Rating: 
Summary: The Buyer is the Stupid one
Review: This book is another recap of all the stories you have heard for years about the personal computer world. The authors style is very amateur as is the overall packaging (graphics look like they were done in the 1980's). There is no origional material in this book except for the footnotes in which the author tells you he worked at a large NY department store at Christmas one year or he owned a CPM machine which he tried to sell at a boot sale for $50.00. Really, dont buy this as you will end up feeling as stupid as I do for paying for this. It is not a marketing book--its the history of the PC business told once again.
Rating: 
Summary: Little business insight, but interesting history.
Review: I bought this book of the shelf at Softpro (www.softpro.com) because I thought the title was brilliantly oxymoronic. I found the book fun to read, partly because this books story and my career in technology began at about the same time.While some of Rick Chapman's perspectives are astute and the book is historically interesting (and mostly accurate), I did not like the writing style (an attempt at being overly prosaic which compromises an otherwise easy read), nor did I like the self aggrandizing tone (the author seems certain that he is far smarter than the dotes that have built and run America's notable companies). Those criticisms aside, I do recommend the book, especially for technical professionals that enjoy an occasional retrospective. I enjoyed the book and it will stay on my bookself as a historical reference. Joe Stagner
ManagedCode.com
Rating: 
Summary: He who does not learn from stupidity...
Review: In 1982, Tom Peters told the world about how excellent companies were turning around the US economy. What Peters failed to recognize was that many of the companies that he was looking at weren't actually "excellent" but were in fact huge clunking dinosaurs that were producing buggy whips in the age of the automobile. New, smaller companies came around and ate the lunch of the big "excellent" guys and then proceeded to make either the exact same stupid mistakes as the big guys or new and more innovative stupid mistakes. This book basically deals with the stupidity found in high tech companies of the 1980's and 1990's. Why is Microsoft such a huge company today? It isn't because their products were better or because they cheated other companies out of their rightful place in the market. It's because they weren't as stupid as their competition. Merrill Chapman takes us through the comedy of errors that companies like Digital Research, WordStar, Lotus, and Ashton-Tate went through as they tossed their market leads aside in fits of stupidity. You can't help but laugh (or cry) at the amazing levels of stupidity that these companies exhibited. Examples: WordStar was once one of the finest word processing programs in the world. But somehow the company ended up owning two competing mediocre products. Lotus was the leader in spreadsheets but ignored the rise of Windows and allowed themselves to be knocked out of first place by Excel. These and many more examples are well documented in this book. The book is not an in-depth study of the business world. You won't find very much analysis of why a particular company made such obviously fatal errors. Why did Borland pay an outrageous sum to buy Ashton-Tate at a time when Ashton-Tate had virtually nothing that Borland needed? You won't find the answer here. What you will find is an amusing, well-written (without being vicious) examination of the collapse of perfectly good companies under the weight of their own serious errors of judgment. There is a moral to be learned from this book. It isn't necessary to be excellent. In fact, excellence can be expensive and drive up your costs so much that they make your products uncompetitive. The secret is not to be excellent, in fact you don't even have to be very smart. All you need to be is less stupid that your competitors. Just ask Microsoft.
Rating:
Summary: The only stupidity was my own
Review: As my title suggests, the stupidity was my own for buying a book touted as a business book (that may be Amazon's fault) with expectations of insights into mistakes made and how to benefit from them.
This is a well-written book, but it is a HISTORY book, NOT a business book. There are simply good stories presented here and I did not find it easy to draw parallels between huge organizations like IBM and Microsoft and my own small business.
This finely-crafted book should be read for entertainment purposes only.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfect Tech Bubble Post-mortem
Review: This book was a wonderful trip down memory lane since my career has traced the rise of the high-tech sector over the last couple of decades. Chapman's discussion of the ASP phenomenon was particularly enjoyable, with fresh memories of relieving numerous ASPs of their capital when I was at an integration software company. Our products were used to integrate applications together using message broker technology. The ASPs used our stuff when hosting multiple applications for customers. We never could figure out how they could ever make money. Likewise, most of the dot-coms. We knew they'd never be repeat customers.
