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Comment by AlphaWeaver | Hacker News Reader

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable.

I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky.

Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to genuinely care about fixing your issue. Throughout the day, they held tech demos and video game competitions, and all the kids I saw in the store always seemed to be enjoying themselves. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a kid visiting the Microsoft store in the mall was inspired to learn more about computers and technology based on their experience.

This sucks.

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Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to check out various Surfaces in person as well.

I will say, the surfaces/laptops side of the store was usually empty. Some kids playing with the Xbox or people at the counter getting help seemed to be the extent of traffic the past couple of years.

They seem to be aggressively destroying any paltry remaining goodwill with consumer enthusiasts. I'm sure it's great for the bottom line, but is the ultimate goal to only be competing with Google and AWS on who can run the cheapest Linux VMs in the cloud ?

I don't really see the connection. If the only traffic to the stores was a handful of people, how can this have any significant effect on customer good will? They can't be both empty and influential.

It seems like the stores were a missed opportunity, but they always had the odds stacked against them. Whatever you can get in an MS store, you could get a much cheaper alternative running the same software at another electronic goods store or online. I suspect the theoretical opportunity was really a mirage and never really there.

While I agree with your premise, I think that the availability of a store is a form of goodwill. You are given more confidence in a product if you know there's a place where you can go when things go wrong, or if you want to see something for real, and not just rely on some rendered image on a screen.

There's an Apple Store a few blocks from me. I've never been there. But I like knowing I have the option.

> There's an Apple Store a few blocks from me. I've never been there. But I like knowing I have the option.

Right - I feel like almost any city I'm going to for a conference will have an Apple store I can pop into if I have a problem.

What do you do if you have a ThinkPad or System76 and you get a problem while at a conference? I guess you're out of luck and on your own.

I have no idea for System 76, but for less than the cost of AppleCare, you can get next business day onsite service for your ThinkPad.

I find that more convenient than taking your laptop to the store.

> It seems like the stores were a missed opportunity, but they always had the odds stacked against them.

Odds were against Microsoft stores being profitable because Microsoft is now an underdog in consumer tech. If you want hardware (possibly with the exception of xbox; I just do not know, never had one), Microsoft is rarely the name that jumps to mind. But this is exactly why Microsoft should keep them (using some profits from OS and software), even at a loss, to provide demos and let folks play with their toys. Not doing this means riding much more on inertia of existing corporate Windows 10 and Office installations. This is very profitable and still has a lot of inertia, but abandoning consumer tech is putting a $1.5 trillion dollar company into a more vulnerable long-term position.

But is it actually serving a purpose if not enough people are actually going into the stores, at the demos and playing with the toys?

I don't think this is abandoning consumer tech. Their ~90% domination is still a thing. They gained it without stores, and the stores weren't helping them maintain it.

There seems to be this cognitive lag where it seems like the stores should be a big deal, should be significant, giving them up should say something about Microsoft's position in the industry. A lot of commentary can't shake that perception. The reality though is it never was any of those things.

I think that an interesting part of that lag is directly Windows Phone related. Phones seem to be the one consumer hardware product that customers "demand" a store to exist. Look at the retail landscape, other than big box electronics stores and office stores and Wal-Mart/Target, who is selling consumer electronics physically? There's a lot of strip malls packed with phone stores. People that want PC laptops/desktops mostly buy directly from OEMs on their websites. People that want Xboxes or PlayStations are fine grabbing it at Target, but more likely Amazon today.

Phones for various reasons (and a lot of them are phone carrier bureaucracy related, I would imagine) "need" that extra bit of handholding, that service relationship when buying one. Even Apple Stores, the vast majority of the store space is devoted to phone sales and services and laptops/desktops an after-thought. If you hear of lines and busy days of Apple Stores, it is almost exclusively phones.

Microsoft created their Stores just too many months too late to save the Windows Phone after the main US carriers decided 3 OSes was one too many options to carry in their own stores. Once Microsoft Stores were no longer selling Phones they always had less reason to exist, mostly existed already as either Xbox Experiences or shadow versions of (for instance) Best Buy's Surface section, without the rewards/brand loyalty of something like Best Buy.

