Quick, what's the best way to score a Lifetime Achievement Award from PC Magazine for your contribution to the computer industry? Well, evidently your best bet is to crank out cheap and boring systems-as-commodities and avoid original product innovation like the plague, because as faithful viewer Bill Moore points out, that dubious honor has just been awarded to none other than Captain Beige himself, Michael Dell. (Gee, and when we loaded the page, we get a Dell banner ad at the top. Quelle surprise.)

Indeed, if you want to experience a serious Twilight Zone moment, just check out the AnchorDesk article that faithful viewer Keith Isley dug up, which sings the praises of Mike Dell's exceptional ability to create products as drab and boring as pocket lint. Yes, the author waxes rhapsodic about how boring computers are a "good thing" because business purchasers equate "cool" with "risk," so boring equals safety. We're not saying he's wrong, because the enterprise computer purchasers we've encountered, at least, would paint themselves beige if they thought it would make fewer people notice them. They can be a skittish lot, to be sure-- and Mike Dell is right there to sell them build-to-order boxes as aesthetically vacant as possible. He's truly the king of bland, and apparently that's the secret of his success.

In fact, when told that one of his company's new laptops was "snazzy enough to be a Mac," Mike reportedly "recoiled a bit and said something to the effect of, 'Well, I guess that's a compliment.'" Sure, it comes off as avoidance and petty jealousy, but we really think the poor guy meant it. After all, Dell's genius (or, perhaps, his sickness) consists of ripping off Apple innovations as quickly as possible and then repackaging them into the dullest guises imaginable, so you just have to assume that once the interview was over, Mr. Dell sent that "snazzy" laptop back down to the Anti-Design department with orders that it be desnazzified at least four full style points.

We're starting to think that the fruits of his psychosis come from a deep-seated need to take Apple's beautiful creations and recreate them as stylistic negatives, devoid of any aesthetic appeal whatsoever. (It just so happens that Big Business loves that sort of junk-- hence, Dell's accidental success.) Or we could be reading too much into it, and the guy's just a yutz with no sense of taste and a head for snapping together cheap components. But hey, we're just naturally charitable over here...