Guess who won PC Week’s “Corporate Candor” award for consistently telling his customers the truth throughout 1998?
William Henry Gates III of Redmond, Wash.
GATES 2000
PRESIDENTIAL Y2K STEP?
This is the same billg@microsoft.com whose ducking and weaving under questioning reached new levels of obfuscation in a Washington courtroom last week when he was asked by a trust buster, “What non-Microsoft browsers were you concerned about in January of 1996?”
Gates:”I don’t know what you mean by concerned.”
Prosecutor: “What is it about the word concerned that you don’t understand?”
Gates: “I’m not sure what you meant by it.”
Is this guy Presidential material or what?
Depends on what you mean by is.
DECK THE WEB
WITH PLASTIC
Web surfers who still hesitate to use their credit cards on-line sit in the crosshairs of a move by Riverwood-based Discover Financial Services to establish www.discovercard.com, a highly card-friendly and secure site boasting mnerchandise from a tony elite including FAO Schwarz for toys, Eddie Bauer for outsdoorsey gimcracks and Hickory Farms for cheezy credit card cheer.
With a raft of 15 per cent discounts, cash rebates and other e-commerce ice breakers this Christmas shopping site should yield the plastic giant droves of newly minted Web buyers.
BINARY BEAUTY
LOOKERS ON-LINE
Cosmo girls and the ladies who read African-American centric Essence alike face, if you’ll pardon the expression, software from computer game giant SegaSoft that lets a lass import her own picture into software that then lets her try 300 coiffures, 20 hair colors, and 115 assessories including hats and shades plus a whole palette of cosmetics.
Both packages come with a deal from Kodak to get a photo of milady scanned in to the software and a promise of even more downloadable looks at www.virtualmakeover.com.
If you doubt that this is serious stuff, note that the software also allows a user to see how she’d look in any one of 50 bridal veils.
DIGITAL DOOR BUSTERS
BINARY BAIT
The coverage in trade journal Computer Retail Week was pretty negative, but the CompUSA chain is getting a lot of industry ink with a loss leader scheme that offers a $400 in-store rebate on a Packard Bell branded PC making for a $99 Cyrix MII-266 MHz computer.
The catch is a very big one indeed. The offer only covers a few selected stores and there is a limit of six machines per store.
If you swallow that bait, expect the switch to be a $2,500 Pentium II 450 Mhz monster.