I think the "retail demand" for phones is closely connected to phone repairs. Unlike a computer, a phone is carried around every day and has a much higher chance to break. Customers depend heavily on it, so they are not willing to send phones to repair centers and wait weeks for a return.

Haven't really been a console person for a long while... That said, I pretty much favor big-box stores for a few different items namely game consoles, televisions and monitors. It's likely just my own anecdotal bias here, but I've had more of these die in the first month of use than any other electronics, and having a place I can go to "now" to get it replaced is usually a huge deal.

When the first X-box came out, the first one died within an hour of use... the second in about two days, the third is still running (or was last time I looked at it). 1/3 of TVs or Monitors I've mail ordered have been doa or didn't make it a month.

In the end, I really do hope some of them survive as there's something to be said for not mail order. Costco is usually really decent, and Best Buy is sometimes really frustrating, but I like having some options even if I don't like buying in person and would prefer mail order.

Anecdotally I'm in a similar place. I believe that Amazon's electronics "department" is little better than eBay these days and the amount of digging just keeps increasing that you need to do to figure out who is actually selling the device, what their business model is, and if you can trust their listing. (Are they a warehouse arbitrage just moving stuff from Wal-Mart/Target/Costco/etc around, based on who has the highest current price? Are they a nearly defunct old Mom & Pop shop whose only livelihood is now an Amazon and/or eBay shingle? Are they a refurbisher shop that has the gall to label "like new" items as "new" because Amazon's algorithms and mechanical turks haven't caught them yet? Etc.)

That said, I've been charged with being weirdly "old school" that I'd often rather pay extra at Best Buy than just order it for cheap on Amazon. (I've needed to replace a PC monitor since March, but keep procrastinating it because I don't want to buy it online.)

I mostly only buy if Amazon is the seller... at least returns are pretty consistent that way, though still subject to mingling. Same goes for using newegg... was really sad when newegg added 3rd party sellers, it muddied the site.

Thing to watch out for is that Amazon often is the shipper but not the seller and some of Amazon's greedier dark patterns make it tough sometimes to notice that a product that looks sold by Amazon just means it is shipped by Amazon. (It's one of the UX things were they have to be clear about it but are fighting themselves with how clear to be. Both phrases "sold by" and "shipped by" start with "s" end with "by" and you certainly have to imagine Amazon counts on you skimming the middle parts in some of their UI layouts.) Outside of "Amazon Basics" brand products, Amazon directly sells almost no electronics, from my anecdata, but they certainly ship for a large percentage of their 3rd party sellers (because of course they do, that's the easiest way to make items Prime Eligible and thus further their Amazon SEO quotients).

Though Amazon can be credited that they are consistent with returns in "shipped by" products as much as they are with "sold by" products. At least there their attempts at confusing the marketplace means they hold up some standards universally as well.

I'm pretty careful about that... I will almost always only order if Amazon (or the mfg) is the seller... and even then, I still favor Amazon (mostly for return hassles).

> Phones for various reasons (and a lot of them are phone carrier bureaucracy related, I would imagine)

IMHO the real issue is the size of the audience. Phones get sold to people who would never buy a computer, "non-technicals" to a level that desktops and laptops never really touched.

These folks 1) need a lot of help choosing what to buy, 2) have a relationship with these items that is not driven by tech specs but by "feels", 3) buy stuff primarily in shops, not from websites.

In Canada, retail phone stores are kind of an artificial construct. There are only three large national carriers, but they all have multiple flanker brands and subsidiaries, so a mall will frequently have seven or eight phone stores by the same three companies in order to carpet bomb consumer consciousness. This isn't useful for consumers in any way - they're effectively just paying for redundant staff and infrastructure via inflated monthly plan prices.

They did that when they failed/gave up the phone business. Affected MS retail in the long term. Pulled out one leg from the stool, metaphorically.

