April 16, 1989

WAKE ME UP IN FRISCO: Somebody must still know how to get excited by this capital-I Industry that personal computing has become, but everyone I talked to (including usually gung-ho marketing managers) is to the point where it’s just a big “so what?”

Take this year’s Comdex Spring in Chicago. What do you do after you’ve seen your 95th millionth 33 megahertz PC clone? You start asking yourself big questions. F’instance: Who needs another 33 MHz PC clone? And: If faster is better, why aren’t 95 million 33MHz PC clones enough? So: Does Intel need to introduce another chip for everyone to build 95 million clones?

I’ve asked these questions of many attendees. “Now there’s a good question,” was the typical answer.
Sheldon Adelson, who organizes Comdex via the Interface Group when he’s not contributing to President Bush’s campaign coffers, had a chance to inject a little friendly vitriol into Chicago Comdex. For the first time ever, he invited Macintosh vendors to exhibit at the shows which until now have been overwhelmingly PC-oriented.

He called it MacDEX, which a friend of mine immediately dubbed MacDEATH. Instead of bringing the Mac vendors onto the main show floor, Adelson stuck them in a corner, miles away. Adding insult to injury, they also had a curtain around them. The 30 or so MacDEX attendees who actually found the enclosure fell on their knees in gratitude. And some actually had to pay extra to get in.

When asked about “the MacDEX situation,” Adelson said: “From little acorns come big oaks.” Yeah, Shel, but you gotta give ‘em a little water or put ‘em in the sun or sumpin’, huh?

“THREE FUNKY WORDS”: Marketing strategist Craig Settles got a big surprise last week. He thought he’d come up with a great teaser campaign for client FoundationWare of Cleveland. He sent out an unmarked envelope containing a bullet casing and note that said, “Who’s been shooting the readers of…?” Each note was hand addressed and bore the name of a different magazine in the blank — Byte Magazine, Computer & Software News, Personal Computing, and InfoWorld, among others.

A follow-up note bearing FoundationWare’s name went out a week later, but in some cases it was too late. Not knowing the first note was part of an marketing ploy, at least three of the magazines called the FBI, Postal Service and/or police.

Caught at the Comdex booth, Settles explained: FoundationWare’s product, Certus, keeps people from erasing their hard disks and otherwise shooting themselves in the foot. “I forgot to say “in the foot’ on the first note,” Settles said sheepishly. “Peter (Tippett, the company’s president) always talks about people shooting themselves in the foot and messing up their systems. By omitting three funky words, I created a major trauma that I’ve spent the last four days trying to repair. Every law enforcement agency in the country is after us.”

Yeah, come on, Settles. You just did it to get attention, right? He says no. “I don’t like to b-s the press,” he says. “So I saw it as a serious detriment. I have learned a great lesson.”

PROMOS NOT FROM HELL: Altos Computer Systems, introducing “the first multiuser 486″ computer, sent out Zappers — those little noisemakers you use in your car to pretend you vulcanized the jerk who just cut you off on Highway 101 — instead of bullet casings. The Zappers are finding more amusing applications than I’m sure the 486 machine will. One recipient, Jenny McCune of VAR Business magazine, is using hers to train her cat.

FROM THE NOTEBOOK: Erik Sandberg-Diment, the former New York Times columnist who quit writing his “Personal Computing” and “The Executive Computer” columns to trek his family across the Sahara Desert, says he’s starting a hardware/software company. He won’t say more, except that he’s got “plenty of money.” … Jim Cannavino, head of IBM’s Entry Systems Division, talked to small groups of journalists in private sessions during Comdex and pooh-poohed talk of a PC industry slowdown. Cannavino, who’s rumored to be the hot pistol at IBM these days, once again alluded to a multimedia home computer that Big Blue is supposed to be working on, which will include Digital Video Interactive and the 486 processor. Also, Gordon Eubanks, chairman of Symantec Corp. and a big IBM vendor, believes IBM is “on a roll” with its new campaign to win hearts and minds for OS/2 and Micro Channel Architecture.