When Michael Dell appeared at San Francisco’s Churchill Club Oct. 13, journalists apparently heard exactly what they wanted to hear. Based on early reports from The Register, the Dell Computer founder lit into the small display characteristics of netbooks in a way that would apply to smartbooks as well. He predicted most netbook users would return to full-sized notebooks 36 hours after giving smaller platforms a test-drive. Based on this impression, the Dell CEO would not seem to hold out great hope for his own company’s Mini architecture.
But Rick Merritt of EE Times came away from the Churchill soiree with an entirely different impression. Dell gave a heavy boost to Android and the notion of open operating systems for smartphones, and pledged Dell’s participation in this market. One could assume by his remarks that Dell expected to see a variety of form-factor and OS environments.
Maybe those two positions are not so contradictory. The laptop user who is familiar with Windows and large displays may find a netbook to be a memory-deficient toy. But a smartbook user, and even a netbook user, will represent a different class of information broker that can accept cloud computing for information storage, accept Chrome and other Linux derivatives, and accept a different ergonomic experience.
At the end of the day, nothing Dell said should indicate his company is moving in a radically different direction. Instead, it indicates how editors bring different preconceived notions to every event, and can walk away with radically different interpretations of what someone has said.
Loring
