Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) recently fell as the world's second-largest PC maker, and if Taiwan's Acer has any fire left, it will be directed at the numero uno in global PC sales, Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ). Is it really out of the realm of possibilities to have Acer unseat a $100 billion global technology giant?

Paul McWilliams was one of the few to not be surprised by the upside surprises in recent quarterly earnings reports from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), as he has been consistently more bullish than others on Wall Street.

In his Next Inning, the tech stock specialist -- who personally owns a position in the stock -- offers a detailed and in-depth review of the firm's latest results and outlook.

"For the first time in what now seems like at least a year, not a single analyst on the Intel conference call asked about whether netbook sales were 'cannibalizing' notebook sales.

Even though Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) is seeing a leveling off of slack demand for its computer products, the company also doesn't see any uptick in PC sales for its July quarter, according to the company. Dell will host its annual shareholder's meeting this Friday in Austin right outside its Round Rock, Tx. headquarters. Investors will most likely have plenty of questions about strategy at that time.

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) said something interesting this week: It may join the ranks of PC makers and offer a netbook PC for sale. Why on earth Oracle would want to get into the extremely popular but low-margin netbook PC hardware business is an interesting mystery, but that's exactly what Oracle chief Larry Ellison indicated.

Oracle, which is in the midst of closing its deal to buy Sun Microsystems, said that Sun's Java technology could be used to run a future Oracle-branded netbook PC. Ellison quipped that "I don't see why some of those devices shouldn't come from Sun . . . there will be computers that are fundamentally based on Java."

AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T) started unleashing its netbook wireless data plans and subsidized netbook PCs in select markets just this year. The nation's second-largest wireless carrier will now be rolling out the program nationwide this summer. That means customers will be able to purchase an ultraportable netbook PC with an AT&T wireless data plan anywhere AT&T's markets are. Call this unimportant, but it's a biggie for AT&T.

The one shining light of the PC industry for the last three quarters have been netbook sales. These sub-$500 book-sized PCs are perfect for travel and normal tasks like web surfing, email use and word processing and spreadsheets. Tap some kind of built-in broadband access inside these low-cost computers outside the standard but limited range of WiFi and you pretty much have a go-anywhere, compute-anything device way smaller than most textbooks.

Taiwan's Acer, which is the world's third-largest PC maker, said that its Q1 results included a 31% profit decline as the recession continued to hit PC sales and PC makers were taking advantage of selling more PCs at the same time.

In January, I posted on netbooks -- paperback book-sized computers that now go for under $300. To me, the netbook looked like a powerful growth trend that was boosting sales at makers by as much as 55%, even as the rest of the PC industry shrank 12%. 11 million netbooks were sold in 2008 and 22 million are expected to fly off the shelves in 2009.

Netbooks are popular because many people spend a lot of time dealing with online services and want a cheap, light device they can use on the go.

This week, I received a number of calls from friends and family about the incredible events in the financial markets. I've tried to be optimistic, but it wasn't easy. Every day, there seemed to be a new avalanche of bad news.

So what does this all mean for your business?

Well, I think it's critically important to be careful and conservative. Basically, assume the following:

• It's going to take longer to raise capital -- and the terms will be tougher.
• It's going to take longer to get customers.
• Oh, and customers will take longer to pay you (and that's assuming they actually do pay you).

In other words, you need to find ways to manage your cash flow. You can use some nifty online tools, such as NetBooks. There are also some great books on the topic, like Tim Berry's The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan.

And another thing: Be sure to focus on your existing customers. In tough times, it can be easy to lose them. And, of course, it's always expensive to get new customers.

Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU) has made a fortune by selling easy-to-use and affordable accounting software for small businesses. But competition is heating up -- which is, no doubt, a great benefit for customers.

The latest entrant is NetBooks, which recently raised about $9 million in a Series A round. The investors include CMEA Ventures and Integral Capital.

Developing accounting software is extremely complex. As a result, it took NetBooks about four years to create its offering. Interestingly enough, the company's founder, Ridgely Evers, was the mastermind of Intuit's QuickBooks.

With NetBooks, a small business can accomplish things like sales management, customer relationship management (CRM), vendor management, and so on.

And since it uses an on-demand approach, NetBooks is fairly easy to implement and does not require large information technology (IT) expenses.

But the big test will be the upcoming IPO of rival NetSuite. If it's a success, I think we'll likely see more companies like NetBooks hit the market.

If you want to check out more venture fundings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.