A helpdesk that helps you well and doesn’t have queues provides lots of goodwill, even when you don’t use it often.

Such a helpdesk is expensive, though, the more so if you put it in a building in a premium location.

In Apple’s case, that’s paid for by sales. I imagine Microsoft didn’t manage to do that, if only because they have less hardware to sell.

I used to check out the Surfaces as I walked by the windows of that store and for a while considered buying one. I didn't but it did have a (mildly) positive on my perception of MS while I lived in SF.

Was it low traffic or low sales traffic? Helpdesk traffic is unlikely to drive much in terms of immediate sales, but establishing a good helpdesk that can be trusted is very key to trust in the brand. And helpdesk is usually a get in, drop your laptop off, get out and pick it up later type of thing.

Agreed. I had a great walk in help desk experience with resetting a Surface. I otherwise like the Surface, but, if you search online, you can see some models seem to have an intermittant mystery power up glitch. Knowing there was a store a few minutes away that could reset the device would give me confidence to purchase another one without hesitation.

It's about presence and exposure. For people (like me) who use mostly Apple products and block ads on the internet, the Microsoft products aren't really on my mind. Having a store close by that I can visit certainly increases exposure to these products.

It's surprising how my own attitude changes depending on if it's online: if I see an ad for Microsoft or other brands on the Internet, I'd feel irate and start to wonder why my ad blocker stopped working. But if I see a Microsoft store taking up thousands of square feet, I don't mind its presence and would totally check it out if I am not busy.

You have a hard time escaping the advertising online; you can just leave the store.

I always got the impression the schools were like after-school daycare for kids. A lot of the demo computers as well as the demo XBoxes were always full of kids playing Minecraft, Overwatch, etc. The other ones might have kids watching Youtube or Twitch (never Mixer) of the same types of games.

> I will say, the surfaces/laptops side of the store was usually empty. Some kids playing with the Xbox or people at the counter getting help seemed to be the extent of traffic the past couple of years.

Exactly my experience last I visited. It seemed like the goal of the stores was misconceived from the start... like the purpose was to coax Surface into being a successful product, rather than build up a real store business of its own.

"Same with the SF Westfield Center store. Great staff. It was a good place to check out various Surfaces in person as well."

Agreed - about that specific store. However, I must reflect that after years of going there with my children, we spent exactly zero dollars there.

We had fun and played video games and hung out and futzed around with various "exotic" computing devices from MS ... and we never had any intention of buying anything.

Agree on "this is a real shame" feeling. I am not, in general, a heavy Microsoft user: my workstations both at home and in the office run Linux. But a few years ago, when I saw a Microsoft Surface tablet when I walked by the Microsoft store as I was waiting for my wife at the mall I was wowed by its ergonomics.

Within three months I bought one as a personal travel laptop and another one for work as my main laptop. An extended family member saw my Surface and bought one. Two people at work saw my work Surface and bought theirs for work. Having a Windows-only travel laptop made me look at WSL and I saw that while it was not perfect it is surprisingly useful which also surprised some die-hard Linux folks at work when they saw it. None of this would have happened if I did not walk by that Microsoft store; I would be buying another Dell laptop for work and griping about its lousy ergonomics.

I was also a fan of the early Surface Pros, although I didn't like the larger form factor of the later models. The early models were small enough to fit in a big coat pocket.

Interestingly for me it was almost the opposite experience. I got really excited about the Surface Book and was really close to buy one, then a couple days later I walked past the Microsoft Store on Oxford Street and saw one in real life and was extremely shocked/disappointed how huge, heavy and really really thick it is. It made me realise how unportable this portable device is and I never thought again of buying a Surface book. I think the latest Surface Book still has that monster big ass fist thick hinge and I'm not surprised that I haven't seen a single person with a Surface Book in a coffee shop yet. It's too big for being a portable device. So in some respect, the physical store has meant that they sold one device less in my case.

