Martin Veitch's Diary

I recall a sunny Monday morning seven years ago when I visited them in Richmond, Surrey. The company from beautiful Irvine, California was flying. They were that mysterious thing: a reseller channel-based PC company thriving despite Dell and the rest of the direct movement grabbing handfuls of user base.

Compaq, by contrast, was being spoken of as having a last chance if it made a good job of its 'budget' PC line, the ProLinea. How things have changed.

Tuesday

Gateway tells us they don't think NEC has a chance in the direct channel.

Okay, it demands a Mandy Rice-Davis response but I think Gateway is right. NEC - any Japanese company for that matter - has never shown the nimbleness to compete in the low-price market. For all that, it would be nice to see a new face do well in PCs. Post-Gateway, things have been pretty staid.

Wednesday

Microsoft is annoyed with the SPA for a document stating its position on monopolies. Hey, guys, just because they're saying that the dominant OS player shouldn't be able to bundle all those other products doesn't mean you should get paranoid. I mean, Apple is still out there, Novell is really doing great things with directory services, Unix is big in the Web and banks, and as for OS/2