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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Keo who wrote (132535)	6/12/1999 9:44:00 PM
From: Z268	Respond to of 176387

RE:" What kind of PC will be availble for free? what kind of support? And,,, someone has to build those free PCs for Microsoft. MSFT won't actually get them for free... I know dell was going to step up the cheap pc market...so.. maybe this is a little threat." The following extract is from Raging Bull Cyberstock Investor Report of June 11. It appears variants of this business model are being considered. ____________________________ Is Dell preparing to embrace the free PC craze? Dell Computer (DELL) this week officially launched DellNet, a free Internet service in the United Kingdom, with plans to roll out similar free ISPs in Germany and France shortly. In the U.K., DellNet will rely on British Telecommunications' (BTY) networks, and integrate content from Excite At Home's (ATHM) Excite portal site into the service. The DellNet software will be pre-installed on Dell computers sold in the U.K., and will be available for download on the company's U.K. Web site. Of course, free ISPs are nothing new for Europe or the U.K. Over 50 free ISPs have popped up in the U.K. in the past year. In fact, free ISP Dixons' Freeserve is now the largest Internet provider in all of the U.K. That's right. With 1.5 million customers, Freeserve is actually bigger than AOL in the U.K. I believe Dell's move foreshadows the company's entrance into the U.S. ISP business somehow in the next few months. At the Paine Webber (PWJ) tech conference this week, a Dell executive told the audience that Dell sees "opportunities outside of the box that we intend to pursue." However, I don't expect a domestic ISP offering by Dell to be "free." More likely, Dell will offer a deeply discounted PC ($200-$250) to customers who agree to sign up for the DellNet ISP at $20 a month or so for a specified number of months. In a conference call last month, Dell founder and Chief Executive Michael Dell told analysts that Dell was exploring plans to make "the PC look like a cable-TV subscription." In other words, a business model that would give Dell a consistent monthly revenue stream from its PCs, much like a financial product. Smart, Michael Dell. Very smart. If any of the box makers has the ability to do a complete 180-degree turn of its business model in the face of declining PC prices, it would appear to be Dell. This is bad news for upstart "free PC" firms like Gobi, Enchilada and Free-PC.com. If I'm observing Dell's recent comments and moves correctly, the direct selling monster from Austin, Texas, is about to enter their space. Not only would this aggressive move attack the free PC upstarts, but it would place Dell closer to direct competition with the portals and ISPs. As I noted a few months back in this report, many of the box makers seemed to be positioning themselves to offer a full suite of content, e-commerce and connectivity services. I believe portals and community sites still have a chance to fight back against the box makers by leveraging their existing millions of eyeballs and launching their own free ISPs like NetZero, but no portal seems to be making a move yet. _________________________