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If You Want to Have a Dumbed Down Webinar Invite the Moms

Last night I was invited to watch a webinar introducing Dell’s new touchscreen computer. I love my touchscreen computer for a million reasons, but after a year of daily use I have a lot of questions about touchscreen computing.

Dell invited four mom bloggers to be in attendance, and at least a dozen more to attend the password protected webinar (I was logged on and was one of 13 people).

Here’s the webinar.

At 20 minutes in Miss Lori asks Dell my question about screen size. Someone also asked my follow up question about “why is big too big?” My screen is 26 inches, and I’d like my next one to be a little bigger. I like having the ability to open windows side by side, and with a few more inches I could comfortably look at three windows side by side.

I asked repeatedly about the computer’s processor. Buying a computer without knowing what processor it is running is a like buying a car that has cylinders, but no one is really sure how many.

I don’t blame the women in the room for feeling like they have to be Dell cheerleaders. I understand feeling the pressure to like a product after you’ve been treated kindly by a company. If I was in the room I’d also feel excited about the “prettiness” of the computer as well. I really and truly get that part of being the guest of a brand.

The presenter did mention the kid in the dorm room quite a few times. I love the idea of a PC/TV for young adults who don’t necessarily have room for two devices, but keep in mind that they’ll probably also need (at a minimum) a netbook to take to classes as well.

I had two takeaways from the webcast: Dell has a nice new User Interface, and Dell has a touchscreen.

A MacBook will be smaller (a full ten inches smaller), but only $50 more, and where the Inspiron One has a AMD Athlon™ II X4 610E (2.3GHz/2MB cache), the Macbook has a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache.

There is no bluetooth on this system. For many folks that’s a deal breaker.

It is pretty. Pretty counts in a home office. I’ll be the first to tell  you that, but much like my cars, I want my computers fast, fun and safe.

It’s entirely possible that the Insprion One is a fabulous computer, and a great solution, it’s just as likely that it’s an over-sized netbook and a real piece of junk. Apparently I’m going to have to wait for Dell to do a webinar for the men if I want to get any real information.

Which is just embarrassing for everyone.

7 thoughts on “If You Want to Have a Dumbed Down Webinar Invite the Moms”

  1. Unfortunately bad webinars aren’t limited to moms. I have sat through more than a few in which they never addressed the key issues or concerns. Too many people treat it as a PR tool but never recognize that it should also be tied into marketing/sales.

  2. I’m confused – I’m nine minutes in and he’s showing how to get photos from Facebook into a folder and well he mentions hi-res photos. I thought Facebook automatically condensed photos to be WEB resolution not hi-res. I know when I get photos off of Facebook to put into family albums it will not print as they are low res.

    Interesting….

    I love seeing MissLori sitting there smiling with her PBS smile. She’s so cute!

    I agree with the “big is too big” sorry but 23″ is just too small the 27″ iMac is the perfect size (for me anyway!)

    On a side note – I don’t think you HAVE to suck face with a company if you honestly feel that their product is smoke up the rear. I have a few favorite companies that I will promote until they go under but if they come out with a product that sucks royal yak balls I will tell them exactly how I feel their quality is slacking.

    Just because they may or may not have paid to send me to some factory tour does not mean I have to “smile and nod.”

    Personally I don’t see anything special about this new Dell – then again I openly am a Apple girl and I have hatted Dell products for years.

  3. Okay… don’t get me wrong. I love my Dell folks. I can’t really drag myself through this. If you feel like you need to explain what content is? Don’t use acronyms like “UI” and “Q1” and “key pillars”.
    Product demos belong at CES or the brick & mortar store.

    And when did Dell get so heavily in bed with Facebook? The whole photo thing came across as an advertisement for Facebook’s new hi-res photo options.

    I love Lori too – but I’m not sitting through an hour long product demo with women on couches. That wasn’t a webinar, it was a commercial. Ick.

    I’m with you on the “give me big for screens that stay put”… but I don’t really need the whole touchscreen functionality at a desktop station. I like it on my mobile devices and iPad because I’m not going to schlep a mouse around all the time. But I fail to see why I wouldn’t want the granular control a mouse or digital pen gives me when I’m not out and about.

    I love some of Dell’s products. But that was definitely NOT the way to try and sell me on it. It made it sound like “the big shiny computer that you get if you don’t really understand the Internet, but like Facebook, pictures and music!! Yay!” Product demos: something that doesn’t seem to appeal when combined with an “ooh look! You could touch it if you weren’t stuck over there on the couches!” concept.

    I’m missing where Dell’s research told them that Moms were too stupid to want to know specs? Or is this the “cupholder theory” of computer hardware?

    (edit: I really hate accidentally replying in the Facebook section when I meant to reply in the comments. Oh wait… maybe I do need a ‘shiny’ computer!)

  4. I teetered between fine and bemused ’til I saw the “I love Dell!” scrawled on the Touchscreen. Adorable? Sure. Yet somehow unsettling too. Anyway, the underlying, “don’t you worry your pretty little head” — about processors, etc. — reminded me tangentially of Tom Thwaite’s “Toaster Project.” (http://bit.ly/icszDO) He realized that we how far we’ve traveled from the days when we could re-create our own technology (stone axes, etc.); he determined to try to build a toaster — from scratch. Mining the materials, etc. It’s a great little lesson. I’ll see if I can find the TED talk where he describes technologists’ reactions to his endeavor — sort of like DELL’s to Moms, mayhap?

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