Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
Dell’s enterprise chief pooh-poohs netbooks
Netbooks: flavor of the month? Not according to Dell’s Steven Schuckenbrock.
The PC giant’s head of enterprise sales was quick to point out flaws in the stripped-down, no-frills mini-computers that have garnered rave reiews for their ultra-portability and anywhere-connectivity.
“Netbooks are a secondary device. The user experience of a netbook is just not as good. It’s slower than a conventional notebook computer,” Schuckenbrock said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.
Perhaps that’s why Dell was slow to get into a space dominated early on by aggressive Taiwanese upstarts like Asustek. Dell, the once-preminent U.S. personal computer manufacturer, which has steadily given away market share to rivals from Hewlett Packard to Lenovo, unveiled its first netbook only in September.
AT&T: Beer keg, please phone home
Next time a bartender draws a long, cool German brew on tap at your favorite U.S. bar, you might be sipping beer that made a mobile phone call along the way.
At the Reuters Technology Summit in New York, AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega, who heads its wireless division, described a firm that has fitted its beer with mobile devices.
“We had a customer in Germany that wanted us — and we have found a way — to track their beer kegs as they were shipped,” said de la Vega. He said the wireless devices track how cold the keg is, whether it was properly pressurized and its location.
