Monday, October 22, 2012

Buying a new device? Buy from the owner of a store.


If you are going to buy a new Windows 8 machine get it from Microsoft. If you’re getting an Android tablet get it from Google. Of course you can only get iOS and OSX from an Apple product. Kindle and Nooks also fall into the category of owners of the store. 

There are so many devices, with so many choices. So why am I advocating buying devices from the people who own the stores on their machines? You can get the Kindle store on just about anything, and you will be able to have Microsoft’s store on any Windows 8 machine. The answer is that the store is where the money is. But there is another reason that I will share with you in a moment.

Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Barns and Noble, and Google don’t have to make a cent off of their hardware. What this means is that other companies who are producing computers or tablets have to make all of their money from the slim profit margins that they get from selling their hardware. The aforementioned companies don’t have to make any money at all from selling their products. It’s similar to Microsoft making their money off of games and services for the Xbox or Nintendo making their money from selling copies of Mario Cart. Bottom line you are going to get more hardware for your buck if you buy from the store owners.

The other reason for buying from the maker of the store is that they are also the makers of their Operating System. If you make the OS and the hardware it runs on then it’s most likely going to run better. Yes the Kindle and the Nook are based on Android but they have highly customized it to run on their devices. It’s the same as Mac OSX being based on Free BSD then massively customized to work only on Apple hardware.

All that being said it may explain why most Android phones seem clumsy compared to an iPhone. Yes Samsung has done a good job with Android but most really haven’t. I would have no qualms at all about getting a Google phone with Android installed; I would bet it would run great.