March 04, 2006 Archives

04-03-2006 16:39

Retail help staff

I have heard Marcel Gagne say many times that he challenges all Linux users to go to their local computer stores and ask the sales staff if they have anyLinux compatible laptops and which ones. This is not entirely to be a smart ass and anouying, but to help raise the awareness of Linux in big name department stores. As sales staff are asked more and more, they will return this info to their superiors about the inquiries.

Well as my laptop is having battery trouble and it is of course old, I thought I would look into laptops and ask this very question. Well I wish I took a voice recorder! I have also heard Anthony Robbins say that whenever you ask yourself a question, no matter how stupid, your mind looks for an answer even if there is none. For instance, "Why am I so fat?". You canimagine the reasons the mind finds, even if they are not true. So anyway, the first sales lady I saw simply pasted on the info so unsure if she knew much at all. The gentleman she asked gave his answer to me something like this:

"No, nothing here is, you have to have hardware especially made for Linux and we haven't got that here."

Needless to say I corrected him on that and so his tact changed to basicly.

"We dont have anything here like that, you will have to look somewhere else."

So off we go to the 2nd shop. Their first (and only salesman I dealt with) came back with:

"Linux doesn't have any special requirements, it will just work with all of them." To which my reply was: "I think there is some systems that have compatibilty issues. like video cards, hence I want an Nvidia VGA." He answered "Oh yes the drivers. They dont actually come with any." So after starting off sounding almost knowledgable, he ultimately bombed out.

So anyway, needless to say my inquires were futile in regards to getting any decent information, but I hope they help the cause.


Posted by DaveQB | Permanent Link