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.'"

Normal

[LingNoi (1066278)]

Don't Walmart bring products in and out all the time, I fail to see the "omg linux failure" here..

Re:Normal

[kripkenstein (913150)]

Don't Walmart bring products in and out all the time

That is very true. In addition, the point of the article is that on-site sales were poor, but on the other hand online sales were successful enough for Wal-Mart to continue selling Linux PCs, currently the gPC 2 and the CloudBook.

Bottom line, walk-in customers at Wal-Mart weren't into these products, but more tech-savvy people that buy online form a sufficient market for Wal-Mart to serve. What is important about the latter fact is that it means Wal-Mart will be ready to supply demand should desktop Linux become more mainstream.

Re:

[Excelsior (164338)]

Where did you get that information? I'm guessing you made it up, because in store models were reportedly selling out.

Re:Normal

[kripkenstein (913150)]

Despite your hostile tone, I'll answer you in a civil manner: TFA says

Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores.

They indeed sold out nicely online, but offline, they didn't do as well. Note that perhaps they did sell, we don't have figures, but not well enough to justify keeping them on shelves. So Wal-Mart discontinued retail sales.

However online sales were a success, which is nice.

Re:Normal

[QuantumG (50515)]

Umm, dude, you're still not getting it. They sold out both online and in stores. The most likely reason that Wal-Mart is pulling these from the store is that they are getting too much interest and tying up staff. Customer service is suffering as a result. If Wal-Mart hires more staff that will increase the cost of the product and may decrease the demand, resulting in an elastic effect on sales.. so it is easier to pull the product from stores and require customers to buy it online where they won't be tying up customer service agents.

Its called shelf space

[Shivetya (243324)]

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.

Re:

[Foolicious (895952)]

Umm, dude, you're still not getting it.

Why do people always type (write) the words "ummm" and/or "errr" to make a point when posting? In the spoken word, "umm" is generally a filler used to buy time as you formulate what to say. It's generally considered a bad habit if you use it too much, akin to saying "like" all the time. But you don't need to do that when you write because you can simply pause and stop typing. So why do people do that?

Re:Normal

[QuantumG (50515)]

you can't find a reference because it is FUD and you know it.

Re:Normal

[zippthorne (748122)]

A computer takes up a lot more shelf space than, say, an mp3 player or mobile phone. Indeed, it's price density is lower than most of the items in the store, save maybe housewares. Pillows and comforters do take up a large volume.

More importantly, at $200 for a PC, it's profit margin had to be quite a bit lower than any of those things. I'd bet that even selling like hotcakes it would be one of the least efficient items in the store, in terms of profit per square foot.

Re:

[Excelsior (164338)]

The article cleary states they sold out of in store stock. You have stated otherwise more than once. Sorry if I sound hostile.

Re:

[wvmarle (1070040)]

On top of that I would guess that for on-line sales one doesn't need that much sales volume to make it profitable than for off-line sales. On-line a product doesn't take up shelf space, and the stock is much easier managed over say five warehouses than say five thousand shops.
It sounds like they sold OK but not good enough to dedicate shelf space in the shops, but selling good enough online to keep selling that way.

More interesting from the article..

[LingNoi (1066278)]

I find this more interesting..

Walmart.com now carries an updated version, the gPC2, also for $199, without a monitor. The site also sells a tiny Linux-driven laptop, the Everex CloudBook, for $399.

I think it would sell better with a monitor but, whatever..

Re:More interesting from the article..

[SnoopJeDi (859765)]

I don't know about you, but I just keep reusing the same oscilloscope from system to system...

Re:

[Stormscape (998750)]

I don't know about you, but I just keep reusing the same oscilloscope from system to system...

Real men use binary printouts to figure out what their computer is telling them.

Re:More interesting from the article..

