Comrades!

Dell’s new “services and systems for small business” adds a new line called “Vostro”. Maybe it is because I just enjoyed “The Hunt for Red October” on DVD with Sean Connery and Sam Neill, but the the name sounds like shades of the 1950’s and the cold war. Dell was never one for particularly attractive designs, the units even look a little bit like something designed in the former Soviet block, relentlessly unadorned and practical..and actually more attractive than the standard designs for desktops a few years back. Still, I wish they’d hire the Apple designers.

Apparently the features of units for small business include:
1. Tech support delivered from the U.S.
2. Elimination of all the shovel-ware that they used to put on the hard drive.
3. Software to allow Dell technicians to log into the machine remotely.

And yet, Latitude and Optiplex live on. So does this mean the death of the Dimension? and the end of the Dell Precision?