Rating: 
Summary: You could not make this stuff up...
Review: Chapman offers a caustic and often hilarious first-person Silicon Valley memoir with a biased point of view: stupid is as stupid does. Folks who weren't there (I was) may not believe the monumental egos, internal power struggles, organizational tunnel vision, towering communications failures and blockheaded marketing miscalculations. Sadly, these tales are not apocryphal. If you're looking for a scholarly history of the development of the personal computer, you'll be disappointed because the development of the personal computer market was hardly a scholarly exercise. But if you're in search of a bare-knuckled commentary written in a "tell-it-like-it-was" style that will often leave you laughing, you'll really enjoy this read. Lots of lessons to be learned here for both marketing types and senior management.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful chronicle of hi-tech industry
Review: This is one of the best books I've read about what's gone wrong with the high-tech industry. Chapman has the answers, told through stories that are witty, and yet provide useful lessons for software and tech company owners, marketers, and sales execs who want to succeed today.
Rating:
Summary: ROI
Review: One of the most enjoyable books I have read regarding the business of high tech. Reading some of the previous reviews, I guess not everyone agrees. I personally loved the author's sense of humour, which makes for a very enjoyable read. Those who criticize the lack of 'dot.com' material, or doubt that 20 years old events are today irrelevant, miss an important point: those who forget -or ignore- history are condemned to repeat it.Besides, learning from mistakes through some other poor guy's skin has some of the better ROI I know. And told with such a witty irreverent sense of humour is just plain fun. I would warmly recommend this book. Excellent read.
Rating: 
Summary: There is a fundamental problem with this book...
Review: The fundamental problem with this book is that the author only writes about dead companies where he used to work. That's fine, but hardly objective or very informative. A particularly annoying trick he uses is to propose "obvious" alternative marketing choices to what the company actually did. Okay, so either this guy is the king of hindsight and monday-morning-quarterbacking, or else he had these ideas at the time and could get no one to listen to him. I suspect it's the former, as many of his "obvious ideas" sound like the result of years of thinking about what went wrong. If only we could pause at every decision and take a few years to see what happens, then go back and make the decision. This book is weak because it only covers the companies where the author worked. That's why there is minutely detailed coverage of MicroPro, but almost nothing about the dot-coms. Hey, I like telling my work stories too, but I'm not sure it's worth a whole book...
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, Accurate and Educational
Review: Many books of this nature are written by jounalists who simply 'report' the news. As a result, they don't always get their facts straight (Accidental Empires by Robert X. Cringely and Dot.Con by John Cassidy are examples). Merrill R. Chapman was there and reports first hand what he not only witnessed, but also experienced. And he does so with exceptional accuracy. I was there in many of the examples he offers in the book and was ecstatic to see (and remember!) many of the stories he recalls in this fabulous book. I'm so relieved to finally see a book written by someone that not only recounts the history accurately, but also explains very logically why so many marketing tactics were so bad. In the very beginning of the book he describes Motorola's Iridium system (a satellite-based cellular phone that allowed anyone to use their phone any where in the world by launching 66 extremely expensive low-orbit satellites to cover the entire planet Earth.) Not only were the phones large and barely portable, but you had to use them outdoors, with no obstructions (like a tree) and 'point them at the satellite.' With all those inconveniences, no one apparently considered that 70% of the Earth is covered by nothing but water. I never thought of that before. It's both obvious and, at the same time, brilliant and clever thinking/deduction. He repeats this logic throughout the book, citing examples that refresh my memory of the fabulous 1980s and early 1990's. If you really want to know the real reason why things turned out the way they are today, read a book written by someone who not only observed it, but interacted with it. For example, this book.