[gsn (989808)]

Excuse me but real men use butterflies. You see the change in system state as the output is calculated creates temperature differences which in turn create pockets of higher pressure air to form near the computer. Such a small change in the distribution of heat near the earth's surface creates minute, immeasurable, changes in atmospheric circulation. Fortunately it also annoys butterflies which come around flapping their wings outside my window and I've learnt how to read the output from the number of butterflies and the individual and group flapping patterns. I even use the reverse technique to program on occasion but its faster to use a vi shortcut -> :dwit for do what I think. Emacs is useless and has no such feature but you can still use the butterflies.

http://www.xkcd.com/378/ [xkcd.com]

   

mmm yes

[EEPROMS (889169)]

I see were you are going with that now, replace the word "effective" with "profitable"

A thought

[Gothic_Walrus (692125)]

Paul Kim, brand manager for Everex, said selling the gPC online was "significantly more effective" than selling it in stores.

From my experiences online, it seems like there's a higher percentage of geeks with significant problems with Wal-Mart than there is in the rest of the population. Is it possible that that had an effect?

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.

Re:A thought

[wvmarle (1070040)]

For the risk of really running off-topic, a small anecdote regarding Linux for the user.
I'm running a small business: I have only one staff who is not a technophobe, but all but geeky either. My computers come with Linux as I can manage that well, I just don't know Windows and don't want to learn it as Linux is working fine for me.

So now how is she coping with Linux on the computer? No problems. She didn't realise we're not using Word but using OpenOffice.org until I mentioned it. E-mail using Evolution is also easy; I set up the accounts of course but with a little coaching setting up mail folders and the like is now also done by herself. After a few days I noticed she changed the background of the desktop, found it out herself.
No problems with it. Not at all. I got the request from her today to set up MSN Messenger, for contact with a customer, and then told her it's there already, called GAIM. The reaction she gave when seeing all the supported protocols was "wow that's convenient, saves downloading and installing a lot of programs!"

Linux is getting there, and is doing so quickly. I think really the main reason most people still buy Windows is mindshare. Linux is different, is scary. But for most of the users, what they do does not require ANY knowledge of the underlying system at all: they now already ask their friends to maintain their Windows. They will just have to call less frequently.

Oh yeah and I'm also a proud owner of an EEE PC. That one I don't recommend to the casual user as it has way too many rough edges. This is not a complaint towards Linux as such but towards the UI makers that do not think of anything smaller than 1024x768 pixels. It all is just a little too much hacking.

Re:

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr. (142215)]

(From your sig:)

>Ubuntu 7.10 was the first Linux install I've ever done that worked! (Now what do I do with it?)

Replace it with Gentoo.

How much of it was support / training costs

[deniable (76198)]

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.

Re:

[raehl (609729)]

We don't have any Walmarts here, but what are they like with Windows?

I don't think any Wal-Marts have windows. Just brick all around, glass doors in the front, and some loading docks.

Why isn't anyone asking the question...

[v(*_*)vvvv (233078)]

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.

I bought one, had a bad time...

[JetScootr (319545)]

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.

Re:WHY Mod Parent Down?

[JetScootr (319545)]

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.

I bought one of these and I'm not suprised

[xoundmind (932373)]

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.)

Lack of demand

[Cajun Hell (725246)]

This article [guardian.co.uk] 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.

Re:

[ILuvRamen (1026668)]

but if you're going for the cheapest machine you can find, I'm sure the manufacturer factored in what like $30-50 for the windows license on it. As for me, I don't want Linux running as slow as Vista so I'd buy a midrange PC instead of the cheapest. It's not like you're going to spend hundreds on software afterwards like a PC so why not spend some $ on a dual core system with some ram and give that penguin some caffeine :D

Re:No worries, mate

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's cheaper than buying a dedicated Linux machine.

Uhh, no it's not. Similar computers at Dell have a difference of $50-$90 in price between the Vista and Ubuntu versions.

More importantly though, part of the money you're paying to replace Vista with Ubuntu goes to Microsoft, which allows them to further their monopoly. Do you really feel good about doing that?

Re:No worries, mate

[kaos07 (1113443)]

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.

Actually the cheapest PC available on Walmar is $278. Exactly the same as the Linux model but comes with Vista Home Basic.

Re:No worries, mate

[LingNoi (1066278)]

From the article..

