We know, we know: shame on us. Look, we admit it, okay? We let our guard down, and analyst Rob Enderle said something really stupid a couple of weeks ago and we totally missed it. What can we say? We just got so used to his usual level of stupidity, which, you have to grant, is pretty darn consistent over time. So we took our eyes off him for a second or two (okay, two million-- but no more than that, we swear) and we remained blissfully unaware of his lyrical prose poem about the love of his life: his Acer-brand Wintel laptop.

We can hear you from here: "Love? A Wintel laptop? Surely you jest." Oh, but don't scoff, true believers, because this isn't just any Wintel: it's a Wintel with the Ferrari logo on it. It's "the only notebook in the world to sport the patented Ferrari-Red colour." It has, and we quote, a "classy strip of grey" bordering the keyboard. It is, in short, the middle-aged man's portable equivalent of the Hot Wheels PC from about half a decade back-- and Enderle's drooling all over it. As faithful viewer Kalel666 pointed out, the man actually devoted an entire article to gushing over it like it's the best thing since Viagra. (Little blue pill, shiny red laptop: anyone want to bet on the overlap between customer demographics?)

Says Rob, "When I walk into a room with this baby, even the Apple users join the throngs of admirers." Hrm, well, it's possible, we suppose. But we can't help wondering if maybe Rob, wearing his Ferrari-colored Spectacles O' Luv, might be seeing admiration where there is, in reality, only pity and the sort of fascination that draws eyes toward a car wreck. Or maybe people are just staring in utter disbelief: "One impressive piece of execution is that when you fire the machine up it plays a WAV file of a Ferrari race car revving its engine. That alone is worth the relatively low $1,899 price of admission."

Oy, vey... Rob Enderle has officially become Milhouse's dad: "I sleep in a race car! Do you?" Gee, Rob, the early Power Macs made a car sound at startup, too-- only it was a car crash, and it only happened when something was seriously wrong with the hardware. That should be a clue. Then again, if you like, we can spray-paint a malfunctioning 6100 bright red, stick a little horsey logo on it, and sell it to you for a mere $1,999. Let us know.

That said, we have to admit that it's sort of refreshing seeing a very visible Apple-hostile analyst bemoaning a Wintel's lackluster processing power and then saying "I take one look at the machine's lustrous coat, and somehow everything else seems trivial." So Rob's placing a computer's looks ahead of its performance? Geez, between that and his cult-like unquestioning devotion to what is, ultimately, "just a computer" (how many times have we Mac fans heard that?), he's practically a Mac user already! And since we all know why he really likes having that big, red Ferrari in his lap (his bio reveals a twenty-year career, greying temples, and a receding hairline; he's practically the midlife crisis poster boy), we'll just remind him that the screen in his love machine is only a 15-inch model. Maybe it's time to graduate to the 17-inch PowerBook before the guys start laughing at him in the health club locker room...