Dell needs to revamp its product portfolio just like Apple needed to 10 years ago.

Dell has branded itself as a maker of low cost machines and now is stuck selling systems that lack in profitability and has been pushing high end systems under the XPS brand and acquired Alienware.

But contrary to Steve Jobs, Michael Dell isn't known for his technology vision. Instead he is a clever businessman who was able to adopt an innovative business model that literally killed much of the competition. Beige computer boxes don't drive growth anymore. Innovation and appealing design do.

It remains unclear if Michael Dell can provide a solution to those problems.

Dell at CES last January

We showed up bright and early, hoping to witness a stampede for this revolutionary software, or at least some excited Microsoft fans eagerly waiting to get a copy of the first new Windows operating system in more than five years.

Store shelves were stocked to the rim. Demo machines were finely tuned to show off the next-gen operating system and the staff was ready to pitch their wares. But not a customer in sight.

Maybe it was because many customers were hesitant to migrate to a new and largely unproven Windows version that in many cases requires costly graphic card updates. Or perhaps is a 7am release event just another demonstration of Microsoft's continued misunderstanding of its customers.

Microsoft marketeers resort to Starbucks, as Windows Vista failed to provide any eye-opening experiences this Tuesday morning.

The software is more secure. But just like a boat, you only find out that it has sprung a leak when it's too late. We'll happily credit Microsoft when we'll witness a drop in the number of cyber attacks two years from now (or sooner, hopefully).

Vista's media capabilities won't be of much use until we see some appealing hardware devices that are designed for the living room, or that allow consumers to easily access their data through a media adapter. And meanwhile Cisco and Google will try their hardest wipe out the foundation from under Vista by moving all our data online.

Vista admittedly is cool and a great piece of software. But time will tell if it will help us do amazing new things, or merely provide access to great new services.

Mickos however was quick to refute the story's most blatant claim. Oracle has never suggested that it would offer support for the open source database.

And when it comes to distributing the database, that has been the case ever since Oracle started distributing Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The database after all is bundled with the Linux distribution. But turning that into a distribution agreement is like stating that Ford is in the gasoline refinery business, just because it there is gas in the vehicles that people buy.

"I never said that Oracle has threatened MySQL.(I think this may have been the writer's editorial comment)," Mickos said in an emailed statement. "Instead, I view it as a positive thing that Oracle distributes MySQL. I have often suggested that Oracle should distribute MySQL and I've made the same suggestion to Microsoft. Perhaps Oracle, Microsoft or IBM will provide support for MySQL and that could be good for open source in general. (And note that Red Hat, HP and others already do so.)"

It's just another case of watching an experienced spin doctor at work.

Mickos

Scoble left a comment on Saturday morning requesting a link to a video of his. Admittedly, I didn't notice it until Monday morning. The video is 40 minutes long and provides a tour of one of Intel's fabs where the 45nm chips will be manufactured. It's a fine video, but the big news about Intel's the High-k and metal gates transistors is tucked away about 20-25 minutes into the video, way beyond my attention span. And even then, if offers largely the same information that is offered elsewhere. If Scoble would have pasted the link in his comment, I would have left it there.

We linked to news copy that we at vnunet.com produced ourselves (full disclosure: this blog is published by vnunet.com, currently part of the Nielsen Company (formerly called VNU) and soon to be owned by 3i). Because we feel that the copy is relevant to our readers.

If the latter is the case, Scoble is simply wrong. We do link to blogs if we feel that they provide relevant information that is accurate and verifiable, or if we use blogs as a source for a story – both on this blog and in our news coverage on vnunet.com.

A story that we fact checked and researched ourselves by definition is more verifiable to us than any blog posting. The sole exception would a blog posting by the Intel engineer who invented the technology (but even then we will often verify the authenticity of the posting with Intel's PR department). In this case our news story provided relevant information, so we linked to it instead of the NY Times or Podtech.net (Scoble's current employer, which had a reporter present at the Intel event).

