Dell launches Della site, for the ladies
Dell's Della range is being targeted solely at women, with a focus on simplicity and multi-functionality.
The Della site is heavily pushing Dell's standard Inspiron Mini 10 range of netbooks, claiming that it's so small it'll fit in most ladies' purses and still connect to the internet effortlessly, for instant messaging and whatnot.
Dell's Della campaign doesn't seem to offer any new hardware or products, but the site does come with a load of other new content, such as simple technology tips and sections entitled 'Giving' and 'Featured Artist'.
The tech tips on offer detail how ladies might want to use the Inspiron Mini 10 netbook to search for online recipes, stay in touch with friends through email and track your diet, including calorie intake and carbs. Y'know - all those things that men don't ever do. The 'Giving' section guides users on how to recycle their technology or give it away to charity, while the 'Featured Artist' section is a short case study on Robyn Moren, author of Practically Posh: The Smart Girls Guide to a Glam Life. Wow.
The Della website also offers a catalogue of different PC accessories that you can use alongside your shiny new PC, but why take our word for it? You can check out the official Della website here, assuming you have the right chromosomes of course.
Are you a lady who uses a PC, or do you just like to pretend when you're playing games online? Let us know in the forums.
Thanks to b5k for tipping us off to this.
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26 Comments
Discuss in the forums Reply+1 Isn't society meant to be trying to move away from sexism?
As Sarah Haskins says 'I am just a lady, with a simple lady mind.'.
Sorry Dell, Fail!
Surely Dell would also have to create separate sections for men, transexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals, relix and those of any other sexual preference in order to appease the PC brigade and dispel fears of sexism?
smc8788, I would love to be able to buy an L:GBTQell!
equal society my rear end. lol
Could they be any more condescending with it?
yeah.... Dell. Fail!
and about the sexist side, nobody is keeping me as a man from surfing on that site, and nobody is keeping me from buying something there... nobody is blaming dell for having an XPS site for another subgroup in this world's population: the gamers.
EDIT: only the name is a real fail. here in Belgium, it is a typical cow name.
Oh ya, because most guys don't do EXACTLY the same thing (ie pick a laptop based on looks). The only difference between a guy and a girl when choosing a laptop is the salesperson takes a man's intelligence seriously and will explain the difference between two computers for a guy.
I happen to LIKE searching through zillions of different models and configurations.
I've just spent the past week going from store to store looking for parts for my new computer, and every time, I've had some salesman try to steer me away from the components, explaining to my small minded self that those aren't whole computers and that I want to be looking elsewhere (without, mind you, asking me what I'm looking for first). I'll never get tired of their expressions when I ask them if they have any Radeon 4890 video cards in stock. Is it really that shocking that a woman knows more about computers than they do?
I once had a job as an IT assistant at a school, and you know what I found? Girls would often encounter a problem, and when I showed them how to fix it, they'd learn from me and fix it themselves the next time. Guys, in the other hand, seemed to often have trouble with the idea of learning from a girl, and as a result paid no attention to me when I was fixing their problem and never learned a thing. I'd keep getting called back by the same guys over and over for the same problems.
So while non-tech savvy people (not just women) are often not interested in learning the subtle nuances of computer configuration, they usually do like to learn a little bit about the machine they're buying and the Della website does absolutely nothing to help them make an informed decision concerning which laptop is best for them.
sorry but this is the dumbest thing I've heard all day
Looks to me like Dells marketing team have done pretty well!
If they want to go into the details, even just a little say, picking a bigger monitor/hdd then they can. I really think most non-tech savvy already see Dell as the friendly option. You pay what you can for the type of PC and they deliver it pre-built and ready to go. You can pay for an extended warranty to let the tech savvy types at Dell (arguable, but go with me on this) fix it when it's broken.
Incidentally does this mean the guys get a website called 'Dellroy' or whatever?
I think that the marketing team deserves to be introduced to the phenomenon of recessional lay-offs. It seems that it's all they can do not to have pictures of Doris Day-a-likes smiling deleriously into the camera while holding up a pink laptop. In the kitchen, of course.
No wait, it's numbers that fail you, I have plenty of words. I'll spell this out for you reeeeel simple-like. Lets say, for argument's sake, that there are 10,000 people, half men, half women. Now, lets say that, of those people who are knowledgeable about computers, 75% are male, say. You make the logical leap that this means that of those without computer knowhow, most of them are women, and I can't argue with that logic. It is the correct conclusion from the data given, but what you haven't taken into account is that this doesn't actually mean anything. For your conclusion to be socially significant, your knowledgeable population and non-knowledgeable population have to be on the same order of magnitude. They're not.
Lets crunch a number or two, shall we?
Total population = 10,000
Number of women = 5,000
Number of men = 5,000
Number with computer skills = 500 (5%? Enough skills to build a pc, at least in theory? I may be over estimating, but I'm not underestimating)
Number of women with skills = 125
Number of men with skills = 375
Number of women without skills = 4875
Number of men without skills = 4625
See where I'm getting at? Those last two numbers? They're not that different. Sure, it would be "correct" to say that there are more unskilled women than men, but it's misleading. In both cases, over 90% of people haven't a clue. So, be careful setting foot outside your little male dominated niche and into the real world, it's not the place you think it is.
But what do I know? I'm just a theoretical physicist with RSI from too much coding.
I'm one of 2 people where I work (that I know of) who build pcs and believe me I've kept my eyes and ears open for more. That's an office of over 200 people but that still puts it around the 1-2% mark and my office is mostly full of folks around 30 years of age. Folks who might be more likely to have used computers often and thus more likely to be tech savy. I don't think we can say that most of the folks who don't have the knowledge are women. I think this might sound correct, depending on your point of view, but would prove otherwise if you looked more closely.
Just because a Laptop can be a fashion accessory doesn't mean that most of the people are buying them as a fashion accessory. I think we're probably looking at something close to what Ms K suggested. Maybe 10% of people are tech savy, maybe another 10% a somewhat tech savy and the rest just aren't into tech or don't care/don't know. Either way I'd say we're looking at more women, true, but almost as many men.
Looking at the Dell ads, we see the usual things. The women are mostly young 20-30 somethings. There's the office lady stereotype, the woman relaxing at home stereotype (maybe a young stay at home wife or college student?). They're young and trendy. These photos used could be used to sell anything from handbags to clothes to yoghurt.
In the end, I think the existing dell page is already friendly enough to the, perhaps, closer to 80% of women (keeping in mind that 75% of men are in the same boat) who aren't tech savy enough to build a pc or just want something easy and care free.
Do those women need this patronising rubbish? Hell no. And if they do, then they'd better dumb down a page for the 75% of men who are just the same.
Dell seem to be jealous of Apple's designer chic/high pricetag Macbooks which are alarmingly good "fannymagnets", as anyone who has actually seen the potential customers in an Apple store will testify.
Smart girls don't use Windows and they certainly don't want netbooks that are thicker than the one piece aluminium beauties they lust after.
Dell's existing market of sweaty gamer geeks on a budget and skinflint business types will just have to do for them.