I have the book and it's fantastic, it's really NOT an unltrabook and is meant to be a workstation. The Book 3 even comes with a Quadro GPU

The hinge first looks neat but it makes the folded Book quite think. Really not a good design. In general I am having lots of problems with my work Surface Book 2. It constantly runs out of USB resources even with the dock and multi screen setup are quite finicky. Sometimes one screen doesn’t wake up until I reboot the whole setup. For its premium price I am quite disappointed.

I see it as a good thing for both you and the Microsoft. The fact that you had a chance to play with it before buying it (and hated it) means that Microsoft avoided either really pissing off a customer or handling an expensive return; and possibly both.

For me, I wanted a surface pro (not book) with the largest screen available, so I ended up with the Surface Pro 4 and the keyboard -- I use it as a travel laptop, not an on-the-go device, and really love being able to have a decent keyboard and display when I am in a hotel without having to put a 4 lb monster into my backpack when I fly.

I agree, but I kinda feel like the relaxed and comfortable atmosphere was more of an indication that the stores weren’t doing so hot. Every time I went to one is was because it was quieter and lower key than other stores. And I never actually wanted to buy things. Maybe that’s good(ish) marketing but probably doesn’t make good business sense.

Being able to inspect hardware before buying is a good idea, even if you do put the order in online.

That may be the case. I rarely go inside my local mall (Southpoint, Durham NC), but on sunny weekends the Apple store was often jam-packed with people. So busy that customers had a hard time getting through the door. Sales people talking non-stop and processing orders as fast as possible. There was a Microsoft store inside the main mall building, just a few minutes away. I walked by it a few times, but it was usually empty.

South point Apple has always been painful - I avoided it like the plague. I think it’s the only store in the area besides Charlotte.

Crabtree has one too. It's just as crowded and awful.

Good god the Southpoint Apple store is terrible. I went there once because I wanted to buy a new iPad and apple pencil so I could participate in a digital painting workshop the next day, and they wanted me to wait 45 minutes before they would help me. I said that I wasn't going to wait that long and hopefully wasn't an asshole about it (it's never cool to be a jerk to retail employees!) and they did manage to ring me up within about 5 minutes.

The experience was just so weirdly baffling and frustrating and I've since avoided the place. I realize this sounds like the height of American consumer entitlement but it was truly bizarre that the response to "Hi I would like to hand you more than $1,200" was "please wait 45 minutes."

Then there was also the confusion about who to actually to talk to in the first place if you wanted to buy something. Do I talk to the person at the door? Nope, because I don't have an appointment. I should just stand in a corner and hope someone finally talks to me. It was truly amazing that Apple could so thoroughly botch the experience of exchanging money for goods.

I had a similar experience a couple years ago with a $2k MacBook Pro, except they did the whole spiel.

“No, please! I want to give you money. Can I please give you money now?”

I've had a couple decent experiences in the Apple store in Chandler, AZ mall. First was a battery replacement in-warranty, second was a pickup, then a return/exchange. The battery replacement did take longer than I would have preferred about half an hour, but not bad in general. A few years later, I got a mid-2014 rmbp, and didn't know they'd soldered on the RAM and that the storage wasn't upgradeable... wound up forking over for a top end model.

Of course with each progressive release being a little more cumbersome, and never really liking iOS devices. Some of the security locks that you can't turn off (enabled 2fa then sold off one of my two devices, don't know how the 2fa code got delivered to the device I was trying to re-log into, but was lucky in the end). I gifted my last mbp this past xmas, and haven't looked back.

I am mostly on my desktop or work issued laptop now. Hoping to see an upper-mid to high-end Ryzen model with at least 64gb ram and at least an RTX 2070 level gpu. All the current gen Ryzen laptops are seriously gimped in one way or another.

That's a good point. I hate going to the Apple store because you pretty much have to get in line behind a dozen other people for the privilege of buying a $1000 phone or $2500 laptop. The Microsoft store down the block was always super chill by comparison...

