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Enderle's Ferrari Laptop
deminisma writes "Hilarity abounds as 'analyst' Rob Enderle gushes over his new Ferrari/Acer laptop. The laptop apparently even plays the sound of a car revving up while booting, which Enderle seems to think is all the rage at meetings."
This laptop doesn't seem like it is that good aside from the paint job. IMHO, the Ferrari products that carried the Ferrari name, but were manufactured by someone else just seem tacky and sucky. This joins the Ferrari mountain bike in my mind as a sucky marketing ploy. Fortunately, the Article mentions how this is mainly designed to appeal to PHB's who think that because a company is good (or arguably the best) at making cars, the laptop bearing their name is good, or arguably the best.
why the hell are you booting in a meeting? it should already be up and ready to go.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Am I the only one to ask "What's the point?"? It's very pretty 'n' all, but why bother when you can put your money towards the laptop itself rather than an industrial strength coat of paint. Not to mention the fact that you're paying for the brand too. Maybe it's nice to have it as a status symbol, but that's all it is. And yes, I did RTFA.
Just like John Katz or Al Gore, this Bob Enderle dude seems to erupt with totally unresearched, poorly reported and over-exaggerated stuff that seems todraw everyone's attention.
How does he get to be on eWeek and Slashdot and what not with below average write-ups suitable for personal blog? Is the legend about gay mafia true?
Based on his columns and viewpoints, I've always thought of Enderle as a poser, at best. This just cements that impression.
--rc
This notebook is just a POS Acer with Ferrari's name stamped on it. He goes on about it's poor battery life but how you have to comprimise for a high proformance machine. This is nothing spectacluar, this is AMD's mobile chip, which I've heard runs pretty hot and sucks the juice down. This machine looks very thick, and is 7lbs, not very light.
Just because this thing has a car companies logo on it and is painted steal me red, doesn't mean it's a good machine.
-Aaron Mitti
Yes, the Ferrari name has cachet, but if given the choice, I'll take a quality product from a company that focuses on the market and the users. It doesn't mean cross-branding can't work, but this seems like an odd pairing.
CC
They had a custom AMD processor made and all that stuff
I don't think so. Do you have ANY idea how much it costs to bring a new CPU to market? WAY more than Acer could afford, even with Ferrari as a backer. It's a standard AMD mobile chip (not even 64 bit). Don't get me wrong, it's pretty, but not much else.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
I'm not sure how "new" your talking about, but Apple stoped using titanium for their powerbooks because of poor wireless reception issues.
As a (real) Ferrari owner, I can only shake my head in puzzlement when every other red-blooded American male in my office drives to work alone in a 5,000-pound SUV that gets worse gas mileage than my 512TR... and people say I have a small penis.
'Splain?
Exactly. It's not about whether or not Ferrari can build a better lap-top than ACER or Dell or Apple or whoever, but rather cross branding, and individualization. The linux community is a great environment for individualization of technology, so the extension of this concept into hardware seems like an appropriate /. story to me!
I'd love to see one of those Toughbooks with a "Jeep" brand on it. I'd think 2ce about getting one because I drive a jeep.
If it's just about function, then why would people ever buy cheques that have a sailboat on them, or different kind of anything? The choice of having a Ferrari laptop will hopefully only be the beginning. Notice things like mini-iPods being offered in several colours, cell phone covers etc, design is important, and people are buying.
So is it such a slow news day that there's literally nothing to post but personal insults? I mean really, that's what this is. There's no "news for nerds" here, no "stuff that matters". Just a story about a guy who's clueless about his personal laptop. Big deal. "Ha ha! Look at this dork with his goofy thing that he has!" Sheesh. Different people like different things, not everybody is an Apple lover, and not everybody has good taste; get over it. This is certainly not front page news.
The laptop (as silly as it is) is not about the cars that Ferrari sells to the public, it is about their race cars! (And their Formula One cars are arguably the best out there) Most slashdotters being American proabbly don't realise that Ferrari is one of the biggest sports franchises on the planet. Manchester United is likely the only bigger name in worldwide sports than Ferrari.
F1 is second only to the World Cup and the Olympics in global TV audience. So the tie in is not snob appeal for the expensive road cars (BTW Ferrari only started making and selling cars to the general public to pay for their racing) This is more like having a New York Yankees or Chicago Bulls branded lap top than having a Nissan branded laptop.
Still a silly idea IMO, but its a different silly idea than the one everyone is poking fun at!