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

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

Re:Normal

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:Normal

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

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

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:Normal

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

Re:Normal

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.

More interesting from the article..

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..

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

Re:More interesting from the article..

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

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

A thought

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

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.

How much of it was support / training costs

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.

Why isn't anyone asking the question...

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...

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:No worries, mate

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

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

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:No worries, mate

"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:Once again...

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:Once again...

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...

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:Once again...

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...

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..."