Quotes of the Week, October November 4-8

"Over time, inevitably consumer PCs and other devices will follow a similar route." - Dell's David Matthews on its recyclable PC line.

"We're very pleased, it's back to business as usual." - Intel spokeswoman on the defeat of Proposition 211, legislation which would have prevented companies from detailing product plans.

"I wouldn't say online shopping will wipe out retail, I'm not that silly. It will probably be 20 per cent of retail by 2003 or 2005." - Roger Collins of the BIT Group which put together Tesco's online shopping site.

"[Cairo is] something we've been working on for quite a while." - Bill Gates being uncharacteristically self-deprecatory.

"The [NC alliance] is a Tower of Babel where there is no central force controlling ... It's like [IBM's failed project] Taligent ... it's interesting but I don't think it will be attractive." - Bill Gates.

"The most important we have ever had." - Jim Allchin on Microsoft's Long Beach, California Developer Conference.

"This is the next step towards our objective of making the Zip drive the new floppy, and to do that we need to put the drives in as many places as possible." - Iomega's Rita Pregger on the slimline Zip drive.

"Quite frankly, they're free to announce as many crazy things as they like, but I hope we're not going back to the days of announcing products a year before shipping. Their PR machine will go off the rails eventually." - Floppy drive maker OR Technology's Mike Dalton on Iomega's new slimline Zip drive.