

FSJ: Why Dell will not bounce back - sharksandwich
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-dell-will-not-bounce-back.html

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raganwald
Apple's computer business may or may not thrive over the next decade, but
beware the false dichotomy where the choice is between Apple thriving or Dell
thriving. Dell is in the no-man's land where it actually isn't the cheapest
supplier, as FSJ explains so sweetly, it has burned its customer loyalty, and
it certainly doesn't have any cachet. And finally, they are at Microsoft's
mercy, and the Vista debacle hurt them terribly. They needed an OS that would
be a killer app: something that would drive customers to upgrade their
hardware just to run Vista.

Without that, where are they going to find explosive growth? Music players?
Anybody remember the Bic Lighter^H^H Dell DJ? Flat screen TVs? Selling
American PCs to the growing Chinese market?

I can't tell you whether to go long AAPL. But I admire the balls of anyone
going long on DELL.

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tx
_The real genius and power of China lies in its armies of low-cost and
brilliant engineers. Seen a Lenovo box lately? Heck of a lot nicer than
anything Dell is pooping out from its factory in Round Rock._

Yeah, right. AFAIK all Lenovo engineering and design is done in the same ex-
IBM engineering US-based campus and I am personally get scared every time new
Thinkpads come out, because when Lenovo transfers engineering to China or/and
turns into Dell, there won't be any usable laptops anymore and I'll have to go
back to a self-made desktop PC.

Sorry Apple, but your keyboards and touchpads aren't in the same league with
<http://kontsevoy.com/ultranav.png> and Dell... let's just say they'll never
bounce back.

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jrockway
Lenovo is already making the Thinkpads suck. For example, they use shitty LCDs
because they have some pride issue buying components from Japan and Korea, and
therefore get second-rate LCDs instead. On my T61, there is a slot for an xD
card (which my camera uses), but for some reason Lenovo has disabled that
reader in hardware. It shows up in Linux, but can't read the media. What the
_fuck_?

Anyway, the hardware is solid, but Lenovo is pulling a lot of crap that will
probably prevent me from buying another Thinkpad. Dell and Apple both suck for
other reasons, unfortunately, making it impossible to get an acceptable
laptop. sigh.

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rudyfink
I've been really pleased with the quality on the Dell XPS line. Comparing it
to the new T61 I got for work, the Dell seems better in every way with the
exception of the lack of a force mouse in the middle of the keyboard.

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sanj
Does it astound anyone else that FSJs analysis is better than 99% of the
actual "analysts" out there?

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pchristensen
"Which brings me to the real difference between Dell and Apple -- simply put,
it's me."

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between FSJ and RSJ.

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wumi
they need a hot UMPC or Android Phone to jumpstart the company.

~~~
jamongkad
Android? Does that even exist? I know I downloaded the SDK like months ago.
"Vaporware" comes to mind.

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babul
if you can't beat them, join them?

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kingkongrevenge
Dell makes cheap functional machines. Apple makes expensive consumerist
lifestyle fashion. In the current economic environment Apple is a better short
than Dell.

~~~
allenbrunson
apple's "expensive consumerist lifestyle fashion," as you call it, is now the
de facto standard hacker machine, used by dhh, the inventor of ruby on rails,
by pg himself, and too many others to mention.

~~~
tx
You're confusing Macs-the-hardware with UNIX they run. Yes, all hackers work
on UNIX of some sort. And even then, OSX requires a quite a bit of work to get
it up to Linux levels of hacker friendliness.

~~~
allenbrunson
dhh recently switched from a macbook pro to a macbook air. does that sound
like somebody who's in it just for the unix underpinnings? i think not.

