So last week me and my wife Kate headed on over to the new Microsoft store in Scottsdale. After walking around the mall looking for it for about 15 minutes (its a pretty big mall and the MS store is in a weird place) we finally found it. At first glance Kate said "hey look they opened an Apple store here too!" That comment just about sums up the place.



So what’s the store like? Well just like the apple store it follows the "long hallway" design (glass front, wide open brightly lit room with tables everywhere displaying products) Also, you can't walk 5 feet in the store without an employee asking "can i help you with something? just let me know!" (and this is no exaggeration, I would say out of every 3 people in the store 1 of them was a MS store employee.)

Some of the cooler aspects of the store are the walls and the Microsoft surface. The walls of the store are all television screens. Some of them are interactive, like for example the back corner of the store is the 360 section (I must say it's actually much smaller than I thought it would be) and thus those screens are displaying the 360 interactive. The rest of the store is cycling wall papers and advertisements, I'll admit it is pretty cool. The Microsoft surface is pretty bad ass. Its hard to describe, its really just something you have to see and use to really get a sense for it. They have about 4 or 5 of them in the store (all were being used at the time, some on a weird iphone looking space game, some on Google maps, some just showing table top applications. (as in if the ms surface was literally in a restaurant or bar being used as a table top)

Half of the computers of course had zunes hooked up to them. Kate again thought at first they were iphones, and was surprised when I told her that yes they still make zunes. They have computers from hp and dell everywhere showing off windows 7 in all its glory.

We were in there about 10 minutes and then had to leave because Kate said she couldn’t take the stores freezing ac anymore.

All in all its a pretty cool place, fans of the apple store's design feel right at home. (heh) I'm just happy I have a place I can take my 360 next time it give me the rrod. no more waiting 3 to 5 weeks!