Saturday, November 28, 2009

Only Dell Could Eff Up Chrome

  see the Chromium, see? No? Awwwww!

see the Chromium, see? No? Awwwww!

Although the Chrome OS will not be out until some time next year,

Chromium, the open source version Google made available for geex ‘n’ freax, is already being employed for commercial netbooks, specifically the Dell Mini10V.  Sure, you boot up in less in 15 seconds but it takes a quarter of an hour for it to locate a WiFi connection. Nice goin’ fellas, Ballmer’s gonna’ sleep easier this weekend armed with this bit of FUD.


Friday, May 30, 2008

So Mikey wants to fight


My people are telling me that Mikey Dell says he can “take me.” I’m not sure about the vernacular, but I think he wants an athletic contest of some sort.

Moshe says of course this means war. He says that if Dell wants to put his dumb-ass brute Texas brawn up again my catlike, Ninja wiles, fine by Moshe.

Whatever.

Tell you what, Mikey. Go wait out to the back of your back 40. I’ll be there soon. Really. Count on it.


Monday, December 10, 2007

Doppelganger


From a reader named Quixote: “Has anyone else noticed the striking resemblance between Alfredo Linguini, the young and incompetent yet hubristic and overconfident chef who is manipulated and controlled by rats in Disney’s Ratatouille, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Could they be related? I think we should be told.”

(Much love to Jason for the art work.)


Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Dell polishes a turd

Dell announces an “ambitious” marketing campaign using WPP as its “ambitious” partner. See an analysis from Fortune here. Problem with this “ambitious” plan is that Dell’s problem isn’t marketing — it’s the stuff that Dell makes and sells. Put it this way — you can put pictures of dog shit on every billboard in the world, but you’re not going to convince people it’s foie gras.

The most amazing thing is that even the fawning hacks at Fortune seem to realize this. Not that they’d ever come out and say that, because, um, well, I’m not really sure why they don’t just come out and say that. Instead they do a story that seems, superficially, to take Dell’s statements at face value, and then they slide in a few hints that they actually don’t buy it. The key word here is “ambitious,” which is hack-speak for “Oh please.”

Little tip to Dell on how to turn this around: Invite the Fortune hacks down and let them ride with Michael on his Gulfstream. Soon you’ll get yourself a big slurpy Fortune cover story about Dell’s amazing recovery with a huge Marvell comic style headline — RAISING DELL! — and a crazy Tom Wolfe style opening like this: “I’m playing backgammon with Michael Dell on his private jet and he’s furious — furious! — because I’m winning. Because, you see, if I’m winning, this means he’s losing. Losing! And one thing this brash, brazen, boyish billionaire does not do is lose. Ever. At anything. But facts are facts. Michael Dell is losing. No, this will not stand! He leans forward and glares at the board, as if willing the game — no, commanding it — to obey his will.”

Blah blah glug glug. Wait and see. It’ll happen.


Thursday, June 7, 2007

What do you call it when Dell stops making TVs?

A good start. See here.


Thursday, May 24, 2007

A match made in heaven

Dell and Wal-Mart have formed a partnership. See here. How perfect is this? I’m so glad you two kids found each other.


Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Dell accused of bait and switch? Shocking!

See here. Dell is being sued in New York for consumer fraud. Charges include a variety of ways in which Dell allegedly promised one thing in advertisements and delivered another. Seems to be mostly about service plans and financing. The most hilarious bait and switch of course is this notion that you call up and they build your machine from scratch, custom-made, just the way you like it. Trust me, we’ve had meetings there. They build stuff in advance just like everybody else. Their telemarketers are trained to steer you to whatever they’ve got too much of out in the warehouse. “Well, I know you called up for that super deal on a laptop, and we can make you one of those if you want it [erm, not really] but let me tell you about this deal we have on a model with more memory. Are you going to be making movies? Storing photographs? Music? Browsing the web? Oh, well, you’re really going to need more memory than that machine in the advertisement.”