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Dell is closing its 140 mall kiosks to focus on sales through major retailers like Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Staples, all of which Dell has made deals with in the past few months. The kiosks will be be mostly closed within a few days, though Dell kiosks abroad will remain open.

The kiosks, like the wildly successful Apple retail stores, allowed customers to try Dell products and talk to Dell employees about their needs. Unlike Apple's stores, customers could not purchase and take home their computers that day. Machines could only be ordered to be shipped from Dell's manufacturing facilities, making impulse purchases impossible.

For now, the Dell kiosks remain linked and promoted on Dell's website and the sole full-sized Dell store remains open in Dallas. With the closings, Dell hopes to focus on its retail partner strategy to catch up to No. 1 computer maker HP, which sold 13.1 million PCs to Dell's 9.9 million in the last quarter.

Partnering with Best Buy and Wal-Mart may work, if Dell actually stocks the stores with products consumers want. A retail presence lets customers take home a PC that day, but the selection on offer is most un-Dell-like. Wal-Mart only stocks two kinds of laptops, one desktop model, and two models of monitors. Best Buy is slightly better, with three desktops and five laptops. Dell's replacing a "look but don't buy" retail strategy with "buy but don't customize." It may work, but whatever happened to "your" Dell?

(Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)