Friday, May 05, 2006

Dell has jumped the shark: Spyware pre-installs

SONY jumped the shark when they covertly installed DRM software through their music CDs. The software could not be removed and caused technical problems to SONY's victims.

Now Dell has joined SONY in the inner circle of Heck. Whatever their financials may say, they must be desperate to have included funded spyware in their pre-install packages. This fits with Dell's deteriorating client services.

What went wrong with Dell? They invested in process innovation, but not in product innovation. As long as they could leach from IBM and Compaq they had a good strategy, but a parasite that kills its hosts is in trouble. They crushed IBM and Compaq on price, but they then had no-one to copy. Their organization discouraged innovators, so now they don't have them. Their primary hope now is that Apple's Intel transition will give them something to copy.

I don't buy SONY products. I don't buy Dell products. There are better choices out there.

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