Yes, we like traffic to our websites because it helps us pay the bills. So if all other factors are equal, we'll still link to our own content first. But we don't have a 'no linking' policy.

If Scoble claims that in general we should just link to blogs instead of established media, that's fine too. We appreciate his input and we'll continue to link to blogs if they information they provide is accurate, verifiable and relevant to our readers. Which is what we've always been doing.

Any discussion about how established media deal with emerging media is one worth having. But it seems that we are singled out for the wrong reasons.

I just hope that somehow I'm completely missing Scoble's point, in which case I'm sure that he'll find the comment section below. Otherwise, we'd happily continue to link to blogs when needed.

UPDATE:

Scoble seems to have come to his senses: "Raising a stink doesn’t bring the traffic"

But there is nothing fancy about the way that it got there: Intel essentially went down the list of elements found the materials that showed the right results (it is using two different materials for different functions).

The High-k gate meanwhile provide some much needed headroom in shrinking it down for future generations: the current 65nm chips use a layer that is only 5 atoms thick. Leave out one atom during production, and you just increased leakage by 20 per cent. The new technique uses hafnium instead, which is spread on so thick that there is plenty to shave off for future, smaller generations.

IBM too is preparing High-k technology, which it is expected to share with AMD and other chip manufacturers.

But lets get back to earth. Us mortal consumers will never see a single atom of hafnium. What does this get us?

We'll see a dramatic reduction in overall power consumption by our computers, allowing for longer battery life for our notebooks and ultra mobile PCs (UMPC). Or ultra slim and fanless desktop designs to match your living room sofa.

Enterprises will be able to fit more servers in a rack without increasing the overall power consumption of their data centres.

But that doesn't solve AMD's design lead in the server x86 space. The company still is the only one to have publicly spoken about having a monolithic quad core processor in the works. Intel meanwhile will remain to slap two dual core dies on a single chip, causing some significant overhead, performance loss and increased power consumption.

But that won't bother Intel much for now. The company can rest assured that its hold on the mobile market is tighter than ever and will continue working on more advanced chips. Today is Intel's party, and nothing is going to spoil it.

Photo of Intel's Penryn 45nm processor.

After all, how much longer do you expect Google's market valuation to continue rising at the current hype rates?

But if you want to work for a cool company that has a model of a space ship and a dinosaur skeleton on its campus, you better write a hell of a resume (and be really good at your job).

Second Life has its own online currency, called Linden Dollars that can be openly exchanged for US Dollars. Players claim to have made real world billions trading virtual properties – mostly land, but also from selling clothing and other accessories as well as virtual prostitution (phone sex for the 21st century) and gambling.

But don’t try investing in some virtual property, sell it for a profit after several months and cash in your Linden Dollars for some real world green. Harrison claims that trying to exchange those funds without facing a severe loss is in practically impossible.

The official exchange run by the game developer functions as an open auction that brings buyers and sellers together. But that also makes it impossible to do large transactions there.

That leaves private exchanges that lack any volume. As a result, any attempt to trade a large amount of Linden Dollars will result in an instant drop in the exchange rate.

Example: mid July 2006 SLL/USD was 293.0/279.2 bid/ask on the primary open exchange. Our attempts to trade L$650,000 resulted in settlement bids of 350-450. Interestingly, these trades tended to net returns of right around 4%, which was the prevailing dollar deposit rate.

As we scratched our heads trying to figure out if there weren’t a more clever way of disguising our trades, or perhaps creating our own in-game banks and exchanges in order to arbitrage the other direction, it suddenly dawned upon me.

This game was just a pyramid scheme.

Second Life may offer some great entertainment. But anyone waiting to invest their hard earned cash to start up a flourishing business in the booming economy is dearly mistaken.

"Diva" makeup: virtual paint for sale

The developer agreed to take on the job, and even disclosed on his blog that Microsoft paid him to do so. And that's when all hell broke loose.

