Rating: 
Summary: Learn from history or repeat it
Review: First of all it is a great compilation of 20 years of software history from someone who was a player in the game. It is also of value as a business text, but not if one needs the lessons spelled out in bulleted form at the end of each chapter. Take the mistakes listed in the book and make sure your marketing department isn't making them.My only real criticism is that Microsoft does get a little bit of slack, in that some of their failures were sort of mentioned as an aside rather than the in-depth historical analysis that marks the rest of the book. On the other hand, Microsoft's failures by and large were not marketing failures. Did "Bob" fail because it was dumb or because it wasn't marketed correctly? Some more examination of that would have been helpful. One more amplification of just how right Mr. Chapman's view of history has been. I worked at Microsoft when Lotus Notes was being rolled out. Microsoft actually delayed the shipment of some of it's products to find an answer to the threat that was Notes. Because Lotus bungled the marketing of Notes so badly, Microsoft (who clearly understood the potential and threat of the product) was able to release the software with a small delay and not have to change anything to compete. There are many more examples of the "best" products not controling the market because for a lot of people "marketing" is just not done right. This book should help decision makers to understand the consequences of that choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth your money
Review: This book provides some nice stories of the 80s tech companies, but isn't really analytical in any ways. I bought the book because it has been recommended by Joel Spolsky, but later found that the book contained an interview of him. Aside from telling the stories, the author doesn't provide much analisis. Anyway, I read that book thinking "It'll get better..." but it never did. The last few chapters look like he rushed to finished the book! By the end, the one think I was certain of is that Chapman now gets on my nerves (his writing style is very annoying!).
Rating: 
Summary: How to succeed in silicon valley
Review: Why did Ashton-Tate mess up so badly in the late 1980s? And why in God's name did Borland acquire the company? And why did IBM think that OS/2 could be a better Windows than Windows when Microsoft controlled the codebase. If you've ever wondered about the real story behind these and other collossal blunders in the computer industry, then check out this book. Rick Chapman, author of the Product Marketing Handbook gets an inside look at at some of the most spectacular flame around ranging from the IBM PC Jr with it's chiclet keyboard to the long slow decline of Novell. It's not just a cynical historical romp, it's also a tremendous guide to not repeating the mistakes that have been made in the past. Also includes a forward and interview with software design guru and entrepreneur Joel Spolsky, creator of the CityDesk content management system.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent read
Review: I have a lot of other work-related books that i really must read, but once i started reading "In Search of Stupidity" i couldn't stop turning the pages. This book is very well written, very informative and very enjoyable. Rick does an excellent job of documenting important behind-the-scenes events that have had a profound impact on our industry. His analysis of how these events unfolded is quite good. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the business and marketing side of the software industry. You'll enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Simply fun and enlightening
Review: I very much enjoyed this compendium of stories about the software and computer industry. I worked at both Ashton-Tate and IBM during 80's in which these stories took place and Mr. Chapman got it right. I think many could learn from this book and gain insights into the why and how products were released and what not to do. Finally, it well written and a fast read, Mr. Chapman is an excellent author.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and Fun
Review: Product Management is the most misunderstood and abused role in technology companies. Chapman's book is healthy reading for all product managers in order to make us feel sane and give us a good springboard for future ideas.
Rating:
Summary: What makes some IT providers better than others?
Review: I've seen Mr. Chapman lecturing in Mexico City on software marketing techniques. He is rapidly becoming an authority in Latin America and his book is heavily used in software and high-tech companies. The thing I liked the most is his demystification of the growth and capabilities North American high-tech companies have. His proposed rule "The race goes not to the strong, nor swift, nor more intelligent but to the less stupid " exemplifies a truth consumers of technology should understand. Hopefully they'll question themselves not only the "technical" capabilities of their IT providers but the likelihood of their products to evolve in a marketing dominated environment. I bet that if you have worked on the same industry I do you will scratch your head wondering what went so wrong in the marketing side of products and companies like Dbase, Borland, OS/2 just to mention some of them. Is Bill Gates as smart as we thought or was he just lucky? ¡This book is a most for all of us selling technology!
Rating: 
Summary: Nice stroll down memory lane
Review: As the subtitle suggests, it's a book on "Marketing" disasters in high-tech. It offers a lot of personal insight on where many of the top software companies took the wrong turn in the forked road and resulting in being swallowed up by other companies or just simply ran out of business. I felt the Internet chapter was a bit weak. The author could have gone a bit more in depth, but that could be a book all by itself. It's a good and fast read. You will gain some insight on how not to make certain decisions, but there isn't a lot of "lessons learned" advice.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag
Review: I give this book 5 stars for the first half or so, for the main reason that it was a fun trip down nostalgia lane for me. My own career started in those late 70s/early 80s and I was one of those many of the receiving end of the Madness of Ashton-Tate. I coded my dBase II programs in Wordstar and remember my first snippets of Microsoft BASIC (I still have print outs somewhere). The rest of the book gets zero stars, as by then the author's self-important style gets extremely tiring. He's seen it all, he's done it all, he knows it all. I did appreciate that he didn't follow in the same worn track of Microsoft-demonizing, but then he goes into the other direction in what can only be called fawning over Bill Gates. In addition the book starts to feel rushed. Where the author starts with dedicated chapters on the fiascos of individual companies, he starts jumbling more and more companies together. His Intel vs Motorola analysis is at best incomplete. Despite having been written recently, he brushes off AMD with nary a word. His dot-com chapter is useless. Smarter people have written far more detailed books on this "era" and crunching 4 years of investor and business madness into a few pages is pointless - and doesn't even belong in the same category of business mistakes. And finally, that appended interview which justifies bloatware by Moore's law, is nothing short of ridiculous. If you actually still remember Ashton-Tate, MicroPro, the Apple 2, the first IBM PCs, have a go, it will give you a mild chuckle. Otherwise don't bother. Oh yeah, and just what *is* his problem with Amazon.com?
Rating:
Summary: Stupid Human Tricks
Review: I loved this book. Kind of like stupid human tricks for software companies.
This book offers many funny anecdotes choked full of technical marketing lessons. They were very relevant for me as my career traced the rise of high-tech over the last two decades. One can only wonder how management at once-major players (Novell, Ashton Tate, Netscape, etc) acted so "stupidly". You would think its quite difficult to screw the pooch when you are the dominate networking vendor (e.g., Novell) , have the 1st mover advantage, annually sell billions in product, customers like your product and have several 1000 employees. But Rick describes in painstaking detail Novells wrenching fall. Having built several Novell and Microsoft oriented products, this chapter alone for me was worth the price of the book. Plus the book was hard to put down with all the named names... Ed Esber, Ray Noorda, Jim Manzi, Philippe Khan stupid human tricks. If you are in the tech business, buy this book. Read it too.
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