Walmart.com now carries an updated version, the gPC2, also for $199

I assume you meant their site because you said "on walmart" not "in walmart".

Re:

[kaos07 (1113443)]

I did mean on the website, but the parent post was stating that low end Windows machines are cheaper than the gPC. Which is not the case.

Re:No worries, mate

[shellbeach (610559)]

Actually he said "on Walmart". He was obviously referring to the small town in South Wales.

Actually, he said "on Walmar" (no 't'). http://www.walmar.net/ [walmar.net] doesn't seem to sell many PCs, but they do feature a zero-flush waterless urinal [walmar.net] which sounds pretty similar to Vista basic if you ask me ...

Re:

[kitsunewarlock (971818)]

I meant to say "On Walmar" myself...which is the name of the town in _new_ Southern Wales.

But typo'ing a complaint against a typo is...well I fail.

Re:No worries, mate

[dhavleak (912889)]

You're right about that being the cheapest way to get a linux machine. I think the objection to that would be on principle more than anything else -- people won't want to pay the Vista license fee if they're not gonna actually use Vista. In fact, if you're trying to get value for money its a little annoying to know that your PC could have been cheaper if you didn't have to pay for s/w you're not going to use.

It's important to note though, that users do have a choice in the matter (buying the gPC in the store/online - and now just online). If Walmart decided to discontinue it because of the lack of demand, that's fair game. If Walmart decides they would rather install Vista on everything rather than the hassle of having seperate SKUs (with Vista/without Vista) - that's fair game as well.

Re:

[Gothic_Walrus (692125)]

Unless I'm mistaken, I thought part of the appeal here was the idea of a mass-market, easy-to-use Linux computer. Average Joe can go out and buy a cheap desktop, sure, but given how messy some of the Linux distros are to install and use I don't seem him going out of his way to put Linux on the computer...especially since he'd have to figure out which of the multiple distros he wants to use in the first place.

Re:No worries, mate

[jejones (115979)]

"Just go get the cheapest Windows PC you can find (they have a sticker that says "Vista Capable" or "Vista Ready") and install Linux."

Are you willing to buy it back from me for the price I gave if one or more of its peripherals has no good Linux device driver, where by good I mean having speed and feature parity with the Windows driver? Are you willing to send me the cost of Windows, so I don't have to pay for something I don't want?

Actually, never mind--even if you're willing to do that, some of my money would be going to MS, and I will not do anything that benefits MS.

Re:

[klubar (591384)]

There really is a difference in quality between cheap machines and mid-priced ones. I suspect a fair number of Windows crashes are really due to hardware problems (marginal memory, bad grounding, power supply problems). These all get blamed on windows as the software reports the problem. The machine will have the same problem with linux--and the additional problem of incompatible drivers. But with linux the user will be so confused between installing the OS and the hardware that they will probably just

Re:

[Windowser (191974)]

but why is there no 'Linux Ready' logo

Maybe it is not a logo, but the last laser printer I bought was a Samsung and one of the decisive factor was that, right there on the box, it said it worked under Linux.
Even better, the CD in the box contained the Linux drivers.
In the end, Samsung got my money because they decided to support Linux. And guess what brand I will be looking at first the next time I need a printer ?

Re:Once again...

[Gadget_Guy (627405)]

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

Re:

[dotancohen (1015143)]

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.

Re:Once again...

[cp.tar (871488)]

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.

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.

Re:Once again...

[Lumpy (12016)]

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.

Re:

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

They realized it was not a viable business decision and moved on.

That doesn't sound like what happened at all.

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.

Re:

[pipatron (966506)]

Or they ordered X of them and sold X, since the article clearly says they sold out.

Re:Once again...

[shmlco (594907)]

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..."

Re:Once again...

[budgenator (254554)]

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

Re:Once again...

[debatem1 (1087307)]

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.

Re:

[KillerBob (217953)]

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 fri

Re:

[1u3hr (530656)]

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.

That isn't in TFA. Where did you get that fact from?

Re:

[civilizedINTENSITY (45686)]

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).