A little while later we needed to order another iMac and this time it came in the original iMac blue color. Thankfully, at least I didn't have to pick a fruit. Apparently the women in the office didn't think that this blueish one was quite as cute because it wasn't purple and didn't look as nice. They liked the matching purple mouse. It was a USB (Universal Serial Bus) mouse so, unfortunately, they couldn't use it on their computers or I probably would have come in and actually had a beige mouse attached to my iMac while the purple mouse was being fought over by the folks in the office.

Now, finally, I'm back to beige computers. I recently bought a honker. This sucker is (or at least was, for about a week) the most powerful computer on the planet. It's a 500 Mhz Pentium III, all of that incredible power. Everything you could possibly want in a computer except for a gameboard (because it was at work and I'd never get anything done). Actually, it came with a 3D AGP card, but I am refusing to acknowledge that it's a 3D card because I'd never get anything done at work. And I absolutely refuse to install a joystick, which I wouldn't actually need for some of the cooler games, but nonetheless it is keeping me under some degree of control.

Of course, as I said, it was a honker for a week. Yesterday, CNET announced that there are now 550 Mhz Pentium IIIs. And so my claim to fame didn't last long. Such is life.

I should tell you that I have two or three end goals that come with every editorial I write. One of them, of course, is to actually finish the editorial. Another is to make it relevant enough that you don't look at me and say "Why are you writing this editorial? Are you just trying to fill space?" And the third, of course, is to occasionally impart the knowledge and guidance and wisdom that comes from my many years in the computer industry. I'm not sure I'm going to hit all three this time. But now, I want to talk about product naming, because I think it's kind of important and because it has a sort of relevance that actually means something.

You see, the iMac was perfectly branded and perfectly executed (which was quite a shock, coming from Apple). Let me give you an example. Every one of the people who came into my office said they wanted one. They wanted a purple one or a yellow one or an orange one. Assuming all the other technical and price elements were equal, they would buy this computer over another computer (if they were in the market for a computer) because of the color. Style does matter - but only as long as performance isn't sacrificed.

This brings us (finally!) to the Windows CE devices in the world. Let's take, for instance, the HP Jornada. There's a palm-sized HP Jornada which, as I recall, is a dark blue. Both the handheld and mini-laptop sized HP Jornadas (the 680 and 820 respectively), are both kind of blue-gray. None of them are beige but, thankfully, none of them are tangerine.

The problem is that these three computers (one's a handheld, one's a palm-sized PC, and one's a mini-laptop) all have numbers like 480, 640 220, 96820, 3270, or some such thing. And therein lies the problem. Who can keep track of this stuff? I'd wager that most people can't. There are occasionally the cool Windows CE super-fans who measure every single brand and number and item, and wear that knowledge on their shoulders as a badge of pride. Then there are the folks who just want a working computer and don't really care what it's called but would like to remember what its name is.