[Marketing] Business Week on Dell Latitude 2100 education netbook

[Sean DALY]

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/05/dell_takes_netb.html

A short article by someone who understood Dell's key differentiators:

* the blinky LED bar in the cover, software-configurable (but no info
yet on how)
* the services, especially preloaded custom image, to reduce school
admin workload.

Dell is not "announcing" the price of the 24-bay cart
charger/switch... because it is said to be nearly US $4000. Clearly,
their business model is to scrape profit in the notoriously
unprofitable netbook sector by:

* making the base price of the netbook fairly low ($369), but with
useful options like 802.11n, touchscreen, webcam etc. price climbs
quickly to > US $500

* making a very tidy profit on the charger bay, which every school
admin will want to have... for every classroom.


The Dell service proposal of custom preloaded images - so school
admins are freed from lengthy individual setp - is another
differentiator which most netbook vendors (in the developed countries
at least) will have difficulty matching.

Sean