

Dell shares drop a like a rock - jfruh
http://www.itworld.com/hardware/194691/dell-shares-plummet-lowered-sales-forecast

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eggbrain
If I were Michael Dell, I'd shut the company down and give the money back to
the shareholders.

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WiseWeasel
Or perhaps Dell's management could take this opportunity to do some soul-
searching, to figure out where the market for computing is headed, and what
unique value they can bring to it.

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pstuart
It's a joke -- Dell had said the same about Apple way back when.

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WiseWeasel
I am aware of the quote. I'm just offering a more constructive solution.

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joshu
Suuuuuuuuuure.

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nkassis
I remember buying from dell in the 90s when they had decent customer service
and made good (for a large OEM) computers.

1\. There website was much simpler and not at all like the overload piece of
crap site they have now. People use to go on Dells website to configure a
computer. That was their advantage, configurability. But now doing that
involves one of the worse web site UI I've ever seen. That tab thing to go
through options suck. Just bring back the long form. HP does the same thing
and it sucks (HP website is the worse website i've ever seen, it's painful to
use. But they own the retail store market)

2\. They need to get back to making decent computers again. The build quality
has gone way down compared to what they used to do. They even managed to make
Alienware suck ;p

3\. Their customer service is nothing like what it used to be.

They really sold their soul (Where the dell dude?) to save cost at every
corner and it shows.

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nkassis
4\. simplify the damn options, there 5 options per model and like 30 different
models. It's ridiculous. You just need a few options with customizability.

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jarek
Spoken like someone who has never needed a specific card or subsystem because
that and only that works with mission critical software or hardware they need
to run.

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nkassis
there no reason that they need 5 different models of 15 inch XPS laptop shown
on the page. What they should do is have one model and let you customize that
to your will. Obviously internally that might affect some things like the mobo
choice and all but user wise it's a lot simpler. You can still have your add
in card as you want, at least you get to see the exact amount it adds to your
machine. When it's already all packaged up you don't see it.

I've built my fair share of servers through both Dell and HPs site. Some
complex ones with multi raid cards and 16+ HD . I still say their site is
overly complex.

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jarek
Aha, fair enough. I'm not a fan of the current manufacturer websites either —
certainly they can and should be done a lot better — I'd just hate to lose the
configurability.

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ScottWhigham
I wonder if two significant events are coming together to make this happen:

1) Do consumers/IT workers need to buy entirely new computers today as
frequently as they did 10 years ago? I don't think so. I'm running my dev rig
on a machine I built in 2008 - quad core Intel Core Duo w/ 8GB RAM on 64-bit
Win2k8R2 OS - and it's blazing still today. I'm running VMs, SharePoint, SQL
Server all in the background and still it's a great box. Prior to that I was
spending $2k every two years probably to keep up.

My wife's PC is the same - it's just a regular box we bought at MicroCenter, I
think, in 2009. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD dual core (can't recall).
It's super fast. I see no reason to upgrade. She runs Photoshop and MS Office
mainly and both are super, super fast.

2) The one thing that made the biggest impact for our computers was to make
the OS run on SSDs. Prior to doing that, we were both frustrated.

So combine (a) whether Moore's Law is applicable today, and (b) SSD
performance and availability, and it makes me wonder just how much this will
impact not only Dell but other companies (HP, etc).

Hell, that makes me wonder: are we spending money on iPads for fun b/c we have
extra money that we were going to spend on upgrading computers but now don't
have to? Now I'm reaching...

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r00fus
Combine with the following: 1) Virtualization has made having excess boxes
less of a necessity as opposed to even 3 years ago.

2) SaaS and other clouded operations have outsourced IT such that though
knowledge workers are still in need, the machines are not.

3) The ongoing recession and latest government austerity trends are forcing
the market in general to drop, as large government buyers are buying less.

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seunghomattyang
What do you guys think Dell could/should do to get back in the game (besides
"shutting it down and giving the money back to the shareholders")?

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alexgartrell
Spend a _Ton_ of money on world class industrial designers and sell a
rebranded high-end laptop that doesn't suck. I can only imagine that the
market for people who want Apple-style hardware (in terms of
construction/quality) with Windows baked in is huge.

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2muchcoffeeman
This is like the opinion that Apple should license their OS and allow 3rd
party hardware manufacturers to create Mac clones. Or that they should create
a low cost Mac to compete with cheap PCs. This is not their strength. What
makes you think they will succeed in a new market segment when they are
tanking at what they used to be good at?

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powertower
I would imagine 2 things are happening here:

1\. Less people are buying PCs and laptops as they are realizing that browsing
the web and checking email can be done with tablets and netbooks (and
smartphones). A few years ago you got a PC. Now you get an iPad or iPhone.

2\. Less companies are buying servers as they are moving to the "cloud". The
"cloud" is of course bullshit (no real scalability, piss-poor performance,
etc) but the marketing won.

My understanding of Dell is that most of the profits they make are derived
from upgrades and from the more expensive systems. All their "deal" PCs and
laptops are loss-leaders (break-even at best).

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modoc
A good bit of the "cloud" is run on Dell servers....

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powertower
Virtualized = many VMs on 1 server (and oversubscribed in many cases) = less
servers overall.

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joshu
10% down is not "like a rock."

Can we not editorialize when editing titles?

