Report from local CompUSA:
New Imac on display. No one was looking at it when I walked in and, while I don't know how many people glanced at it as I did, the display and store were pretty quiet at 8 pm on a Saturday night. Guess I need to add that this store is in Ridgeland, MS, on the outskirts of the big mall north of Jackson <vbg>. Not exactly the same sort of atmosphere as a Fry's in Silicon Valley.
The surprise was all the "SOLD OUT" signs on Intel computers. Many 5 or 6 models?) of Hewlett Packard and Compaq desktops were sold out, PII300, PII333, & PII350, I think. PII400s were in stock. At least one, maybe two or three models (I didn't take notes!) were Celerons. I DID NOT see any AMD machines marked with a SOLD OUT sign.
BTW When a salesman was steering a couple to the 300Mhz HP AMD machine, I asked how soon they would have the SOLD OUT machines back in stock, so there would be a better selection, and he said he was expecting some within a week. I'm hoping that couple and others will wait...of course we don't really know if the salesman knew what he was talking about.
Hope that Intel is producing the RIGHT processor for the sweet spot in the right volume. This JIT gets tricky. Surely the box makers are beginning to realize that Intel is not going to make everything and sit on inventory to see what orders come in?
FWIW thought I'd report that the shortage is reaching even the more remote outposts.
dmf
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