Microsoft has a sweet $99 deal for a $299 Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. However, it was only the first 20 at each Microsoft Store will have these tablets available at that price, after which it becomes a still pretty reasonable $199 for the next 10 units and then full price after that. Well, the deal got some pretty good press coverage, and everyone was looking to cash in on this door buster deal, which is part of Microsoft's Christmas "12 Days of Deals".

I went to the Danbury Mall's Microsoft Store at 8am this morning to try and snag one but the line was already 40 people long , so I headed to work to try and get one online, since the promo also applies to the online store, with the $99 price for the first 100 orders and then $199 for the rest of the day while stocks last.

I had multiple Google Chrome tabs open http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell-Venue-8-Pro-Tablet-32-GB/productID.289455200 to try and get the $99 deal and the Microsoft Store website was unbearably slow!

Check out the errors I received from the website:


First the tantalizing red spinning arrow, indicating it's adding me to the placeholder. Soon after I get a blank page with the text "Placeholder not found".

Then I got this error:



Then the red spinning circle showed the Add to Cart button, so I frantically clicked it: (10:04am ET)

And lastly this heart-breaking error message:


It SOLD OUT in 4 minutes! Guess Microsoft did a nice job building some buzz around this 8" Windows 8 tablet. I've never seen Microsoft have any sort of buzz like this (excluding the Xbox) that caused their site to slow. It reminds me of Apple during the iPhone's heyday and how their site would slow and lines for form outside Apple stores.

The Amazon Kindle HDX (7"), which I considered as a Christmas gift, is the most popular 7-8" tablet right now, but at $229, the Kindle HDX has serious price competition from this Dell Venue 8, which has more features due to the fact that it runs full Windows 8! Install the Kindle app and the Dell Venue 8 has almost all the features of the Kindle HDX plus support for Windows software and the "Metro" app store as well.

Microsoft's first Christmas holiday deal (of 12) definitely built some buzz. There were at least 4 people in my office trying to snag this deal and NONE of them were even considering a Windows tablet before this deal was announced. Perhaps that was Microsoft's plan all along. Tease us with something we can't have so we want it more. Well played Microsoft. Well played...