Microsoft Store

I was very impressed with the service I received yesterday at the Microsoft Store. Vince and Ryan were both very knowledgeable and went above and beyond to help me with my problem. This is the first time I have ever received this level of service from a tech store. The service far surpassed any of the competition. I will definitely be coming back for any of my other tech needs.
Thank you Vince and Ryan!

Microsoft is a little late to the retail store party (shades of Internet Explorer, anyone?) but they have followed that same formula: see what works, try to copy it, then eventually make it better.
Finally the not cool geeks have a store to call their own. Microsoft copied the Apple store concept, but fortunately they didn’t copy Apple’s price gouging as there is plenty here you can afford without having to give up food for a month or borrow from your parents again. The one improvement over the Apple store is the AV lounge where you get to check out some multi player action with your friends.
Staff mostly know their stuff, but all of them don’t know everything, so make sure you find the right help. Dig around and you will find some pretty good deals on stuff you can actually use for work and play. I picked up a 32Gb Dell tablet for only $ 99!
It will be interesting to see what Microsoft does with these stores in the future, but for now, they are worth checking out.

I give these guys and gals 4 due to it is the only place in the city that allows you to do FREE presentation in their AV space at the back of the store. This is all free with even help of promoting the event via
Serious, this is a great presentation space for up to 25 people with a killer screen to splash your ugly mug half way across Yorkdale mall. Heh heh. Staff are very supportive to get the job done! Also, I would only buy WIndows based products here because I like yelling at people in person instead over the phone to get the thing fixed. Heh Heh. Apple is great to but it is nice to have WIndows option as well.

I’ve shopped at both apple and microsoft, as both stores are side by side in the yorkdale mall. Although the microsoft company has come up with some interesting new concepts in the way they market themselves, it just so happened that unfortunately my experience in-​store was a bit jumbled and confusing. The staff seem to all ask each other to answer customers’ questions, giving an impression they are not certain about their product knowledge, or perhaps the management is responsible for that. When i inquired about their Surface products, two staff also gave contradicting answers.

It’s really interesting to see this, the Windows logo gleaming at the end of the new Yorkdale expansion.
It’s half the size of the apple store (just next door). It could be the placement of tables, and the small glass room at the back it seems like for one-​on-​one instruction etc. This was my first venture into the world of Microsoft and Windows 8 in a while. Doesn’t matter that I use it on a daily basis, I guess we’re just taking it for granted.
I think it was because the Surface Tablet and most of the computers in there were all TOUCH SCREEN. This is something new to me. A touch screen computer/​monitor. Something different, something new, makes me want. Stepping into the Apple Store right after, everything felt BLAH and old.
It’s interesting because Microsoft doesn’t manufacture their own computers, so you see mostly Asus laptops, and some other companies on display. The large touch screen monitor (just like a Mac, but touch screen) was quite cool, but doesn’t seem as intuitive as the iPad or how apple products function.
I wonder how come Apple never came up with this themselves.
At the back of the store is a small section for Xbox with a demo of Kinect and all that fun stuff.
Yes, walking out of here, I was torn between my loyalty between Apple and the new stuff from Microsoft. I guess that’s the point.

Microsoft finally got around to opening their own standalone retail store in Toronto .
Let me warn you, this place is crowded — but not as crowded as the Apple store where there was a line to get in on Black Friday, post Workday.
Few things I noticed — the layout is way similar to that of the Apple Store with a few minor differences — which I’ll point out here.
Their peripheral/​accessories section is tiney-​tiny compared to that of the apple store, with Xbox games to the back end of the store.
Their product section, eg, Surface and laptops, ultra-​books are placed and
merchandised liked the Apple Store — so there are quite a few floor of the more popular products out on the floor for demoing out for you to try.
Plus there seemed like there was a fair amount of staff out and about, but they are a bit hard to spot in the crowd as they are wearing differently color t-​shirts.
Their «black Friday» special they only had one floor model out to demo, so that was a bit annoying because we had to wait while others tried it out and staff made the sales pitch (which I did end up buying after the BF verified the spec details)
One unique feature of the store is the Community Lounge in the back, which can be set up for Xbox tournaments and what not, you would need to speak to the Community Rep for more details, but it looked pretty neat from what we could tell)