Microsoft is on a retail roll, announcing today that it will open another five brick-and-mortar stores by this summer.
New locations will be scattered across the country, in the Natick Mall in Natick, Mass.; the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii; Pioneer Place in Portland, Ore.; The Somerset Collection in Troy, Mich.; and the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Ill. More details on the grand opening celebrations of the five locations will become available soon.
The news comes after Redmond revealed in December that it will build six new stores in Texas, Florida, Ohio, California, Utah, and Missouri.
"Our customers continue to tell us that they value our stores for connecting them to the best of Microsoft," Jonathan Adashek, Microsoft's communications and strategy general manager, said in a blog post. "This delights us to no end."
Retail stores provide PC, mobile, and gaming consumers a chance to interact with touch-screen laptops, desktops, and tablets running Windows 8, as well as Windows Phones and Xbox and Kinect consoles and accessories.
Microsoft prides itself on the retail customer experience, boasting knowledgeable associates and a personalized shopping trip, for everyone from a tech enthusiast "who wants to talk speeds and feeds" to parents prepping their kids for school, or a small business owner with a 10-person office.
Brick-and-mortar Microsoft stores got off to a slow start in 2009 with only 11 locations built in two years. But company announced in 2011 that it would open 75 more retail stores in the next few years. Microsoft had more than 30 holiday store locations; the pop-up shop in New York's Times Square closed last month.
For more, see PCMag's How Much Do Microsoft Store Workers Really Know About Windows 8? Also, check out our review of Windows 8 and the slideshow above.