I feel embarrassed for Dell as I read about the company's new effort to launch a line of so-called luxury products. Yikes, those are some tacky-looking products. Dell is like someone who is really smart and successful but still has no taste in clothes. You know who I mean--they're worth $100 million but wear Ecco shoes to a business meeting. The new "stylish" Dell machines show the same sad lack of style sense--which is a fatal flaw in a style product. Among consumer electronics companies, only Apple--and sometimes Sony--can pull this off. Dell needs to find another way to move its product mix into higher margin areas. Trying to equal the master marketer of style statements, Steve Jobs, is a dead end.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Desktops
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Richard MacManus of ZDNet not only notes how business is moving to laptops from desktop computers, he also does a nice job of heralding the future Web-based office, in which applications are on the Net rather than computer-based. At the end of his piece, he runs through a list of Web-based solutions that are already out there for everything from word processing to spreadsheets, calendars, e-mail, and presentations.

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing me to this one (though he thinks Web-based offices are 5 to 10 years out).

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: Work
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Firefox has reignited the browser wars. Opera is emboldened. Internet Explorer is weakened. And Netscape has a decent browser on the market. So decent, in fact, that it (and not Firefox, on which it's based) will ship on new HP computers. Could this whole browser thing just come full circle?

Permalink | 13 comments

• Read also: Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

Finally, I just noticed that Google is now speaking to CNET's News.com, despite promises of a yearlong freeze-out. (I suspect there may be someone into whom some sense was talked.) Well, golly, Google--what if News.com doesn't want to talk to you anymore? Just kidding, they totally do.

Permalink | 2 comments

• Read also: Buzz
• Email to a friend | Print this post

T-Mobile yesterday "upgraded" its BlackBerry Internet and e-mail service. This is exactly the kind of thing a small-business owner like me doesn't need. I had subscribed to the BlackBerry service from T-Mobile because it was priced well, I could add Wi-Fi hot spots to my account for a discounted rate, Bluetooth Internet service was included in the price, the service was fine, it worked internationally without chip-swapping, and so on.

T-Mobile warned me recently in a few e-mail messages that everything was changing as of October 2, and it sure has. I just spent about 25 minutes on the phone with a reasonably helpful woman (named Mace, she said) after being on hold for about 25 minutes, and she gave me some unfortunate news:

According to the latest research from Nielsen, Americans devote more time than ever to watching television. The TV ratings service attributes the all-time high in TV viewership per household per day--a whopping 8 hours, 11 minutes for the 2004-2005 season--to the increase in available channels and number of TVs per household. A couple of more nuggets from the report:   

• The average individual watched 4 hours, 32 minutes of TV per day last season, the highest level in 15 years.
• The average U.S. home now receives more than 100 channels of programming.
• The average household watches 1 hour, 53 minutes of prime-time TV per day.
• During 2005's premiere week for prime-time programming, an average of 62 percent of American households were watching TV.

Permalink | Post a comment

• Read also: TVs
• Email to a friend | Print this post