Ted and thread, check this out. I got this from JC's. IBM got 39 1 GHz from Intel and so far has sold 4. ROTFLMA!!!
jc-news.com
Okay, okay ... I called up IBM and asked. The answers were very confused and confusing,
but here's what I heard:
ETA is listed as the 9th, but he's "a little hesitant to commit and say that they'll be coming
in tomorrow". As of about this time, IBM has had 4 orders (my call was actually the first one
he'd personally gotten about the 1GHz system) for the PIII-1000. According to this nice fellow,
the first shipment IBM gets from Intel will contain thirty-nine 1GHz Pentium III processors.
But, like I said, the shipment date "sounds wrong to me" (his words). If I ordered now and the
reported shipment date was accurate, then I could conceivably, hypothetically get a 1GHz
system by next Tuesday. But in general, this rep was comfortable with a two week lead time
estimate.
The customer rep at IBM was very nice, and didn't try to push anything on me.
Fine, fine. I got bit by the lead time bug. Called up Gateway this time. The sales guy told
me that they have plenty of the chips in stock, and mentioned off to their side that there's
"definitely not a shortage" of any kind -- implication being that they have many more than
they've had ordered. Their 30GB drives are backordered, so lead time of the system as is on
the website would be a while, probably a couple weeks. With another drive, for example the
20GB, lead time drops to one week precisely. The rep assured me that the 30GB drive was
the only part that would currently present a problem to this order, and that otherwise
configuring a part would not incur any delay.
The customer rep at Gateway was very nice, and didn't try to push anything on me.
The call to Dell was ... interesting. Short, but interesting. The sales guy stated that they
will not sell 1GHz systems until they are put through thorough testing, but added that they are
"in the final stages of testing". He went out of his way to note that their Pentium III systems with RDRAM are faster than any
1GHz AMD system (I didn't actually inquire about any of this, he just sorta blurted it out, probably because I mentioned that I
was shopping for 1GHz systems).
HP's site explicitly states that their 1GHz PIII systems are out of stock. But I called up anyway. The rep said that the
systems should be in stock some time next week. He quoted an impossible-sounding (eg, impressive!) lead time of two
business days for the Pavilion 1G. He was nice enough to tell me that they're going to be getting about a hundred 1GHz
chips from Intel per week (I got the impression from him that a regular intro is two to three times this amount). The Pavilion
1G is premade right now; customizable systems will be coming out in about a month, he guessed. He noted that HP's
website has a really neat feature that notifies you when a system gets in stock.
The customer rep at HP was very nice, and didn't try to push anything on me.
Called Compaq. Holy crap, this guy was incredible!!! I chatted for over twenty minutes (maybe even more than a half
hour?) with this guy, we covered all kinds of subjects from business to personal. This was truly a great telephone experience.
This fellow in actuality didn't tell me much I was initially trying to ask about. He simply didn't know a lot of this stuff. For
example, he had no clue how many GHz parts were coming into Compaq, other than that he'd not been told of any problems.
He did say, though, that the Athlon-1000 would be in stock tomorrow and that ordering will commence at that time (and
that's when the website will show info on the GHz system). Lead time is 7 days. He does seem to think that AMD is unlikely
to ship any less than decent quantities for the Athlon, as they're riding on a wave of popularity recently and cannot really
afford to crow about stuff that they don't have (especially since they're the number two guys). FWIW, this fellow has a
550MHz Compaq Athlon system. He didn't push any opinions on whether the Athlon or PIII was faster, but he did say that he
liked that home system very much.
Actually, he did push one sales pitch (but he warned me ahead of time that this was what he was about to do), and it was
fantastically cool. He called it the "Ownership Advantage Program". Basically, if you buy a Compaq PC, save the serial
number and give it to them if you buy another Compaq PC down the line (no less than two years, he said). They'll sell you the
new PC for list price minus the depreciated value of the old system (what it's worth at the time that you order the new
system). Kinda like trading in the old system, except that you get to keep the old system.
The customer rep at Compaq was very nice, and the sheer enjoyment I got out of the call vastly outweight the small bit of
pushiness he gave (which was actually helpful, anyway). |
