Steve Jobs’ legacy

Here’s the thing about Steve Jobs. All that stuff about the charisma, the “reality distortion field,” all the crap that PC-oriented journalists caught up in the Microsoft-Intel duopoly derided as fan-boy BS, it was very real.  Check out this video from MacWorld Boston (remember that???) in 1997, especially the piped-in appearance by Bill Gates about 30 minutes in. (An amazing amount of hissing for an industry event. And let’s not get into the boobirds.)

Stunning. To plagiarize myself, what has always struck me about Apple compared to Microsoft is that Apple, at least under Jobs, always left its customers jazzed but wanting more. Microsoft, on the other hand (and this coming from a long-time Windows user) seems to leave its users exhausted and wanting less.

That’s a big fundamental difference.

Let us know what you think about this post; email Barbara Darrow, Senior News Director at bdarrow@techtarget.com,

HP to make good on TouchPad refunds

Hewlett-Packard will, in fact, offer full refunds to  VARs for any TouchPad tablets they have in inventory. it will also “price protect” customers who bought the TouchPad at full price. But it’s not advertising that fact. Continued »

TouchPad banners still hanging at HP headquarters

This just in from a SearchITChannel.com spy. Yes, that’s a gigantic TouchPad banner hanging off HP headquarters as of Tuesday morning. Kind of eerie, ain’t it?

Last week, most stores were well-stocked with HP TouchPads. But now that HP nuked its tablet business, TouchPads are selling like hot cakes at $99 each. Our eye witness saw 35 to 40 people (no badges so not HP employees) lined up at HP before 9 a.m. for the hot-selling-but-dead product.

VARs said HP’s cost for the high-end TouchPad, which listed for $499, was $380. VARs could make 4% of list, or $20 from each sale> Small problem: Precious few sold at $499. But now VARs say customers are begging them for the $99 deals. Not likely, said one. “I expect to ship them back to Ingram [Micro] for a full refund.”

Is interest in the HP’s moribund TouchPad the ultimate irony, or is it a great - if unprofitable - guerilla marketing campaign from HP?

Let us know what you think about the story; email Pat Ouellette, Associate Editor, at pouellette@techtarget.com , or follow us on twitter.

HP reverbs continue to roil partners, Wall Street

Hewlett-Packard PR would really, really like to talk to reporters about its VMworld news next week. But I’m guessing there aren’t many takers given recent HP bombshells.

Last week, CEO Leo  Apotheker told the world that HP was killing the new, heavily-hyped TouchPads, might sell off/spin off its huge PC division, and was exploring options for WebOS.

Oh, and it would buy little-known Autonomy for $10.3 billion.

One HP partner reached on Friday needed to be talked off the ledge.

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Dell encourages solution providers to think ‘chiller-less’

Dell is encouraging solutions that represent its server technologies to pick up the rallying cry for its new “chiller-less” data center design philosophy. Continued »

HP to dump WebOS TouchPads, phones

In a shocking move, Hewlett-Packard will deep-six its nascent WebOS TouchPad and phone efforts. You know, all the “hot” new products it touted at its annual Americas Partner Conference  That was five months ago. Continued »

HP without PCs? Not so unthinkable

Hewlett-Packard is on the verge of spinning off its PC business, if reports out of Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal are accurate. Continued »

Despite consolidation, innovation spikes in security software

Anyone who reads my posts here with any kind of regularity knows that I am kind of a numbers geek, which is to say that I love the nuances of all the statistics that are published by the usual suspects on the market research side of life. It doesn’t mean I believe all of them, but I feel most of them bear exposure. (Or, bare exposure, if you prefer.) Continued »

iPhone 5 boom, VAR wars and other takeaways from GreenPages Summit

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Unsurprisingly, cloud was top of mind at this week’s GreenPages Solutions Summit 2011.

About a hundred or so GreenPages customers–IT professionals from organizations ranging from area hospitals to Liberty Mutual Insurance and Stratus Computer — came to hear GreenPages’ cloud pitch, specifically the VAR’s planned “data bus” that would help them move data from on-premises data centers to hybrid and/or public clouds. But that was the official news. Here’s the real scuttlebutt. Continued »

VCE channel guy Koliopoulos jumps ship

Pete Koliopoulos, who shepherded The VCE Co. through some early rough waters around its channel game plan, left the company and joined Arrow as VP of marketing for Arrow ECS, according to his LinkedIn bio.

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