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To: Mani1 who wrote (3296)	8/6/1999 10:37:00 PM
From: Mani1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3645

infoworld.com Notebook delays hamstring IT managers? mobile projects By Dan Briody InfoWorld Electric Posted at 5:04 PM PT, Aug 6, 1999 As the summer swelter tapers off, tempers continue to run hot as shipments of notebook computers experience unprecedented delays throughout the country. Customers have reached their wits? end as the LCD shortage in Asia is having a devastating impact on the U.S. notebook market, resulting in delays as long as two months. ?Right now, this is killing me,? said Jonathan Schreiber, president of Infinite Mobility, a provider of mobile solutions in Long Beach, Calif. ?The vendors are on back order and we can?t get units to people.? Compounding the notebook shortage are the product transitions that most companies are currently undergoing in preparation for the fall product lineup, which will include new chip sets and processors from Intel. ?This is a cyclical market,? said Katrina Dahlquist, analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. ?Vendors are undergoing standard product transitions right now, and that links with the LCD shortages [to create shipment delays].? Shortages and delays of this magnitude compel large organizations to stock up on notebooks in order to prepare for repairs and failures, thereby pushing inventory back to the customer and raising overall IT costs. ?We have to stockpile notebooks in a back room because we never know if we?ll be able to get one from the vendor. And we may or may not end up using them,? said one IT manager at a Fortune 500 company. ?That?s not where we want to spend our money.? Analysts warn that the notebook shortage will get worse before it gets better, likely easing up by the second quarter of next year. In the meantime, there may be a few options for IT managers that remain hard-pressed to find notebooks. Ironically, Compaq resellers have some products available because of channel-stuffing ? where vendors ship units to PC resellers to register sales numbers ? that went on earlier in the year. Also, NEC officials are attempting to take advantage of the shortage by leveraging their own LCD plants in Japan. ?We are seeing some business increase, because if [customers] can?t get [notebooks] from their first-tier vendor, we do have availability,? said Mike DeNefe, director of mobile PCs at NEC, in Mountain View, Calif. ?We are an LCD manufacturer and saw this coming a long time ago. We are using that to our advantage and getting some priority scheduling.? Notebook vendors are trying to sell off what they have, and that varies from vendor to vendor. NEC claims an abundance of 13.3-inch and 14-inch screens, while Dell says they have 12.1-inch screens. ?We can?t sell you what we don?t have,? said Rob Crawley, a spokesman for Dell, in Round Rock, Texas.