[seanmcdirmid]

Its probably more about morale than marketing. Getting employees to experience and enjoy the company's products is very important. Also, they might build more apps for WP and Win8 in their spare time. But 90K people...isn't really enough to make a huge impact, perhaps the ~40K in Redmond/Bellevue, but the effect would dilute quickly as you approached downtown Seattle from the eastside.

Edit: morale vs. moral

[Jarihd]

I totally agree with employees being allowed to enjoy and explore company products; and that such experiences should be absolutely free for all employees; but wonder if this experience should be limited within the company premises.

btw, does the hardware belong to the employee or is a property of MS. If the hardware is property of the employee, how does that make sense for MS, when employees switch jobs for their betterment (job + monetary reasons) .

AFAIK, MS at Redmond does not give Windows OS(software) for free; but gives it at a discount to its employees. Why not use the same strategy with hardware – give it with some discount – say 50% discount.

Win Apps - Do you really need to give hardware to build Apps for WP and Win8 or software alone would do ???

[seanmcdirmid]

You need hardware to test and also motivate your work. You wouldn't build an iPad app without an iPad neh?

Hardware discounts are hard when you aren't producing the hardware. You are basically subsidizing cost, and...you could imagine how much trouble that is! Better to just give it away; besides, if it was Microsoft campus store only, it would be only good for the folks in Redmond.

Attrition happens, but honestly losing an employee costs more than a phone and a tablet!

[Jarihd]

well by "software alone" - what i implicitly meant was that most employees would already have some hardware – latptop or desktop – in which case software given for free would motivate and encourage them to develop their ideas and even more apps.

If one has some hardware machine then one can install several OS’s in Virtual Machines for development and testing. one need not have separate hardware to develop apps for different OS’s.

If MS has to give hardware for free for whatever reasons, wouldn't it be a great idea to give the hardware to customers (non-MS) for free. This way if the product is really great; it will cause some buzz in the market and help the company market their product as well.

I just wonder if it’s really worth giving free hardware; instead of software. Once a software is given; and an employee discovers the potential in it; no matter whether the employee remains with the company(MS) or not; the person will become a lifelong investment and asset for the company - as he may/will buy product upgrades and related software – which may not be the case with hardware .

[seanmcdirmid]

I would never use my company provided laptop for non-work (moonlighting) purposes. All of my personal computers are macs running OS X; I'm afraid of buying a PC in my market (China), while the local Apple Store in contrast is a very dependable and safe (Apple is also better about servicing hardware bought out of country). If I was back in the states, I would feel better about buying a personal PC.

The problem with giving free hardware to customers is that you can't really identify who would add value with it, while employees are a better (but probably still not very good) heuristic.

You will always need to test your app on a real device it is intended for; virtual machines and simulators don't really account for the real device experience. For mobile/tablet apps, this means you'll need a decent device in that category.