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December 11, 2004

Microsoft Holds Inventory Blowout Sale

An announcement went out Thursday about a big sale to be held on Microsoft's campus this weekend, promising "Save 30-50% off of MS Store prices on the entire inventory of excess, returned, and obsolete Microsoft hardware, consumer software, Xbox games, and PC games" (but not Office or Windows).

It was in Building 33 and started at 10 am. Because of kids' basketball games, I didn't get there until 10:30.

This is a picture of Building 33 -- actually it's not quite all of Building 33, because the Executive Briefing Center is also in the building, to the left of the conference center, but it's most of Building 33:

The sale was in the McKinley room, there on the right. I came out of the elevator just outside the door and the first thing I realized was, "Oh, the line goes out the door of the room". Then I walked to the "Main Entrance" and thought, "Oh, the line goes outside!" Then I walked outside and realized, "Oh, the line wraps around to the front of the building!!" And then I walked around to the front and realized, "Oh, the line extends the entire length of the building and into the EBC parking lot!!!" (the EBC parking lot is to the left of the building in the diagram above).

This is a picture from Dylan Greene's Microsoft photo album:

It's of the Executive Briefing Center, which is on the left of the Conference Center. That is, using the diagram above, this picture was taken by someone standing on the left edge of the browser window, looking to the right. Anyway the line stretched just about to the point where this picture was taken from. According to this map of campus (which is old, St. Andrews has been built), Building 33 is about 200 yards long, so the line was at least that long.

I felt bad because there were lots of people in line with their kids, probably looking for Sidewinder joysticks or USB speakers or other nifty hardware products that Microsoft has stopped making...and I don't think they were even letting anyone in because the room was already packed. I was hoping to score some surplus Easy Ball mice to sell on eBay, but when I saw the line I abandoned the mission and went home.

I was looking around for Conference Center pictures and I dug up this aerial view of Microsoft campus, which is centered on Building 33, although it's not super-obvious where it is unless you know what to look for (if you move the mouse over the image, you are looking for latitude 47.6428, longitude -122.126). RedWest is just at the top to the immediate left of the highway, the Original 6 buildings are just south of the EBC. Building 1, where I had my first Microsoft office, is latitude 47.6412, longitude -122.1256.

Posted by AdamBa at December 11, 2004 06:32 PM

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Posted by: Adam Barr at December 13, 2004 01:24 PM