Gawker: valleywag, acer

Coleman out as Gateway CEO

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:58:05 EST

Ed Coleman will leave his post as CEO of Acer subsidiary Gateway at the end of January, according to reports. Coleman's departure paves the way for integrating Gateway with its new Taiwanese parent, which completed its $710 million Gateway acquisition in October. President of Acer Pan America Rudi Schmidleithner will assume Coleman's responsibilities. But we expect ruthless Acer chairman J. T. Wang to keep calling the shots back in Taiwan.

Acer boss turns the PC business into a knife fight

Owen Thomas — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 12:59:41 EDT

J.T. Wang, the chairman of Acer, looks like such a nice guy. But appearances are deceiving. The Taiwanese businessman is determined to keep his PC maker from becoming an also-ran. His company just announced plans to buy Gateway, the once-famed PC seller bruised by competition with Dell and Hewlett-Packard, for $710 million. The deal cuts at Chinese archrival Lenovo twice — first, by vaulting Acer past Lenovo into third place for PC market share. Second, by disrupting Lenovo's plans to buy Packard Bell, a fading PC brand that's still strong in Europe. Gateway, from a past acquisition, got rights of first refusal on any deal to buy Packard Bell — and Acer now plans to exercise those rights. Let's see — for a mere $710 million, Wang gets bragging rights, a bigger share of the vital U.S. market, and a way to bloody a rival's nose. Sounds cheap to me.

Microsoft's Vista SP1 fixes not out until 2009?

Owen Thomas — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:04:05 EDT

The tip, incredible. The source, ironclad. Microsoft has apparently told executives at one of the world's largest PC makers not to expect a formal release of Windows Vista SP1 — the first major set of upgrades and bug fixes to its Vista operating system — until 2009 at the earliest. That explains why Microsoft was so desperate to correct erroneous reports, spread by a careless team of developers at Microsoft, that a beta version of SP1 would be out last week. Microsoft now says it "currently anticipates" a beta of SP1 later this year. Anticipations, of course, are not always met. Especially if you're a sluggish beast like Microsoft, with thousands of developers to keep in train on a release. And this delay would have wide aftershocks.

The rumored delay in SP1, of course, means that it would be impossible for Microsoft to deliver its next version of Windows by 2010, as Windows watcher Mary Jo Foley believes. At ZDNet, David Berlind asks the smart question: Will any future version of Windows matter, as developers and users shift to the Web? Any delays in SP1, of course, make subsequent releases less and less relevant.

The delays in Vista, and its lack of must-have features, have already infuriated Microsoft's most important partners, the PC makers who preinstall most copies of Windows sold. Gianfranco Lanci, CEO of Acer, the fourth-largest PC maker, has broken the code of silence, telling the FT Deutschland newspaper that "the entire industry is disappointed by Vista." Historically, new releases of Windows have provided a boost to PC sales. Not so with Vista, Lanci contends.

And if PC makers have to wait two years for SP1, and more than that for the next version of Windows? Apple's marketers will have a field day. And the notion of a mass-market Linux PC, once ludicrous, will look more and more plausible.