Is There A Dell In Your Future?

white box wake up Dell's competitors Annual Report Card trounced the competition

CRN's Heather Clancy is sceptical Dell can make much progress with white-box solution providers, though she does allow, "many will listen to Dell's white-box pitch, no matter how much it galls them to admit it." But her colleague Steve Burke sees it a little differently, "my bet is Dell has a winner here," he writes.

Meanwhile, readers were weighing in, many responding to our interview with Dell's Frank Muehleman, with comments ranging from "I see my customers lining up to buy Dell equipment" to "Dell is undoubtably the cheapest and most arrogant company I have ever dealt with."

VARBusiness' Jeff Schwartz uncovers one unsettled issue: can solution providers even tell customers their computer is made by Dell? Depends who you ask. This story that is just getting started.

The Penguin and the Apple

There's no doubt people are passionate about the Linux and Mac OS operating systems, even on the server side. Linux, according to a Dataquest report, is the fastest growing server operating system. Mac's OS X is attracting new fans as a server OS as well, including database giant Oracle, who released OS X development products this week. Meanwhile, Mac OS fans, many prompted by a link on the Macsurfer web site, swamped CRN's home page quick poll Thursday on whether Mac represented a valid alternative to Windows-based corporate PCs. Guess what they said?

Best of the Week

Follow the ups and downs of Linux vendor Caldera, which this week renamed itself The SCO Group, in light of the fact that most of their revenue is derived through the sale of traditional Unix software it aquired from the old Santa Cruz Operation.

VARBusiness Rob Wright delivers an analysis twofer: a look at Microsoft's progress evangelizing .Net, and an analysis of how each of HP's product divisions are faring in the newly merged HP/Compaq.

Rich Cirillo looks at Tech Data's newest business tools for solution providers, while CRN's Paula Rooney looks at Microsoft's new tools for Visual Studio.net developers.

And speaking of .Net, you'll find it's just one of the next-generation technologies covered in our new Web Services news center.