Outside the Lines

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan and I debate whether Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader is the next iPhone.

That is a big stretch, especially given the way the iPhone has turned the smartphone business on its head, at least from a product design standpoint. The Kindle is a nice product, and Amazon could bring music, video, and other kinds of content to the device, but it's doesn't have the Steve Jobs touch.

In addition, all the talk about Kindle's skyrocketing sales doesn't ring true. If the Kindle were on such a hot streak, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos would be talking up the sales numbers. All I know is that I keep getting huge Kindle ads in my face every time I go to Amazon.

After a few hundred times, Amazon should figure out that I am not interested in the Kindle and should show me something that I might actually buy based on my history and the recommendation engine. That would certainly be a more lucrative way to use the front door advertising space.

In the podcast, we also discuss Best Buy becoming an iPhone distributor (good for both companies and not for Wal-Mart) and Gartner's endorsement of the iPhone as enterprise-ready. In addition, we note Dell's latest refresh of its Latitude laptops, including a quick-start feature and a battery that can give up to 19 hours of juice.

On this week's EIC Squared podcast ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss Dell's ambitions to get into the crowded music player industry, Microsoft's interesting focus group with Vista and how the broadband wars are shaking out.

Dell might make another attempt at bringing a music player to market. With DRM unraveling, Dell doesn't need to beat iTunes, just offer a relatively cool and cost effective listening device that accesses multiple music services via Wi-Fi. Microsoft has a perception problem with it comes to Vista. That is well known, but it may not be because the operating system is lacking. Microsoft conducted focus groups for an operating system called Mojave (which was really Vista) for non-Vista users. Turns out the focus group overwhelmingly liked Mojave, which makes you wonder what caused Vista to have so many detractors at its inception in the market.

Larry offers his take on the battles among Comcast, Verizon and AT&T to win over each others' customers. With three major players, they can compete and divide up the spoils amongst themselves...like the oil companies.

In this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the two big stories of the week--Yahoo hooking up with Google and the introduction Apple's 3G iPhone launch.

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the latest moves in carving up the wireless world as Verizon Wireless announced plans to acquire Alltel for $28.1 billion. It won't be long before the U.S. wireless industry shakes out into AT&T, Verizon, and a Sprint/T-Mobile merger. We also discuss the latest news in the travails of Yahoo as it tries to keep Carl Icahn from taking over the board.

Plus, we speculate about the Steve Jobs' keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday.

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the celebrity interviews at the D6 conference, hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Unfortunately, I called in from the San Diego airport United Airlines gate area, so you'll hear crying children and the ticker taker coaxing me to get on the plane. Larry gives the lowdown on Dell's earnings and the most recent security issues, patches from Apple, and the Comcast hack.

Lenovo has taken a page straight from Apple's playbook. The parody of the Macbook Air commercial promoting the ThinkPad X300 ultramobile PC has an effect similar to Apple's series of ads with John Hodgman and Justin Long that put down Windows.

It's not what you would expect from the Chinese company that acquired IBM's PC business, but it works. The ad is getting passed around like candy, and it is really funny and points out the weakness of the Macbook Air. (It lacks some ports and an optical drive.) Expect the Macbook Air crowd to strike back with a parody of its own.

Check out our reviews of the pricey X300 and the sleek Macbook Air.

Google still rules Millward Brown Optimor's annual BrandZ top 100 list, which annoints the world's most powerful brands based on financial performance and a global consumer-opinion survey.

Technology-related companies did especially well, taking more than one-third of the top 30 spots.

No. 7 Apple was a big mover, increasing its brand value by 123 percent, and BlackBerry (from Research In Motion) increased 390 percent, positioned at No. 51. The staid IBM's brand value increased 65 percent, and Amazon.com, at No. 61, was up 93 percent.

On the downside, No. 62 Yahoo took a 13 percent brand value hit. Microsoft, at No. 3, was up 29 percent, and No. 1 Google increased its brand value 30 percent year-over-year.

It's not clear whether hooking up with Microsoft will help burnish Yahoo's declining brand value as calculated by Millward Brown, but we may find out soon.

In this week's EIC Squared podcast Larry Dignan and I discuss Google's uplifting quarter, the mysterious Mac clone, and Microsoft's hybrid software strategy.

Google made the market move, with a stellar quarter, which should give Microsoft even more incentive to bring Yahoo into its camp. With quarterly earnings season in full swing, Larry notes that international sales and a weak dollar are helping out U.S. technology companies.

The Mac clone from Florida-based Psystar continues to be shrouded in mystery. The site has been down and the company isn't processing orders, but it says it will be back. Who knows? Check out the ZDNet and CNET News.com coverage.

We also talk about Microsoft's Albany, a subscription service that combines the consumer version of Office with its OneCare security suite. The company is also offering an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in a few countries, and next week plans to launch its Live Mesh service, which will allow users to share data across all of their devices. Microsoft is finally starting to reveal how its hybrid, software-plus-services strategy will play out.

The May issue of Popular Mechanics includes a comparative review, with extensive benchmarks, of Macs and PCs.

The verdict turned out to be somewhat in line with Apple's exaggerated commercials--the PC is slower (running Vista, compared to Apple's Leopard operating system) and less easy to use, and it doesn't have a clear cost advantage. Both are running Intel, so that's always good news for the chipmaker.

Following is the Popular Mechanics verdict:

Mac: In both the laptop and desktop showdowns, Apple's computers were the winners. Oddly, the big difference didn't come in our user ratings, where we expected the famously friendly Mac interface to shine.

Our respondents liked the look and feel of both operating systems but had a slight preference toward OS X. In our speed trials, however, Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown, and program launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple's platform-switching Boot Camp software--and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

PC: Simply put, Vista proved to be a more sluggish operating system than Leopard. Our PCs installed some software faster, but in general, they were slower in our time trials. Plus, both PCs showed weaker performance on third-party benchmarks than the Macs.

Our biggest surprise, however, was that PCs were not the relative bargains we expected them to be. The Asus M51sr costs the same as a MacBook, while the Gateway One actually costs $300 more than an iMac. That means that for the price of the Gateway, you could buy an iMac, boost its hard drive to match the Gateway's, purchase a copy of Vista to boot--and still save $100.