While the encyclopedia has a legitimate worry about spam and inaccurate information, it has swung to the other extreme by preventing stakeholders to correct obvious inaccuracies.

Never mind that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in the past has been caught editing entries to increase the credit to his efforts while deleting those of former partners. Adding inaccurate information, in Wikipedia's eyes is just as bad as some people correcting it.

How did he memorize it all? By taking it 1,000 at a time. He would record the digits on tape recorder and listen to it during his commute and lunch hours. For 2 and a half years. Wearing out 2 tape records.

Surely a number buff like Umile works a million dollar job as some genius software developer? Wrong again. He handles Medicare bills as a filing clerk.

A tribute to pi

The company happily provided us with the actual data. Similar in Microsoft's book means a 30 per cent markup for European consumers (€49.95) and 50 per cent for the UK (£37.99), compared to the US rate.

Microsoft has a right to charge whatever it sees fit for this software. Its prices certainly don't differ from the competition's. But no sane person would claim that a 60 per cent markup qualifies as "similar pricing".

In case you wonder, European prices in part are higher because of value added taxes (VAT) and to offset the costs of localizing and translating the products. But the record deficit on the trade balance and government spending in the US has undermined the value of the dollar, further widening the price gap between the US and Europe.

If that doesn't scare you enough, trying looking at the place on Microsoft's Live Local service and select the bird's eye view.

Any time that a map resembles a view from Sim City is a moment that you should start running for the emergency exit.

Can you tell the game from the place?

It can't have hurt however that most of those painful memories are associated with the "former" CEOs Craig Barrett and Scott McNealy (both have ceded the CEO position to become chairman). Today's deal bore all the signs of a fresh start by the Sun's new CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Intel's Paul Otellini.

Enough so, that when asked what it took for this deal to happen now, Schwartz quipped: "I think it was a bottle of Barolo [wine]."

"A really good bottle," added a smiling Ottelini.

You can watch a video report from Otellini's and Schwartz' press conference below.

Click To Play

Also, we should prepare for mistakes and wrong assumptions that are used to narrow down the current research. After all, the fact that we're unable to find earth-like planets in other solar systems, doesn't mean that life can't be found on other planets.

But before we start gathering ET welcoming committees, consider these two simple assertions:

- If there is extra terrestrial life outside of the earth, it will be found thousands of systems if not more. That dramatically slims down humanity's shot at being the most scientifically and socially advanced life form.

- If long distance space travel is physically possible, other life forms would have succeeded at this a long time ago.

You can bet on the odd chance that we just happen to be the most advanced life form around. But in reality that's like believing your mum when she tells you that you're the prettiest person around.

Snap out off it and face reality. Long distance space travel is a myth, or we really are the only ones out there.

Fake product mock-ups are a dime a dozen these days, but anything that involves Google is sure to catch our attention.

We've heard the same pitch are previous Windows launches, and they never worked very well before. But this time is different, Novell will claim. OpenOffice2.0 is a valid alternative for Office and Suse Linux 10 stands it ground in a direct comparison with Vista.

Be that as it may, hardware vendors still form a gaping hole in the desktop Linux market. Trying surfing to HPshopping.com or Dell.com and switch out Windows for Linux.

HP has certified some of its hardware for Red Hat, Suse, Turbolinux and Mandriva, but won't bundle the operating system with new hardware.

Search for "Linux" on Dell's website and the number one result is a system where Red Hat is advertised as an option, but mysteriously disappears when you start configuring the actual system.

Linux might be ready for the enterprise, but vendors treat users looking to purchase a system as if they have been infected by the plague. How many more Windows versions will it take until Linux is truly ready to take on Microsoft?

Dell claims to offer Linux, but try ordering it...

Instead Apple is blaming the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), a set of standards, conventions and rules that accountants follow. Apple claims that those rules require the firm to charge for significant product updates – such as providing next generation wireless networking.

