The retail computer market is struggling. PC companies are having trouble defining their advantages. Dell has a laptop battery explosion problem. Microsoft has been working on its new version of Windows for years now, with little chance of delivering before 2007. And then there's the spam, the security breeches, the pop-ups the re-boots, the slow death of otherwise good computers by poorly designed software.

In all of this the end user has been taken for granted. So it's no wonder that people are cautious. Or buying Apples.