I mean, these were obviously set up as a (marketing) counterpoint to the Apple stores, but Apple stores aren't just marketing. In any given mall, Apple stores usually have the highest revenue per square foot - they even beat out the jewelry stores. Microsoft was never going to be able to sell enough surface tables and xboxes for this to be viable long-term.

Agree. MS is mainly an OEM and enterprise co focused on TCO, etc. over consumer polish.

I have funny story of being helped in a Microsoft store.

I once bought a BLU Windows Phone in a Microsoft store. I really liked having a Windows Phone mostly because no one I ever met had seen one before and both Apple and Android users were shocked when they saw it. :)

After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was. The phone would suddenly say it was almost out of battery and had to shut down. When I restarted it the battery indicator would say some more reasonable number, consistent with how long ago I had charged the phone; but after a little while, long before it should have been running out of battery, it would again say it had almost no battery left and turn itself off.

I thought the phone's problem wasn't too serious yet and with some vigilance (checking it frequently to turn it on as soon as it turned itself off) I could use it a little longer. But my wife thought it was time for me to get a new phone, so I went to a Microsoft store only to discover they didn't sell them anymore. I think by then everyone had decided to give up on Windows Phones; I still valued what was their main selling point for me, the shock value, and would have gladly bought another!

At the store I started chatting a bit about my phone with the clerk who told me they didn't sell Windows Phones anymore, a heavyset young man. At some point I wanted to show him something on the phone so I took it out of my pocket but fumbled and dropped the phone. When the clerk saw I was about to drop the phone near him, he lifted the leg nearest the phone, but lost his balance and brought his foot down hard, right on my phone!

After that the phone wouldn't turn on anymore. The clerk was very apologetic and seemed willing to pay at least partially to replace my phone but I insisted that I was about to replace it anyway. I went somewhere else and bought myself a cheap Android phone. My wife was very happy the clerk had stepped on my Windows Phone since I had the left the house unconvinced it needed immediate replacement.

but lost his balance and brought his foot down hard, right on my phone!

That shouldn't be a problem.[1]

[1] https://youtu.be/mVPku-xItv8

That's sad but hilarious! I think that young man was Microsoft personified!

(I'm not a hater - owned 2 Windows Phones myself, but MS's strategy always seemed self-defeating in the Phone space)

>After a few years my phone's battery indicator started failing, or at least that's what I think the problem was.

You describe the classic symptoms of a failing battery. The charging efficiency of a battery at the end of its life drops through the floor. This confuses the columb counter in the charge indicator: it sees an amp hour go into the battery, but most of it becomes heat, and maybe ten percent is useful charge. Therefore, the battery indicator happily says the battery is at 90% right up to when it abruptly dies.

No, my phone's battery indicator reported a much lower number than what I knew to be true. Say I fully charged the battery and turned on the phone. The indicator would start at 100% and go slowly down as I expected. Then at some point, around 70% the indicator would suddenly jump down to a much lower number, say 30%. If I kept using the phone the indicator would slowly go down at the expected rate, until at some point it would suddenly jump down to like 4%. The phone would then warn me it has extremely low battery and turn itself off.

Now, at this point I could estimate what the true remaining percentage was, just based on how long I had been using the phone. If often turned itself off when I reckoned it should be at 60%. If I turned the phone on again without charging it at all, the battery indicator would tell me that it did indeed have around the 60% charge I estimated.

The battery seemed to be holding charge just fine. If I added up all the usage I got out of a single charge, that time seemed to be about the same as before (a little over a day), it was just interrupted by several rounds of the phone thinking it had no battery left, turning itself on, me turning it on again and the phone sheepishly recognizing then it actually did have a lot of charge left.

Sorry if I didn't explain this understandably in the original comment.

Behold in terror and glory the lithium-ion discharge curve: https://siliconlightworks.com/image/data/Info_Pages/Li-ion%2...

This is great for the powered device, since it's nice and flat, but annoying for determining state of charge from terminal voltage, since it's awful and flat. I have not personally developed a state-of-charge indicator, but I would guess that one might use columb counting for the first half of the curve, then voltage monitoring for the second half, introducing odd discontinuities in the 80%-30% range. A truly clapped out battery will up and die before it got to the second half; a merely old battery will just be strange and inconsistent.