Leave it to the accountants to spoil a good thing. In the heads of the bean counters, shipping a feature in disabled mode without telling the buyer and then enabling it at a later point amounts to shipping them a free 802.11n wireless networking card.

By the way, 802.11n is still very much a case of 'buyer beware'. The standard won't be ratified for at least another year. Any gear that ships today complies with a draft standard and there is no guarantee that it will work with the final standard (although a firmware upgrade will probably fix that). Unless you're streaming high quality video, you don't 802.11n anyway. Have a little patience.

Apple's Airport Extreme wireless base station will introduce 802.11n Wi-Fi

You can pick Dell's disease. The firm was the last in the industry to switch to AMD processors, despite their lower cost and market momentum. Consumers were getting really fed up with the store's mediocre customer service levels and the company furthermore was beaten at its own game. Competing on price has reduced Dell to a bargain basement brand where no profits are to be had.

Dell currently is shifting focus from low cost to high margin products, which explains the dramatic drop in the company's sales. But the restructuring couldn't have come at a worse time, given that worldwide computer sales are sluggish in the months up to the Windows Vista launch.

HP's Mark Hurd saves cuts cost all the way to the number 1 position

Yahoo made two monumental mistakes: it failed to acquire Google in 2003 (Yahoo CEO Terry Semel (pictured above) allegedly brushed off the $5bn asking price, bidding a measly $3bn instead) and it never properly integrated the 2003 Overture acquisition, a provider of pay-per-click advertising. The Overture business is scheduled to be wrapped into the Yahoo business later this year, which is an embarrassment by all standards.

The Inktomi dilemma is important, because Google has shown that good technology allows you marry the right advertiser with the right consumer/user.

But Yahoo also is betting on content much more than Google is. The firm is trying to be a destination rather than an information broker. Creating content is far more expensive than pointing people towards it.

Fact is that Yahoo is falling behind, and if it allows this to continue, it risks becoming an acquisition target.

Google laughing all the way to the bank

So the facts according to The Man are that Amero willingly and knowingly downloaded the materials. That by default makes her liable for exposing her students to the materials.

If the RIAA can accuse 90-year-old grandmothers who have never owned a computer of illegal file swapping, authorities surely don't have to consider the option of adware and other badware.

Welcome to 1984.

It's like listening to Oracle's Red Hat support pitch. The database vendor claimed to offer better and cheaper support for the open source operating system. But until today nobody has come forward saying that they signed up for Oracle's "superior" Red Hat support. And you can bet that Oracle would have paraded any customer in front of the IT and business press corps.

Sun too can talk as much as it wants. It won't be until we see a major spike in Solaris market share that we can believe that the software is making any impact in the web2.0 space.

Red Hat may not be perfect, but the vendor has by far the most developer mind share within the open source community.

If everybody is out to get Red Hat, they must be doing some things right.

Replacing the tiny wires on a chip with a communications grid on which transistors are then placed allows for a 300 per cent performance boost by 2010, HP's smart minds suggest. A first functioning prototype is expected by the end of this year.

As an added advantage, a grid provides redundancy. If a connection is broken during the manufacturing process, communications can simply take a different route to reach a transistor. Current production techniques simply cause the transistor to cease functioning altogether.

HP suggested that as much as 25 per cent of the grid connectors could be flawed without significantly lowering processor performance.

Atomic force microscope topographs of a nearly defect free region (left) and a highly defective region (right) in a 34 nm pitch nanowire crossbar (click image for a larger view)

The project by 2005 had spiraled completely out of control. Costing $18m, it came in at more than twice the budget, without delivering anything close to a functioning billing solution. Oracle reportedly has now agreed to bring in Prophecy International to get the job done.

The software will still run on top of an Oracle database, but the vendor has proven that its enterprise software was unable to perform. The vendor over the past years has spend over $10bn on building out its enterprise software portfolio and relies on the segment to drive future growth.

