Has anybody seen the commercials for Microsft/SONY for the new XP media center computer?

I've seen the commercials for this a couple of times now. So I went to the website and checked it out.

www.digitaljoy.com

I've gotta admit it's pretty cool. It's the equivalent of a network server for radio, DVD, and TV (with UltimateTV), and digital photos.

And even if your not a fan of Microsoft (I know, I know) it'll at the very least open our customers eyes as to what is available out there. Which will in turn lead to bigger and better projects.

So you can consider it free advertising in a way.

Yes, I know there are already ways to do this, but John Q Public doesn't . It will be an eye opener when it catches on.

I can't wait until Best Buy, Sears, and Circuit City start selling these. It will be soooo exciting......

Think of the amount of service calls we are going to get from the big box stores.

Mike

I understand your pessimism about it VW but I wouldn't look at them as service calls I would look at them more as opportunities. These enormous companies are essentailly doing your advertising for you.

So look at it like this, when you do a service call for another company your not doing a service call you are doing an upgrade, an upgrade of technicians.

From there you can take the opportunity to sell them upgrades like, prontos,ir repeaters, etc.

And when you have done that, the customer will never leave you. Whenever they need something whether it's in their home or business they are not going to call Circuit City, Best Buy, or Sears. They are going to call you.

Why? because you can do things that the others can't.

I'll give you an example:

In my hometown, they built a Home Depot. Everybody was freaked out because the little stores wouldn't be able to survive.

But for some reason, this little old time hardware store across the street stayed right where it was at, no problem.

One day I went in there looking for something I couldn't find in Home Depot and I noticed the parking lot was overflowing with people.

I asked the guy at the counter (the owner) how do you guys stay so busy with Home Depot being across the street? He said when Home Depot opened he walked through made a list of everything that they didn't carry and he made sure he did carry it. He actually said he loves Home Depot! because they alone doubled his gross sales for the last year.

So its simple, you can use those stores to the best of your ability or you can walk in there and hand them the list of all of your customers. Because if any of us think that we can compete with them on the exact same product we can't. But if we learn to use them to our advantage we win.

nice comments skybird - like they say when dealt lemons make lemonade.

I can tell you that my Digital Joy doesn't have anything to do with Microsoft. :)