<font color=blue>From TMF""On a day of gloom and doom for AMD, I stopped by my local Best Buy to check out the displays. Best buy carries four Desktop brands: HP, Compaq, Sony, and E-machines. The desktop ratio was 7 out of 10 Intel, all on clearance. When I asked, I was told that the machines were being cleared for the introduction of Windows XP and normally they had a larger selection of AMD based machines (sold out!). Notebooks were 75% AMD. Durons and Athlons from several manufacturers (HP, Compaq, Sony) with good features that easily out-classed the Celeron and PIII based machines. I did not see any Tualatins.
The real interesting part of the trip started when I spotted a guy with an HP logo on his golf shirt, right next to an AMD logo! It turns out, he was the regional sales manager for HP in store training staff for the XP launch. I pointed out his AMD logo and he said they were selling a ton of AMD product in his region. If you buy a Build To Order (BTO) AMD machine, they would double the size of your DDR for free. He said HP fully supports AMD for their retail machines.
We discussed the Gateway fiasco (he thought they were not long for the world) and the Intel/AMD wars. When I asked him about the ratio of BTO and retail, he said 11% of his total sales in BTO "was a very good month." He said first time buyers never buy on line, they always go to a retail outlet to shop. For the consumer market, retail shelves was the way to go.
He also said that it looked like the HP Compaq deal was going to go through.
Well, at least if HPaq (or Compackard?) was going to drop AMD, they would have to buy their sales staff new shirts!
Dave"
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