Dell has been losing sales to HP for the past year or so.

If you were to look at Dell’s latest notebook offerings, you will understand why.

HP/Compaq’s consumer line of notebooks are super sleek and come with brushed metallic surfaces. They look so sexy that the first time I saw one (at Staples), I almost pulled out my c… er… credit card…

Compare the HPs/Compaqs to Dell’s badly named Inspiron series (the E170x, E150x, E140x etc).

The Dells are ugly as sin: all squarish, chunky and plasticky. Very industrial looking with an awful faux silver color. Very UGLY (sorry, I have to say that again). Very heavy.

We bought a couple of E1505s at work and I will NOT be caught dead bringing one to class. Ugh! The thought makes me shiver.

We study Dell in class. Dell is often quoted as the company that identified a special, under served market segment and profited greatly from that.

Today, however, Dell appears to have lost some of that. Perhaps Dell has lost sight of the other marketing concept: customer intimacy. They have forgotten to check what customers really want or look for in a world of “me-too” computer designs.

Today, notebook manufacturers are going for design. They have seen the impact of Apple’s notebook designs on consumer tastes and on Apple’s increasing market share. They now understand that design is the only way to stand out.

So Sony, Asus, HP/Compaq, Toshiba are all coming out with great looking notebooks. Some of these notebooks (the leather-clad Asus S6, for example) may have inferior specifications but because of their looks and appeal, cost more than comparable systems.

So perhaps Dell needs to do something with their product managers. It looks to me that someone is sleeping at the helm….