I imagine a M$ store employee will be spending 90% of their day dealing with people coming in and complaining that their computer is slow because it's a rat's nest of malware and viruses. Enjoy!

Does Microsoft REALLY need to open a retail store? I mean all they sell is 360s and zunes and the various Windows products.

I do see some good side to this though. M$ gets more profit by selling games directly from their own stores than through a retail video game store, and they get rid of that pesky second hand used games problem.

now they can have their monopoly without a competitive product in their store.

I'd work at a MS store. A chance to show people how to actually use their PC's?

Golden. It's better than working at an AIDS retreat in Africa.

sorry, I had a linux friend that got hired at microsoft, now he won't say the word "opensource" i'm sure manager positions require you take a run through the brainwash-o-matic too.

Another example of Microsoft following Apple's lead.

i just want to know if they are branching into the uk, as i would happily have a part-time job at a MS store.
i get to tell people they suck, how awesome is that? lol

There going to open them riht next to apple stores whenever there is an open rental space, microsoft is really afraid of apple and I don't get why, no thats not rabid fanboyism, hear me out.

First apple redesigned everything and started advertising, microsoft countered apples light-hearted ads to directly negative ones (the I'm a Mac I'm a PC ads are not seriously trying to make you buy a mac, simple go check one out, the PC ads are pretty much Macs suck rawr! hell, there newest ones are the worst, they don't even promote microsoft products, only hardware made by others that happens to use them, obviously there scared) Apple released the iPod, microsoft counters with the zune (which IMHO sucks, and I can say that seeing as I don't own an iPod either) Now they want to make stores right to to apple stores to what, promote their products over apples?

It seems obvious Apple has scared the shit out of Microsoft, but my question is why? seriously, there two very different machines, it's not like MS is ever going to convert an apple user, if you paid the premium your going to stay with it and there is nothing that gives the MS OS an advantage* (the hardware it's on is a different story however if you bough a mac you knew that you got less features for your money, you either bought it for the OS or your just wanted to look cool in which case you deserve to overpay) so what has MS so spooked? My theory, windows 7 will not be nearly as good as they keep saying it will be, it'll still have all those things you hate about vista and they either can't or are do damn lazy to fix them, but thats just my theory. Personally, I'm not interested until they start again and use some form of unix core like apple did with OSX, the system is more stable than anything else I've ever used, old system 9 (thats back when macs really did suck) included.

* Before someone mentions games or some shit you can play most of them natively with a little porting (not hard to do) or worse case scenario you install VMware and XP on that like I did (had to for a particular program that I couldn't get port, thats .NET framework 3.5!). As for these things being to hard for a new mac user to do, well if you buy one odds are you are buying it because you know someone with one and have use it (since the apple store ones suck comared to a real users one) and they can help you.

@LividChihuahua:
it basically boils down to, Microsoft is paranoid as hell. They spend billions per year just to make sure that the general public doesn't know about it, and even if they did know about it, most of them would still stick with windows anyway.
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<rant>
The average consumer is so afraid of change, the best example is the vista fiasco. I'm a rabid linux supporter, but to tell the truth, there is absolutely nothing wrong with vista that isn't wrong with windows itself. people disliked it because it was too different from xp, so what it had enhanced security features, it was "annoying." so what xp is running rampant with viruses, it was "familar." so what that vista was the first os upgrade in 6 years, it was "different," so it was the enemy. now that 7 is coming out, which looks a lot like vista, people are less vile towards it because vista softened them up to the new look & feel.
</rant>

@Monster w21 Faces: Well said.

I was just complaining to my wife today that brands all have their own stores nowadays as opposed to when I was a kid and retailers ALL carried multiple brand names- can you imagine what it would be like if instead of going to a best buy or gamestop you had to go to the activision or ea or ubisoft stores? Than is kind of where we are at in the rest of the retail world, we don't need more of it.