Me Realize Over This Past Weekend That You Would Surmount and Rally The NYSE Back Into Positive Territory. I Agree with You On The Desktop Idea For Students and The Working Class As Well. Just Make Sure You Pick A Barebones Wal*Mart Version, As Did Systemax To Create The Upgradable Versions of The Hardware Involved and Cargo Bay Space.. For The "Now" 4 GB Flash Memory Cards, From My Last Report.. Have The Bay with Card Readers.. Especially The Flash Card Memory. This Will Become The Library Source For All Those Back-Up and Future Program Systems.. Find The Right Techno-Brat That Can Create The Terabyte Flash Card.. Expanding Memory That's Larger The The SD Card.. Is Feasible and Probable. With This Extinction of The Hard Drive.. Memory, and CD and DVD.. and DAT and Travan Drive, Can Also Eliminate Priracy.. When You Remove The Card, For Opening E-mails.. Servers Also Create A Glitch In The Flash Memory.. With A Direct Link To Said "Servers".. Lines of Space, Software and Hardware At Just A Line or WiFi Link To Server. But People Have Memories, That Are Keepsakes and More Personal and Individualized.. For That Future Software and Terabyte Card.. Coil The Flash Cards Prongs Like On A Transitor Radio.. You'll Have Your Terabyte. Thanks For Keeping America Adept On The Future. Time For A Vending Machine "Slim Jim" Sandwich with Swiss and Trail Mix and An Iced Cold Thunder. You Might Want To Lose The Water Deals.. And Keep Those Stock Options Open To Employee's. Your Going To Sky-Rocket.. With Customer Friendly Products (As You Would User Friendly Tech!). I'll Keep You Updated. You Mentor The Masses, Myself Included. Smile!
7-31-2007 @ 10:33AM
David Michael Pedjoe said...
COMPUTATING INVENTORY: WMT, AT YOUR SERVICE!
TV News - Robin Roberts: ''I Have Breast Cancer'' - AOL News
Dearest Robin, From Thee Evidence I Have: "This One Is Conquered with Prayer and Fasting".. This Evidence Comes From An Old Ethiopian Woman, Back In The Famine of: "We Are The World".. She, If You Can Find The Documentation Only Had, I'll Say "Flaps" Where Her Plump Breasts Once Without Famine.. Were Prominent. As For Therapy, It's A Secret To Your Immune System.. Like Rads.. You Get A Small Dose of So-Called "Cancer" or Cell Poisoning, Then At Just The Right Moment and Dose ( Like ECT).. You Get Off The Radiation Treatments and Your Low Dose Cells Return To A Greater Health.. And Have The Extra-Strength To Attack Cysts, Lumps of "Tumors".. Do Not Over Radiated, The Only Reason I Say This Is "In Case" It Attacks Your Lymph System.. But Do Note There Is Loss of Appetite In Chemo-Therapy.. There Are Fatty Tissues In The Breast, and These Radicals Are Disolved By Vitimin E, and Flushing Niacin.. Enhancing The Fasting Technique.. Also A Little Wine For Your "Infirmities"!!! Further Investigations Show That Stimulation of The Breasts While Not Lactating.. Is Like Sucking A Bowling Ball Threw A Straw.. The Effect Has To Create The Mammorary Glands That While Not Pregnant or Nursing.. To Create Cysts.. That Rupture The Mammorary Tissue. In Your Instance You Also Travel Grid-Lock and Smog.. Probably Sulfur Dioxides and Carbons.. Possibly Some Benzenes.. These Are Loosened By Small Digestion of The OLD Targon.. Smokers Mouthwash! The Yellow Stuff, That Also Removes Plague From Your Veins and Arteries.. Your Heart and Exhaled To Disolve Tars In Your Lungs.. Contains Good Ingredients.. Demand The "Classic Yellow" Targon Smoker's Mouth Wash and Ingest In Small Doses.. Aspirin Will Also Thin Your Blood and Vitamin C and Zinc will Oxygenate Your Blood and Spine To Brain Function.
Loosened By Small Digestion of The OLD Targon.. Smokers Mouthwash! The Yellow Stuff, That Also Removes Plague From Your Veins and Arteries.. Your Heart and Exhaled To Disolve Tars In Your Lungs.. Contains Good Ingredients.. Demand The "Classic Yellow" Targon Smoker's Mouth Wash and Ingest In Small Doses.. Aspirin Will Also Thin Your Blood and Vitamin C and Zinc will Oxygenate Your Blood and Spine To Brain Functions..
Stress Kills.. Take 25 MGs of Librium a Day with One or Two Extra-Strength Excedrin. Robin You'll Be Cooked.. Document The Recovery. The Cure For Cancer Is "Perfect Cancer or Normal Cell Division!... United We Stand. Miss America!!!
8-03-2007 @ 6:16AM
David Michael Pedjoe said...
Harvest The Photo Voltaic Cells.. Save The Economy:
Here Are Two Issues That Will Keep America Strong, One Is We Have To Glut The Market By Photo-Voltaic Cells ( Or Solar Cell Dumping in Mass Production).. Like At Thee Advent of The Computer Era, That Mini Byte Computers Were on Average $4000.00 Dollar, Approximately The Price Today of A Good Solar Energy Set Up.. Lessening Oil Needs and Electric Bills.. To Bring That Solar Package Down To $500.00 As About Average Desktops Are.. with Mightier Bytes. That's Gas and Oil and Electric Bill.. On Another Note About Computers, There Terabyte Hard Drives Are A Vanity of Big Is Better.. When Simple Multi-Function Computers Are In The Affordable Range Still.. Doing The Trick That Most Often A Terabyte Isn't Needed Unless Your A Media Live Stream Server.
8-04-2007 @ 10:51AM
David Michael Pedjoe said...
THE REWARD TREAT of THE WEEK: INVEST TODAY!
Here It Is Saturday Morning In My Week of Arduous Labor.. And Dreaming and Drooling on What Prize I Should Treat Myself To.. "For My What A Good Boy Am I"... I'm Not Saying I Want To Burn A Whole In My Pocket.. But Probably Wish I Could Go Out and Spend Unbridled.. But Considered For Lunch with My Loved Ones, A Large Pizza and A Have Decent Bottle of Wine.. About $50.00 Bucks.. But That Amount of Money and The Yearning To Spend.. I'm Thinking of Converting My Whole Home To Some of The New-Fangled Fluorescent Energy Saving and Long Lasting Bulbs.. Do They Have One For The Refrigerator Yet, or The Stove, or Those Reflector Bulbs For The Vanity.. Why I Can Live Without Another Pizza and Some Wine A Get A "Dog" Outside Wal*Mart and Sam's Choice Cola.. As I Leave On My Trick and Treat Journey. Have We Been Stupid Hah.. That We Thought These Bulbs Were The Old "Clunker" Type and Not The Lights of America.. With New Technology.. Saving Me and America, Electricity.. Fossil Fuel.. And A Great Buy! To Help Stop A Possible Depression. You Know? After I'm Done The Light Bulb Exchange In My Home.. I Think I Have Enough For That "Blackberry" In A Few Months.. From Energy Savings For A Loved One.. There's Going To Be A Holiday Season After All.. And Fluorescent Burn Cooler, For That Heat Index of Global Warming.. Less Wear and Tear On That A.C.. And The Ozone! Pizza Anyone? Hey A Light Just Went Off In My Head.. Not Pizza. Fluorescent Light Bulbs.. Treat of The Day. The Arduous Reward System, That Gives Back Long Term Satisfaction.. Invest Today! See You At Wal*Mart and Happy Holidays!