JRI: I agree with the argument that W2K has much more to do with Dell's shortfall than Y2K.
I've been planning on buying two new systems (one mid range, one high end) for my business since last November. I figured then that the intro of the new Rambus based systems would force the price of the SDRAM systems down a bit, but when Intel's SNAFU with the 820 chipset caused Dell and others to pull the promotions for Rambus systems in November, I decided to wait until January.
Now here we are in January, and contrary to some of the posts in the last 24 hours, I'm still not convinced that Dell is in a position to ship Rambus based systems yet, because my Dell sales rep was unequivocal this week when he told me that the current ship is a minimum of 30 days for a Rambus system. Ditto for the higher MHz Intel CPU SDRAM machines. Want a 600 or 650 PIII with the off die cache? Ship pronto. Coppermine CPU SDRAM system at 600 to 700 MHz, a bit longer.
But the clincher for me was the fact that W2K will ship 2/17/00, and Dell will be taking orders on 2/1/00 for W2K loaded systems. Given my experience in upgrading from WIN 95 to WIN 98 (more system freezes/crashes, buggy drivers, slower performance) I have no intention of buying a WIN 98 system now and repeating that experience. When I told my Dell rep I was going to hold off until February for W2K, he said that lots of Dell's customers were saying exactly the same thing.
Plus by mid or end February, I expect to see the prices of the systems I intend to buy come down a bit as the higher end systems finally start to ship in quantity.
So it seems to me that the Rambus delay and the W2K effect are the two main reasons for the Q4 slowdown. It also seems to me that Dell must have seen this happening as early as November, and that expecting a January pick up was just wishful thinking.
Just my 2c worth. David T. |
