Alex,
I will probably also bail; I need to see when I'm past 1 year for those additional shares I bought during the swan dive (I hate taxes).
What is the convertible #? $17 or $18....we are pretty close...huh. I recently read a pretty decent post from a shorter on yahoo. He argues that the BKs (Kotick, Kelley, and pals) have over 6 M in options, and that it would require an effective growth rate of over 50% to get a 20% growth with the dilution factored in. It isn't bad reading, especially for yahoo.
You're right....buying atvi would be a real statement. <g> They still have that poison pill provision...at $30? Whatever happens, msft will be doing a lot of marketing for the xbox. As long as we don't have exclusive titles, my understanding is developing for the xbox isn't too different from developing on the pc. Therefore, we may finally get some bang for our pc development buck. One argument I've heard against any sort of takeover rumor is that most of the exclusive licensing deals (e.g., disney, star trek) have provisions for change of ownership that could be utililized if the evil empire took charge.
On the PC....well, you know I'm still holding on my AMD shares (forward pe of 6!!) so I'm a bit biased. But I'll try and give a straight answer. <g>
I would look at either a P3 or an Athlon/Duron. Prices are great, so you might want to consider going for more mhz. The best performing machines are the Athlons with DDR ram. Micron is making the ram and building consumer machines to sell with it. They are actually selling at Best Buy now, so you can test drive a machine and bring it home the same day. Same advice for a game machine, but of course you'll want to make sure you get a good videocard. With 3dfx out of biz, you're sort of left with Nvidia, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
If you want a more budget machine, I would buy a Duron (budget Athlon) or P3. The Celeron lacks in performance compared with the Duron. Also, with P3 prices so low, why buy a celeron?
Here's a good site to read up on chips and 'puters if you're so inclined:
anandtech.com
The P4 blows. It requires rambus ram, and subsequently costs more than a machine with sdram or ddr ram. The chip also performs poorly on most benchmarks. Here's an article on the subject if you're interested:
zdnet.com
New 1.3GHz Pentium 4 takes some hits
By Ken Popovich, eWEEK
January 3, 2001 3:12 PM PT
URL:
In an unusual bid to boost sluggish sales of its new Pentium 4 processor, Intel Corp. has begun selling a slower, cheaper version of the chip to attract more budget-conscious buyers.
But analysts are belittling the new 1.3GHz Pentium 4, contending that Intel's older 1GHz Pentium III, released in March, outperforms the new chip on most applications and is less expensive since it uses cheaper memory components.
"I just think this is an intelligence test for the buying public," said Kevin Krewell, a senior analyst with MicroDesign Resources in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Overall, the Pentium III's design is better suited to handling most current software, the analyst said, and by offering a slower Pentium 4, Intel is essentially erasing a key advantage the new chip had over its predecessor.
later
-Scot |
