Of course, here at Channel Maven Central, we're interested in all things channel, and we're generally interested in what happens when one behemoth slouches into the space previously dominated by another.   For instance, we'd buy tickets to watch Southwest Airlines face off with American Airlines on the New York-London route.  (Note to Gerard Arpey:  ISP-STN maps out within the range of a 737-900ER.)  So we noted with interest the survey done by CRN last month regarding which vendors would suffer when Dell enters the channel.  Predictably, HP and Toshiba turned up at the top of the list.  At least one VAR pointed out that a differentiator for Dell is that its computers lack the pre-installed software that other vendors load up on their computers.  (Walt Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's indefatigable defender of the people's right to have access to technology that's actually useful, refers to that software a bit differently.)  Just as predictably, the CRN survey results seem to have focused on Dell's pricing as being quite important to the channel, but until Dell breaks open a real R&D budget, pricing will continue to be about the most interesting part of Dell's value proposition. 
With regard to Dell's town-hall meetings, designed to curry favor with SMB buyers, when we think of town-hall meetings, our thoughts turn to Norman Rockwell, Vermont, and plain-spoken earnest tillers of the soil wearing plaid flannel jackets.  We don't immediately think of Michael Dell fronting an academic hour at the Reuters building in Manhattan featuring product announcements and questions posed by Second Lifers.  But who are we to impose classical values on a 21st-century dynamic?  What's important is that Dell is reaching out.  So when, in the wake of this activity, we hear Adrian Jones, the redoubtable head of HP's Solutions Partner Organization for the Americas, assert that he's getting plenty of rest, we wonder, a la Bill Murray, "Quien es mas macho, Adrian o Michael?"  We'll continue to watch that space, but in the meantime, our answer to that question is, as always, "Lloyd Bridges es mas macho."