Gallery: Dell's designs on product lust

Dell thrived in a time when PC users just cared about what was inside the computer--how fast it went, how much storage it had, and the resolution and size of the monitor. But after seeing competitors such as Apple steal the spotlight with new designs and colors, Michael Dell decided his company should go in a different direction from its beige boxes.

See Larry Dignan's blog for more on Dell's new product look.

One of Dell's hottest beige PCs in 2000 was the Dell Dimension 4100 which wowed customers with a Pentium III /866 CPU; 128MB of RAM; Windows 98; a 10GB hard drive; a 16MB graphics card; and a 17-inch monitor.