Rating:
Summary: glib, boring
Review: This book should be subtitled "I was there, and it's not my fault". The author devotes a lot of space cataloging excruciating details surrounding the failures of companies for which he worked, and not much space to analyzing the failures. The style wears thin quickly. I slogged through to the end hoping for some gem to redeem my purchase, but I was left with an interview with Joel of Joel on Software. It was on the strength of his review that I bought the book; Joel needs to stick to shilling his software.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining
Review: I would have it given it a 5 if, at the end of each chapter, the author had - summarized, as an experienced marketer, what conclusions to draw and how to avoid making the mistakes (they're not always that obvious, especially to developers with no business skills) - interviewed the people mentionned, and let them tell _their_ side of the story, like they do in court :-) Possibly, some mistakes weren't _that_ stupid in the context of the time. It's alway easy to spot other's mistakes with the benefit of distance.
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Summary: Exposes business leaders for what they are...
Review: Arrogant, self-serving, morons who make the mistake of believing their own BS. If this book doesn't convince you how incompetent most executives are, nothing will. Case study after case study, technology is the one industry that seems to attract a special breed of idiot; from "lovable" Ed Esber to "cannon fodder" Marc Andreesen. In every single instance, the guy in charge has a "vision" which ends up defying common sense. No wonder Warren Buffet doesn't invest in Technology stocks. Hello? Chapman is trying to tell you something. The underlying theme is: don't believe the hype, because 95 percent of the time, the guy doing the talking is full of crap. Every time that some talking head pops up on the news talking about the next big thing, you should ask yourself: "who is paying this guy's paycheck?" If there's one business leader who has avoided the idiot hat, it's Bill Gates. For all the grief that people give Bill Gates, he OWNS the industry. He went out and did it, which is a lot more than I can say for most software geeks. Once more, he was smart enough to avoid making the mistakes that other people made, and this is why he's #1. I've heard disgruntled Linux-ista often say "well, Bill Gates really isn't that smart, he just got lucky." To which I say "look who is billionaire is, look at your own checking account, now tell me who's smarter." Engineers who hate Microsoft are sore losers munching on sour grapes. Hey, if you can do any better... you go build a billion dollar software company. Put up, or shut the hell up.
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Summary: Learn From The Mistakes of Others
Review: In writing this book, Chapman has done us the service of collecting over 20 years worth of corporate blunders. As such, MBAs entering the software industry would be well advised to read this book and save themselves from making the same strategic errors that led to the demise of earlier pioneers. This is a man who, in the 1980s, wore those blue Adidas running shoes with the cool yellow stripes. This is a man who sat in the front row and saw everything happen with his own eyes. His observations are both astute and hilarious. Old timers reading this book will probably not know if they want to laugh or cry. There have been reviewers who claim that Chapman's lessons are not clear. Good grief, these people haven't read the book! Rick does an incredible job of analyzing history. For example, in one chapter, he looks at the mistakes that hobbled Novell. In the 1990s, Novell decided to emphasize functionality over usability. Sure, Novell's Netware package was years ahead of the pack in terms of features. However, the engineers building Netware stubbornly insisted on sticking to a command-line interface. In short, the inmates were running the asylum. Then, there's IBM. Chapman's autopsy of OS/2 alone is worth the price of the book. Anyone who ever tried to print documents under OS/2, or run a Microsoft application under OS/2's Windows subsystem will grimace in agreement. Big Blue made one ridiculous mistake after another. It's almost as if they were trying to kill OS/2 intentionally. After reading this book, you will see Lou Gerstner in a whole new light. "In Search of Stupidity" offers a droll look at corporate demolition; one that will make you laugh,...until it hurts.
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Summary: Too Funny - From Wordstar Lover
Review: I read this book and it took me back to 1983 when I was first learning Micropro's Wordstar and wished we still had it instead of the bloated over featured MS Word. Rick's descriptions of these companies stategic mistakes was "right on" I even remember when IBM was positioning the IBM AT to be its first "Unix" box and when we waited for 3 years for Microsoft to finally release Windows...talk about a long release cycle...:) I even remember being confused about Wordstar and Wordstar 2000 so it all is relevant to me. Mr. Chapman's sense of humor is terrific and I love his comparisons to Godzilla..... This book would make a great text for undegraduates studying Marketing in their Computer Information Systems curriculum.
I recommend colleges take a hard look at this. I highly recommend this book. Tracy Emerton Williams
Assistant State Court Administrator for Judicial Technology
Rhode Island Supreme Court
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