shrink-wrapped software

Computer makers are betting consumers want a product that's more than a smart phone but less than a full-featured laptop. Lenovo, the Chinese company with worldwide headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., is the latest to enter the burgeoning market for netbooks -- also known as Internet PCs. This month, Lenovo announced plans for a 1-inch-thick IdeaPad netbook with a 10-inch screen. Starting price: $399.

Today, every desk in every business looks naked without a PC or Mac, and the lowliest number-crunchers have computer power at their fingertips the likes of which their 1970's predecessors could never have imagined. [Anyone] will tell you it was a change that transformed business for the better. So why, 20 years later, are some companies moving office tasks off their own PCs and servers and back onto powerful computing clusters -- this time, not in the basement, but thousands of miles away in another firm's air-conditioned warehouse?