If you’re lucky enough to live in an area that’s getting one of the new Microsoft Stores, you may be tempted to buy your next PC there, thanks to what Microsoft is calling our Signature PCs initiative. Under this new program, the PCs sold at the stores won’t have the typical “value-added†programs that come pre-installed on PCs purchased from OEM dealers. Instead, they’ll have Microsoft’s own set of software applications pre-loaded including Windows Live software, Windows Live Sync, Silverlight, the Zune desktop software, the free anti-virus program Microsoft Security Essentials, the Office Live add-in, the Playready PC Runtime (for WMC), and Bing 3D Maps. In addition, they’ll have Adobe Reader and Flash pre-installed, too.
At the moment, the Signature PCs are only available at the retail outlets – no word if this will also extend to the retail website in the future. In the meantime, we think it would be great if you could get all this software available as a single downloadable bundle – something like Ninite does for third-party programs but with more of a Microsoft focus. What do you think?
