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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (80657)	11/21/1999 10:27:00 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1572369

If Gateway gets an Athlon unit out by the end of the month that says alot about the availability of the Athlon and motherboards... I wonder how long Gateway has been planning the Athlon...didn't they just announced they were dropping AMD a couple of weeks ago? Maybe they just said that to snooker Intel out of that $20M "gift"... <GGG> If Gateway comes on that means this Christmas season will be fundamentally better than last year...when Gateway couln't get the chips they wanted... Also, last year, Intel used the Celeron as a weapon against the K6-2. This time around Intel is having to use their big "high profit" gun, the Floppermine...BIG difference...

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (80657)	11/21/1999 11:46:00 PM
From: Scot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572369

RE: "Best Buy has a MAJOR sale coming up over Thanksgiving. You're gonna be amazed how many AMD systems they move...while the Floppermine is in short supply." Yeah, the current AD only lasts until Wednesday. The massive ads in either Thursday's or Friday's paper should be an indication of what to expect this holiday season. This is so great that Athlon systems are widely available at stores right NOW and Gateway is icing on the cake! I also noticed that the ad was only through Wednesday. I'm not kidding when I say that the boxes were stacked over my 6' head in every department; you could barely walk through the store. Let's hope Compaq does well with their AMD sales. On Gateway, I guess I always felt they only reluctantly decided to use the k6-2 in their past systems. IMO, winning the Gateway account was hard fought for little gain. Who knows what concessions were made at the time. Not to mention that the chips were always at the low end. This whole seeming change of events is a bit puzzling. It was only a short time ago that Gateway announced they would no longer be using AMD chips. Add to this the often-repeated statement that Gateway was using AMD to leverage its relationship with Intel. Is Gateway at the short end of a supply stick? Hard to believe. You would think in late September they would have an idea if they weren't going to be getting many cumines. Are they as "just in time" as Dell? Here are some quotes from a recent news.com article on the subject. See the whole thing for some interesting "analyst" remarks. What a change in perspective over 2 months! This "clown" company is kicking a$$! -Scot news.cnet.com. September 20, 1999, 1:15 p.m. PT AMD: Gateway's leverage against Intel Gateway incorporated the AMD chips as leverage to get lower prices from the king of the hill, suggested Aberdeen Group analyst Shawn Willett. "Gateway used Athlon as a kind of lever to get better terms from Intel," he said. And Intel seems to be willing to play ball. "It's real interesting how scared Intel is of this chip," Willett said. "Intel is going to great lengths to prevent Athlon from gaining headway." Several performance tests have shown the new high-end Athlon chip to have better performance than corresponding chips from Intel. But Intel has new, faster "Coppermine" chips due at the end of October, sources say. [...] Kumar and other industry sources said Gateway will discontinue the use of AMD's chips in its consumer line after the current models are phased out. These were the only models where AMD chips were used. Gateway began using AMD chips in certain models of its Select series computers in February and its Profile all-in-one computer in June. Gateway declined to comment on "rumors and speculation," a spokesman said, regarding the disappearance of AMD from Gateway's home-oriented products. However, about the company's decision not to use Athlon chips, the spokesman said: "It was a business decision based on one line of products at one given point in time. Our current product line is already meeting the needs of high-end users quite well."