Speaking of huge warehouse-style retail outlets, have we mentioned that this weekend marks Best Buy's grand opening in New England? There isn't one very close to AtAT's studios yet, so we haven't ventured out to take a look, but one's due to open at a mall in nearby Cambridge fairly soon. Best Buy, you probably recall, used to sell Performas until Apple pulled out of all national retailers except for CompUSA almost a year ago; Best Buy was the first chain reported to be "dropping" its Macs. However, it's also the first dropped retailer to be welcomed back into the Mac fold; as announced last week, Best Buy will start selling iMacs on November 8th, in time for the big holiday buying rush.

Now, we're certainly not getting our hopes up about knowledgable salespeople or good customer service or any of that stuff; we've heard from numerous sources that Best Buy makes CompUSA look like the Apple Company Store. Since the chain sells home appliances and electronics in addition to home computers, Best Buy employees in general are apparently hired with no regard to their computer knowledge or experience. Faithful viewer Barry Hamill notes an article which indicates that this may be changing over time, as Best Buy plans to start hiring some technically-savvy salespeople at each store who will "explain the new products and help [the customers] set up their custom-configured computer or home entertainment systems." But in the meantime, consider Best Buy a place to buy a boxed iMac with little or no help available.

In a way, the iMac is the perfect computer for Best Buy to sell; since it's marketed as more of a computing appliance than a computer itself, people may be more likely to buy it even if they can't talk to a salesperson first. After all, everything you need to know is contained in those thirty-second commercials: plug it in, turn it on, and you're well on your way to sending your first email message. And since Best Buy claims to sell one out of every three computers in cities where they have one or more of their 300 stores, we're very interested to see what this deal will mean to the sale of iMacs to first-time computer buyers.