Many companies in the technology industry are in the habit of making announcements about nothing at all--they'll announce products that are not yet available or repackage old products in a shiny new wrapper. The practice is so rampant in the industry that there's a term for it--vapourware. When it's not software and it's not hardware and it pretty much doesn't exist, then it's vapourware.

We've never understood this practice at Cleartrip and we prefer to announce our products only when they're shipping.

Even though there's thousands of companies shipping vapourware, Dell takes first prize for the Vapourware Announcement of the Year--they just announced a 'movie store' with only one movie. Yes, you read that correctly. Here's a taste of the hype they put into their vapour announcement with the excessively ridiculous hyperbole highlighted in bold:

PC manufacturer Dell and Paramount Pictures are opening a new front in digital distribution... For now, Paramount is the only studio that has signed on, and "Iron Man"... is the only film being offered.

The offering is the first step Dell is taking toward setting up a broader digital content storefront that could create significant competition for Apple's dominant iTunes Store.

While Dell is getting started with "Iron Man" as a preload, the company eventually will broaden the selections as it signs other studios. In time, Dell likely will enable consumers to purchase films after they've bought computers, too.

Is Dell serious? How could they make such an embarrassing offering? The Dell movie store is laughable--they only have one movie and you can only buy that one movie if you buy a computer with it.