Windows 7 scarce countrywide
Windows 7 has proven to be in high demand within the first week of its launch, with many people reporting that they are unable to get hold of a copy.
Colin Erasmus, head of Windows products at Microsoft SA said: “Being sold out is a good thing at this stage. We’ve seen very good sales for retail, upgrade and Delivery Service Partner (DSP) packages. Stock distribution is in the hands of our distribution partners.”
We contacted a selection of retailers to investigate their stock levels.
Incredible Connection generally has 4 to 6 copies available of all versions of Windows 7 at its retail stores country wide. The arrival of new stock is dependent on orders made by individual stores.
As an example of a small retail store, Zaps was selected. They are currently only stocking a few copies of DSP versions of Home Premium and Home Basic. Zaps claims to be able to source most versions of the OS from their suppliers within one day, but said that the upgrade packages are more difficult to find.
Online retailer Take2 has sold out of all retail versions of the OS but does have stock of the upgrade packages. New stock is expected to arrive within 3 to 4 weeks.
PC International has also sold out of retail versions but expects renewed stock of around 40 of each version to be available within one week. They currently have a few 32bit DSP versions in stock, with 1 copy of Home Premium, 4 of Home Basic, and 44 of Professional available at the time of writing.
Prophecy reports that they have not experienced any major stock shortages, with only some customers having to wait a week at the most. Retail packages are in higher demand than DSP versions.
Both Prophecy and Erasmus indicated that the arrival of new stock is dependent on the large distribution companies that operate in the country, such as Comztek and Workgroup.
Comztek expects a shipment of various versions of Windows 7 to be arriving within the next week, which means retailers who are part of the shipment order will likely have stock available within two weeks.
Workgroup currently has 80 DSP copies of 32bit Professional available, and expects new shipments to arrive within 2 to 4 weeks.
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