I predict this won't be a huge success for Dell. I may well like pink, but as someone who built her own desktop system and runs her own website, I don't require a lot of hand-holding and soft-focus reassurance on tech issues. It's not just insulting, it's dumb.

Gateway offers a pink laptop, too--this kind of idiocy by Dell is enough to make me look elsewhere whenever I want to purchase an out-of-the-box system.

The video card on mine is a piece of shit, and I had to install new drivers just to play Portal. Gaming machine? Give me a break.

Oh yeah, and it did come in pink, or didn't you notice?

Technology is HARD! *wide eyes*

The sales pitch to the average computer user is already dumbed down to appeal to techno-morons, and now they had to go make it floral-patterned and diet-friendly? Will my netbook tell me when I need to vacuum and when I need a relaxing scented bath?

Barf. If you can't inform yourself and shop for a computer like a grownup, you don't deserve a computer.

...and a software engineer, so I'm not the target demographic. I did click through the Della site to look around. Once you get to the checkout phase, it seems to be the typical Dell checkout procedure. The various options aren't really put into any context that would be useful for a non-techie. Ex: how much is 30 gigabytes? Is that a lot? Apple rarely talks about gigabytes. Rather, they talk about what you can do with it. "Store 10,000 songs!" That is meaningful to a non-techie. It seems like the biggest feature of the Della site is that it can show women how to color-coordinate their laptop with their purse.

Computers are tools. Users have many demands and needs from these tools, and that is why they can be so complex. Figure out what you want to do with your computer (if you don't know, why are you buying one?), do some research, and then buy.

The whole notion that women need a separate shopping site for computers is such massive misjudgment as to be uncomprehensible. Who the hell does their marketing? "Mad Men"?

If this is what Dell really thinks of women, I've bought my last Dell. I'm sure Mac will be happy to have my business, or HP, or any other purveyor of terabytes and RAM.

I may not be the brightest tech tool in the shed, but I know when someone is being condescending.

Assholes.

Buy a Mac. Live happily.

I'm sure someone in a women's studies department has already done this dissertation, but from the time I was a little kid reading my parents' computer magazines, the recipe thing has irritated the heck out of me.

Men want to calculate important spreadsheets. Kids want to play games. And women? Hmmm, I don't know. OH! Women will love the recipes! Originally, I guess you would have had to type in all the recipes from the plastic box of cards so you could pull them up in your kitchen terminal, but now you just need the Internet so you can get all the wonderful recipes.

The tasty, tasty irony? All this recipe promise through the ages and recipe sites are still pathetic and poorly designed.

If the objective is to present a "dumbed down" e-commerce site for technological hand-holding, they should instead focus on our parents!

Gordon Moore once admitted that the reason he didn't invent the PC is because he asked his wife if she'd want to put her recipes on a computer in the kitchen and she said no.

who thinks that a laptop being covered with "glitter and ponies and darling woodland elves" is equally as nauseating as Dell's marketing focus on recipes and fashion? Talk about ugh.

Try out joyofbaking.com. Now THERE's an enticing recipe site.

OK, so women DO look up recipes on the internet. So do men. But if Dell thinks that's ALL we want to do, or know how to do, they'd be better off selling us cookbooks instead of netbooks.

Really, I mean, really! What the HECK are they thinking?

As a female who has worked at an IT Helpdesk and who has had to support/troubleshoot/fix and when all else fails cannibalize the pieces of crap called Dell laptops over the years, I would never consider buying one for myself. Sorry, can't do it. Not even if it was pink, with rainbows, sparkles, and gumdrops.....

That she doesn't even pretend to want to learn how to use for anything more than phone calls. It's just a fashion accessory. It replaced he last phone which was in fact, pink.

Are kind of redundant.

Simply put, if shoppers are motivated by pastels and yoga buddies, this site could be marketing genius. If shoppers are offended by the general tone of the site and it's "girls need a softer touch" marketing, then this site will be one more failure on the pile.

Making statements about "this site is too dopey" really just mean it's too dopey for you. Which is fine, and you can formulate your opinion of the site and Dell in general based upon their choices here.

But really, there is the possibility that a portion, perhaps a significant portion, of women will respond to a site like this, at which point, you are just highlighting your own foolishness to assume your tastes are universal.

I'm sure a wide number of tech savy women who have managed to navigate the world of computers for a while now will turn up their noses at the site, however they aren't it's target audience.

If the site comes off as written for women intimidated by machines, it's probably because it is written for women intimidated by machines. That you are not one of these women isn't really an issue, you can shop at the regular Dell site, or whatever site does speak to you as a computer buyer.

My last three computers have been Dells.

Maybe it's not women who need to be spoon-fed technology.

Maybe Dell's "prizewinning customer service" sucks, whether you get someone from Texas on the line and he starts out with "Kzin name, I'm Mr. Brown" or "you'll have the service I decide to give you" and goes on with "this isn't going to happen." Or the time a computer fan clogged and I said "it sounds like a dust-buster." (Silence from the guy on the phone.) "A leaf blower?" "Ma'am, this is TEXAS!"

OR you get a click, a pause, and you get (or got) someone in Chennai who ma'amed you to death but didn't understand you, interrupted you, or, when you showed signs of being difficult (gee, how'd ya guess?), had a bad connection.

I like the machines, but I was relieved to find a pay-by-phone helpline. I also tracked down their VAR in my area -- anything to circumvent the "prizewinning customer service."

I've owned computers since 1986, been on the internet since 1989, and am still baffled by the Lord High Witchdoctor culture. Not that I don't understand it, but that it is still tolerated.

I feel better now. Thank you.

Yes, I know. Buy a Mac. Let's stay out of theological questions, okay?