Best Buy takes axe to touchy Windows 8 PCs - lops $100 off price
Sit down, Surface, you don't count
Best Buy will slash $100 off the price of touchscreen Windows 8 PCs.
From Monday the US retail chain will cut the cost of Sony, Acer, Toshiba, Dell and HP touch-driven laptops plus two models of Samsung's all-in-ones to shift stock.
You can see the full range of discounted gear here. Best Buy’s discount will not apply to Windows 8 tablets nor to Microsoft’s laptop-tablet-ish Surface.
Best Buy lowered its prices after a survey revealed that shoppers who bought touchscreen Windows 8 devices were “significantly happier” than those who bought PCs with a bog-standard display, according to the The Wall Street Journal.
“Touch is a critical component to Windows 8 from a customer satisfaction perspective,” Jason Bonfig, Best Buy’s vice-president for merchant computing, told the WSJ.
In the run up to the Windows 8 release, Microsoft gave PC makers clear advice on the hardware to put into their computers to take advantage of the new operating system's features - such as touchscreens for the new finger-driven user interface. But the manufacturers resisted because they believed adding the extra hardware would make the machines too expensive and unsellable.
Windows 8 then failed to shift in significant volumes over the Christmas shopping period, leaving Best Buy and other shops stocked up with unsold inventory. One senior source at a major PC maker told The Reg consumers snapped up Windows 7 PCs rather than machines running Windows 8. ®
COMMENTS
Customers are happier with Win8 touch-
So much that they aren't buying them, so we are dropping the price to make them happier, not to shift the things...
Riiiight...
Not a big enough discount . .
I spend a fair amount of time keeping my screen free of dust and other detritus. The idea that I would deliberately smear finger grease all over my window on the world is as daft thinking of doing the same thing to my car windscreen. Absurd idea that fully deserves its place in the dustbin of history.
Re: Discounting the cheap boxes
My goodness. At this rate with the keyboard shortcuts, we'll be able to pitch a comeback for Emacs!
@ Anonymous IV
Why should the consumer have to pay for MS's design disaster ?
My mum got my dad a Windows 8 laptop for Christmas. They've asked me to put Windows 7 on it next time I visit.
You'll be using it and suddenly, without warning, what you're working on will disappear and the 'social network' screen, or some other nonsense, will appear. You're constantly on pins, just waiting for it to go tits up.
The rest of the time you're either trying to get the sidebar to disappear, or trying to get it to appear.