>If I turned the phone on again without charging it at all, the battery indicator would tell me that it did indeed have around the 60% charge I estimated.

Another delightful behavior of battery cells is "voltage sag". Battery voltage drops under load. The more current you draw, the bigger the drop. If you draw a big whack of current, then leave the battery alone, the voltage will drift back up: https://www.powerstream.com/x/Christopher-Suozzo-engine-cran... Additionally, the more you ask of a battery, the less capacity it will have https://www.cloudynights.com/uploads/monthly_09_2014/post-21... (1C is 1x the capacity rating of the battery. A 1C discharge of a 2 amp hour battery is 2 amps, 2C 4 amps, etc) and the shorter its lifespan will be https://www.batteryuniversity.com/_img/content/DST-cycles-we...

Combine these factors, we discover that while your phone was behaving very unintuitively, it might not have been lying. If you hit an old cell phone with a big enough draw, (prime95, bitcoin mining, opening a cnn.com story without adblock) the battery indicator could correctly say that only 4% of the battery is left. Shut it off, letting the battery recover a bit, then turn it back on, and ta dah, by the voltage curve with a light idle discharge, it's got 60% left.

Cell phone batteries generally last two or three years. Four years+ requires light discharges and not recharging it fully. Essentially, not using it at all.

Interesting! I thought the battery itself wasn't the problem mainly because the battery life hadn't gone down (I was still getting the same number of hours between charges if you added up the time my phone was on), but I also didn't know the symptoms I did see were consistent with battery problems. Thanks!

I wish announcements were more straightforward. I’m looking at their announcement but can’t figure out what they mean by:

“...We will continue to co-locate engineering, sales, support, envisioning centers, executive briefing centers, and retail spaces for maximum impact for our customers and our company.”

What does that actually mean in real terms?

They will keep a support team (not just salespeople) near big customers where it would be better to employ people locally compared to having to send support staff from Redmond each time a customer has a problem.

Probably something along the lines of GeekSquad inside BestBuy.

Agree! I used to walk through the store in Century City at lunch to see what was new in laptops, headsets, etc. They often had classes or lots of kids doing something on the computer. I made a few purchases there including a Surface tablet for my son that has been a great piece of hardware.

Maybe this is the opening for someone else to come up with an experiential computer store. I hope so.

> I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky.

Maybe having a physical store that lowers the barrier for making warranty claims, especially “shaky” ones, isn’t a profit maker.

;)

Maybe having a physical store that lowers the barrier for making warranty claims, especially “shaky” ones, isn’t a profit maker.

Cost to fix a shaky piece of kit: $100

Future sale made because someone is happy with your service: $1,000

While I like to blame this sort of myopic thinking on SV, it seems like an entire generation, or two, has forgotten that if you make someone happy today, you've made a customer for life.

This was car sales 101 in the 1950's and 60's.

> Cost to fix a shaky piece of kit: $100

if they spend an hour or two fixing a screen your kid smashed for free, the screen costs $30-$50 wholesale, 1-2 hrs of labor, and fixed costs for the day like power, insurance, lease payment, etc...

And if they just have to click some setting, the parts cost is $0, and the labor is already factored into the person already being there.

Really? SV takes this to the extreme. The never make money, give out tons of coupons, charge super low prices, kind of strategy. If anything, SV is too far-sighted, not myopic.

Capturing markets (or trying) by burning VC money is different than trying to build customer loyalty with good service. VC fueled business cares about market share/profit potential, not profitability.

For car sales it makes sense because with car sales, comes car repair and service. And this is where the dealers make money individual car sales are not that profitable.

Ms stores were a really sad sight at the malls when not positioned far enough from Apple stores. Maybe they should try Xbox store or something else that does not remind ppl of work

A fellow Raleigh-Durham-ite! The Microsoft store in Southpoint is/was indeed pretty great... But, the Apple store nearby always has much more traffic.

