"Michael Dell is out as CEO!" shouted Katie (AtAT's Resident Fact-Checker and Goddess of Minutiae) from the next room, at which point we knew immediately that Dell's resignation would be the single most-suggested plot point in AtAT's history. After all, this is Mike Dell we're talking about, here: the plot thread of his increasingly unhinged obsession with copying Steve Jobs's every move has fueled approximately 38% of all AtAT scenes ever produced. Clearly we were headed for Inbox Meltdown on this one.

As it turned out, however, Dell going bye-bye was not the most-suggested plot point ever, nor was it even the most-suggested plot point of the day. (The latter honor goes to the battery life-- and we use the term "life" very loosely, here-- of the mammoth 16ish-pound Acer Aspire 1710 Wintel notebook we discussed yesterday: "up to 1.0 hour life depending on configuration and usage," as pointed out by faithful viewer flyingcactus and enough others to qualify as a national sports league.)

Apparently people don't think Dell leaving his CEO post is actually all that big a deal, and in a general sense, they're right; as noted by CNN/Money in an article first pointed out by faithful viewer drow, ol' Mikey remains the chairman of the board to think about "big picture" stuff and merely yields his CEOship to Dell's president Kevin Rollins, who will take over the nuts and bolts of running the company. Since that's reportedly what both guys really do already, there's no real change other than a shuffle of titles.

But what people seem to be neglecting is, how does this change affect us, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff? (Because as you all know, we're all that matters.) With Mike out of the spotlight we'll have far fewer opportunities to play up the progression of his compulsive Steve-emulation. And indeed, is it possible that Mike's been cured? After all, Steve is a notorious micromanager, and here we have Mike giving up the day-to-day running of his company to think profound thoughts about "direction" and "purpose." Hey, waitaminnit-- do you suppose now he's copying Bill Gates?

Naaaahhh.

We can only wait and see what the future holds; for all we know, Mike ditched his CEO position expressly to gain more time to stalk Steve Jobs, because he's clearly been slacking on that whole thing lately. And regardless, on the plus side, this move thrusts Kevin Rollins into a far more public position, and who knows? We struck drama gold when Bill Gates handed his CEOship over to Steve "Leadership Through Grave Embarrassment" Ballmer. For all we know, Rollins is an even bigger basket case than Mike Dell was. Fingers crossed, people!