Rating:
Summary: A printed paper blog
Review: This book is basically a blog on paper. If blogs had been around 20 years ago, Mr. Chapman would have written one and it would have had the same "obnoxious teenager" style writing as this book. The few facts in the book are well known to those who've taken the time to understand the industry, the conclusions are not that clever, and the chatty style really grates after the first couple chapters. Yes Wordstar - Wordstar 2000 was a fiasco, yes dot-coms were stupid, yes Netscape was doomed by personalities, but so what? Do we care that the Novell guest hotel had bad food? Or that the marketing excesses of the past look silly now? No. There are interesting stories to be told about the last 20 years, but this book doesn't have them.
Rating:
Summary: Stupid is as stupid does....
Review: Rick Chapman names names and takes prisoners in this expose of stupid marketing tricks. Read how Ed Esber, Ray Noorda, Jim Manzi, Philippe Khan and others didn't let their intelligence stand in the way of making a stupid mistake. A sure way to stay off the list in Rick's sequel (there will no doubt be several sequels) is to read the book and take the lessons to heart. Even if you don't think you need these lessons (you are wrong--you really do), it's a funny read.
Rating:
Summary: As informative as it is entertaining
Review: Chapman writes in a style that is difficult to pull off. When you deride the mistakes of others, it's easy to come off as an overbearing, better-than-thou observer who hasn't done anything splashy but likes criticizing those who have. It's also easy to appear mean-spirited by taking easy shots at people who, however much they might deserve, have already lost big and don't really need anyone to tell them that.
Chapman has been in the business and studied his trade closely. His cautionary tales are mildly laced with armchair quarterbacking. They are heavily dosed, however, with common sense: don't sell two products with the same name, you'll confuse your audience; greedy and litigious people make lousy business partners; intellect is a limited resource, so if a company can make fewer stupid mistakes than the competition and capitalize on their mistakes, it should do well.
What's also obvious is how easily some high-tech developers and their management fall into the traps of hubris, control mania, and management by force of personality. The results, as Chapman paints them, are sometimes amusing, sometimes sad. Sometimes they don't seem so dumb if you consider how prolonged stress can fool with anyone's judgment. But Chapman reminds the reader that all these cases demonstrate how a company took its eye off the ball and refused to put it back, and ended up a shadow of its former self, if that.
Since Microsoft is the computing market, statistically speaking, Chapman has a lot to say about what this company has (and hasn't done) to stay on top. The analysis is pragmatic and credible. Some of Chapman's other historical discussions felt at odds with the timelines as I remember them, but then again I didn't research them.
The lessons Chapman presents as he goes, in particular through his interview with Joel Spolsky, are real gems. Anyone who wants to understand high-tech markets will learn something from this book, and have more than a few smiles along the way.
Rating:
Summary: Marketing matters!
Review: Since the beginning of the computing industry, technology companies have wondered about the value of marketing. This book explains the winners and losers in the context of marketing disasters. Rather than search for excellence, Chapman searches for explanations of how once high-flying companies fail. Positioning mistakes abound, as do mistakes resulting from executive and engineering arrogance. Using a combination of personal anecdotes and astute industry observation, Chapman proves he has been there. He shows us marketing and operational mistakes for companies like IBM, Apple, Lotus, and Novell, as well as almost forgotten MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, and Borland. Chapman has a clever and funny style, making the book very readable.
Rating:
Summary: Kudos from a fellow marketer
Review: Chapman's book piqued my interest as 1) a fellow marketer who tries to counsel companies, yet has watched many of them fall short or self-destruct because of egos, lapses or just plain stupidity; and 2)one who has questioned why once huge players in the high tech business were at the top one day and forever gone the next. While some demises (dimees?) were and are obvious, others Chapman brings forth are revelations, at least to this reader. His sagas -- well written with his own often humorous insights and asides making the reader wonder how these once-major players acted so ridiculously -- is well thought out, organized, interesting, interestingly illustrated, and despite its subject matter (making great things go bad), was hard to put down. I could hardly wait to tell each and every one of my friends, even those outside my profession, that it's a must-read. My only regret is I never had occasion to work with the author -he exhibits a unique flair (for the obvious), a good sense of humor, a certain passion for those companies now "deceased" and has a unique gift for telling a good story (many, actually). I can't say I truly thoroughly enjoy reading too many business books, although I try to learn from each one. With this one, I enjoyed, reminisced, reflected AND learned. Thanks, Merrill, er, Rick.
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