Compatibility with existing systems hardly could have been any issue. The project is replacing a 30-year system that still relies on punch cards.

While Oracle didn’t admit to any wrongdoings, the fact that it is effectively donating $6.9m in software and consultancy services only further underscores its failure.

But they will reach the developed world nonetheless, if it's up to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project.

A display that operates in both reflective and backlight mode is must if your school is outdoors, as is the case in many developing nations. But its also a nice feature for workers who want to enjoy an outdoor spring meeting.

The same goes for the OLPC power generator. The $10 device (cost) doesn't just recharge a OLPC's battery in areas where the simply is no electricity, 5 minutes of yanking the yo-yo shaped device will give your cellphone a full charge. So expect it to show up in stores soon.

Third world problems aren’t necessarily unique, at times they can just be a bit more urgent and allow for innovative solutions to pop up.

The first prototypes of the XO's hand operated power generator left the factory last week. But OLPC expects to sell them for multiple applications.

For as the number of patents out there increases, it becomes increasingly hard for new applications to properly scan for prior applications to similar and/or identical technologies. Over time this should then create a default legal defense:

"Your honor, I move to dismiss plaintiff's patent claim on the basis that he couldn't physically have done a proper review of prior art and patent filings. You see, he took only two years to file his application, where we have established legal precedent that it takes at least 10 years to sift through all the patents out there."

Another problem solved.

As expected, the atmosphere at the keynote was more like a Who concert than a convention. The crush of humanity pictured below is just for press seating.

Before sending the jaws of over 4,000 people to the floor of the Moscone Center with the iPhone, Jobs took some time to give an update on the iTV and provide the usual smug  Apple/Microsoft comparison (this year was the Zune's market share.) He also gave users a screening of the latest Mac/PC commercial. In the latest installment, PC goes in for a major Vista operation.

Then, the iPhone hit. Apple claims that there are over 200 patents in the device.

On the expo floor, there was an iPhone on display inside a rotating glass case carefully monitored by Apple muscle...err...employees.

That dot in the upper left-hand corner is the iPhone's 2 megapixel camera.

And that little silver line in front of the visibly irritated Apple employee is iPhone's 11.6mm side profile.

Apple wasn't the only company attracting big crowds with cool gadgets. Other World Computing showcased the ModBook, a Mac tablet put together by Axiotron. The crowds were packed so tight around the frankentab that some of us short-statured gentlemen had trouble getting a good photo of the device.

As Jupiter Research VP Michael Gartenberg pointed out in a recent interview, few things in the computing world are capable of generating the sort of pre-show buzz that a Steve Jobs keynote delivers, and much of that is due to the trend-setter status that Apple has assumed since Jobs came back to the company and rolled out a sleek, Bondi blue all-in-one machine dubbed "iMac."

Since that fateful day in August of 1998, Steve Jobs' keynotes become synonymous with Apple's "next big thing." Every event brings weeks of intense speculation. Tech news outlets plan special reports just to take a guess at what the latest "one more thing" from Jobs might be.

The reports, however, are rarely based on solid information and even more rarely do they turn out to be right. Apple surrounds their products with the type of secrecy that would make the KGB jealous.

That secrecy is, in part, what makes us anticipate the keynotes so eagerly. It is what has lead to an entire community of sites devoted exclusively to Mac rumors. The buzz surrounding Apple unveillings draws us in because we know that a must-have gadget or a sexy new computer is just around sethe corner. We know that in the time it takes for Jobs to pull one slide up on the projection screen, entire crowds literally gasp with the type of amazement usually reserved for a magician who makes jumbo jets vanish into thin air.

We love it even more because we have no clue. No matter how reliable sources seem to be, nobody ever dares to call Apple releases "a sure thing." Far too often, that "one more thing" Jobs so casually tosses out displays just how little the rest of the world knows about what's barreling  down Apple's pipeline.

