Dell XT Discussions, Review

I tried to reason through the pricing of Dell's XT tablet PC (pretty diagrams and all) a few weeks ago and, earlier today, Loren Heiny posted an blog entry in which he gives Dell some advice on what to do next. While I love the suggestions that he's made [1], the things he's mentioned -- SSD, WiFi or EVDO, and Windows Live Writer -- don't add any real value to this tablet as far as corporate tablet PC users are concerned. This is because (a) corporate users don't need SSDs; (b) if they needed mobile Internet connectivity, they either already have it or they'll go with whatever the rest of the company is using; and (c) bundling Live Writer, while really cool, is probably not all that valuable to corporations or corporate users.

Still, his overall point is valid: if it wants to seriously target non-corporate users, Dell should give more value for the amount that it's charging for the XT -- whether that's through bundling more into the system, as Heiny suggested, or by simply lowering the price.

By the way, the first reviews of the XT are starting to come in. The most comprehensive, so far, comes from Nathan Novak. His review is spread over four blog posts, by the way, all of which are linked from his final article.

[1] Particularly "Make an online/blogger special unit that people will love, blog about, chat up, and recommend." :)