I don't spend a lot of time in malls, but I've passed Microsoft Stores maybe six or seven times. My observation has been that they're always located as close to the Apple Store as possible, and that they are virtually empty, compared to the Apple Store.

I remember one day it was particularly stark. There was a line to get in at the Apple Store (not a launch day), and there were only employees inside the Microsoft Store. It was then I realized that the Microsoft Store wasn't about selling things, it was just a branding exercise.

>Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to genuinely care about fixing your issue

This was my experience as well. As a bonus, my kiddo always wanted to stop into the Microsoft store. There was something warm and inviting about it, especially in comparison to the Apple store (we lived about 1/2 a block from each).

Same as my experience. While it was admittedly usually dead inside my local store, the clerks were happy to hang out and talk shop, super generous with freebies like t-shirts and the actual buying process was very smooth. As much as I complain about Microsoft, they did a very good job with their stores.

that’s the first I’ve heard of that area called “the triangle.” mind sharing what it’s significant for and what kind of person would fit? I’ve considered moving to the SE for better weather and job opportunities as a new grad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle

I've gotten more in depth into this in the path, but I don't recommend people move to "the triangle"

(I honestly don't know why that name has stuck, sure historically they may be linked, but unless you want to deal with ungodly traffic every day, you're probably not going to be going between Raleigh and Durham)

Durham has some serious unresolved problems with crime, Raleigh and Durham both have problems with traffic, the tech scene is not that robust, house prices are on a rocketship shaped trajectory and frankly it feels like a bubble.

I think the core of my complaints has generally been, if you want suburban sprawl, you can go literally anywhere on the eastern seaboard. There are safer cities than Durham, there are cities like Raleigh that don't have the same problems with growth it's facing

If you want a "city feeling", RDU isn't it. Raleigh downtown is how many blocks? Not many. Public transport is terrible so you're going to need a car if you can't contain your life in it.

Maybe if you have a family to settle down and strong earning power and good savings it's a good idea (that is to say, maybe I don't know, I still wouldn't). Or you're on the opposite end of the spectrum and have a lower income and really young with more interest in living in a "happening" place.

But for a new grad in tech or something in demand, your earning power is squandered on suppressed salaries (and no, it's not that mindboggling cheap to live there, especially not with all the money flowing in from all around the country), you're a little bit older than the point where most people are more interested in how many breweries per square mile there are. It just wasn't an appealing proposition to me.

I moved back to NYC and now I make 1.5x what I did there, but my living expenses have not risen nearly 1.5x, and I've probably saved up in 6 months more than I did in 1 year there... at that point you can afford a few nice vacations a year to make up for the weather

To provide a counterpoint to the other commenters, I quite like the Triangle! (As someone who has lived there for several years now.)

I attend one of the major universities (NC State) but plan to stay here after I graduate. The three major municipalities (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Durham) are different enough and have a wide variety of suburbs around them to offer a lot of options for different price points, if you're planning on moving here.

I've met lots of different people in the area, and there are tons of things to do. Lots of good food.

The traffic isn't that bad. The major interstate that connects the three areas (I-40) gets congested some during the day, but it's nothing like what you'd see out in the valley. Living anywhere in the Triangle means you're effective 30-40 minutes away from everywhere else, so I know lots of people who live in e.g. Raleigh and work in Durham (or in the Park.)

The weather is pretty good! A bit hot in the summer, but spring and fall are really nice, and the winter isn't too cold. We usually only get 1-2 snows a year.

The best part though: you're 2 hours from the mountains and 2 hours from the beach. When you want to take a vacation, you've got both options to choose from.

Above all else, it's a fast growing area. Our public transit needs a lot of work, and there are plenty of other areas for improvement (bringing more startup talent to the area, rather than older established companies.) It's growing pretty notably though, and I for one am excited to be a part of the process _before_ the area explodes. 10 years from now, the area is going to be a lot more popular.

I never realized that. As a matter of fact, is there one in CLT?

It's in Southpark

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