Skeets, Lots of sources. One of the best is our own Early's Tech Review. Or, check his note to me earlier in this thread. Fred Hickey is of the same opinion.
However, despite my confidence in Early and Fred, my comments are made in my Mussolini stance because of my decent contacts at the distributors. To be fair, that leaves out Dell, which is the fastest growing boxmaker. But, as fast as it is growing, it only has 9% market share. MUEI and Gateway are also ignored, but they have almost no market share in the business area.
The distributors I know are telling me that they are building inventory in anticipation of robust business demand once they get their new budgets on Jan 1 and for year end spending of old budgets this year (many cos and most govt. agencies have a use it or lose it policy). The pc makers tell them that there will be huge demand due to Y2K hardware changes. But is there demand right now? Nope. The boxmakers are building on spec and the distributors are taking delivery on spec.
Could the Forester theory be true? Maybe, but it sounds kind of silly to me. Even with new boxes, you need to write new code for your current data. Or, buy software that converts the old to the new. If that software is available, or if you are hiring programmers to rewrite code, you don't really need the new boxes. True, if you are planning on buying new boxes over the next couple of years, anyway, maybe the Y2K changes hurry your decision. Or, maybe the cost of software changes and upgrades delays or even cancels that decision, especially as the economy gets slower.
So, there are no sales to end business customers right now. The question is whether there will be. Another question is, will the customers simply wait until the boxmakers get themselves in inventory trouble before paying for this crap at much lower prices?
What I see is a feeling at the component and boxmakers that the boom is about to start. In other words, pretty far down the food chain. My distributor friends are confident, but they do seem to be biting their fingernails a lot. <G> What I know for sure is that it is not happening yet. I am planning to bet that it will not happen. I could get news that changes my mind, but there has been none so far. It is a gamble either way, but, IMHO, the stocks are already priced like huge new demand is a done deal.
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