When it comes to what the "one more thing" will be in Tuesday's Macworld keynote, whether iPhone or otherwise, to quote Socrates, "all I know is that I know nothing."

The same can be said for just about everyone else outside of 1 Infinite Loop.

And that's why we'll all be there.

But the explanation that MySQL's Kaj Arnö posted in December is nothing to get excited about either:

Until we get clear and strong indications for the general acceptance of GPLv3 over GPLv2, we feel comfortable with a specific GPLv2 reference in our license.

It's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. By actively moving away form the license, MySQL t gives rise to speculation that suggests that GPL3 is no good. Even if deep inside the company strongly believes in it.

But MySQL can't risk adopting GPL3 if that causes its customers to switch to competing open source database applications – and that isn't entirely unimaginable if you consider that GPL3 users will be forced to provide a default patent grant to all open source software.

Dilemmas everywhere

technorati tags: open+source, gpl3, mysql, database, licensing, licence, license

Most of Mozilla's revenues come from search engines that pay the browser maker for the traffic that they receive through the built in search box. In the end those users are bound to click on ads, making the search engine money.

All together Mozilla has a 84.5 per cent profit margin. Microsoft in the same year had a profit margin of 30.8 per cent, and Red Hat made 23.1 cents for every dollar of revenue that it took in.

It would be interesting to see a better break down of Mozilla's revenues: how much of its funds amount to corporate charity such as donations? As soon as investors and entrepreneurs figure out a way to copy the firm's success, you can expect to see a new onslaught of open source investments.

technorati tags: mozilla, revenue, money, open+source

Patriot plans to unveil the world's "fastest memory" at CES next week. The firm's RAM chips will run at 1302Mhz, making the 1111Mhz Corsair DHX look like unsalted peanuts.

What does 1302Mhz memory get you? The manufacturer promises superior gaming performance. But you better prepare for an inflated power bill and a heating problem on the side as well.

Overclocked memory is the penis enlargement of the computer industry. It looks great if you want to brag to your friends, but it's highly unpractical.

Corsair overclocked memory, hidden somewhere under the 3 fans that are required to keep the beast running cool.

technorati tags: CES, CES+blog, las+vegas, overclocking, memory, patriot+memory

Many bloggers welcomed the offer. After all, the programme provided them with a way to test top notch 64-bit systems. Or they simply couldn't resists a free, cool toy.

But others were quick to blast the company for attempting to bribe bloggers.

Media have been facing the same dilemma decades. It's impossible to buy all new hardware and software that you purchase especially if you're testing enterprise gear. While some media outlets boast that they are islands of ethical behavior and hide behind strict codes of conduct, borders are blurred on a constant basis.

Outright bribery and corruption might have worked when the old media had a monopoly on information, it's a thing of the past in the information age. Even if I would accept a shiny new laptop from Microsoft and start writing positive reviews to reward my 'master', that would amount to blogging suicide as my valued readers would walk away.

With thousands of skeptic eyes watching every mayor IT news story, truth has the tendency to catch up with any lie.

Goodies!

technorati tags: vista, microsoft, windows, windows+vista, blogosphere

You can shrug your shoulders and simply ignore the blog, but Christopher Blizzard, one of the OLPC's contributors and an employee for Red Hat, looked a little bit further. It turns out that one of  the site's authors works on an Intel project that is competing with the OLPC. Oops.

Intel has never liked the the $100 laptop. The notebooks will use AMD chips and Intel is developing a series of competing computer designs for the developing world.

So it doesn't take too much of a conspiracy theorist to believe that Intel is secretly bankrolling the OLPC-News website.

Adding insult to injury, OLPC-News is buying advertising on Google to attract visitors to its website.

OLPC News denies all the accusations, but fact is that the site has a huge conflict of interest that it conveniently failed to disclose.

Christopher Blizzard at Red Hat summit in June 2006.

technorati tags: olpc, christopher+blizzard, Negroponte, $100+laptop, $100laptop