Saks Teams with Microsoft for Holiday Display

November 25th, 2009 at 8:40 AM - News by Jeff Gamet

Microsoft teamed up with Saks Fifth Avenue for the upscale New York retailer's annual holiday display. Windows 7 is being used to drive displays showing off the annual Saks children's Christmas book, and holiday tweets, too.

Along with the window display, Microsoft set up in-store lounges where shoppers can check out Windows 7 and get their Windows hardware and software questions answered.

Microsoft's in-store lounge

Microsoft is using the annual holiday window display and lounges to help promote the recent launch of Windows 7 during the busiest shopping time of the year.

While Microsoft's team up with Saks could help foster some good will for Windows 7, the company also unintentionally created tech war thanks to the live Twitter stream showing in store's display windows.

Any tweet including the #holidaywindows hash tag will appear in the stream, and the feed has already become a Mac versus Windows battleground. Tweets with messages such as "Get the Apple Mac and Have a wonderful holiday season," "Windows 7: Welcome to the 1990s," and "We also love our Macs in the UK" have been appearing in the stream.

Windows users are firing back with their own holiday wishes, too, with comments like "Windows has 90% of the Market, Macs about 4% shows you just how good Windows is and Windows 7 is the best."

Emotions tend to run hot during the holiday season, but it's a good bet that Microsoft and Saks didn't expect that to overflow into a live platform war in the display windows.