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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Captain Jack who wrote (79313)	3/9/2000 11:54:00 PM
From: Piotr Koziol	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 97611

CJ, how do you think THIS will affect CPQ price tomorrow? Is this a case of "when DELL sneezes CPQ gets pneumonia"? Dell Notebooks Have Bad Memory 17:18EST By CONNIE MABIN Associated Press Writer 03/09/00 AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Dell Computer Corp. is warning as many as 400,000 notebook computer customers that their machines may contain defective memory chips. The Round-Rock-based computer maker this week sent a letter to customers who purchased the Latitude and Inspiron notebooks shipped between Feb. 1 and Nov. 20, 1999, said Dell spokesman Rob Crawley. Corporate clients that may have purchased multiple machines were notified by Dell account executives, who will set up meetings with those customers to explain the possible problem and solutions, he said. The problem was discovered after Dell analyzed a string of customer service calls reporting similar trouble: computers that freeze following system failures, causing a loss or corruption of data. Pinning down the defective memory as the cause was hard to do because there are several different reasons systems crash and the problem does not always surface right away, Crawley said. About 48 percent, or 400,000, of the Lattitude and Insipiron portables shipped during the Februrary-November period may have received defective memory, Crawley said. Memory from other manufacturers was also used, so not every unit sold at that time will be affected, he added. Crawley said that customers who may have the defective memory should use a diagnostic diskette sent with the letter or download the program from Dell's Web site to test their notebooks. If the diagnostic test shows faulty memory, Dell will ship new memory overnight, or consumers can send their notebooks back to Dell for memory replacement at the company's expense. It's not clear yet exactly how much fixing the memory problem will cost the nation's leading personal computer maker, which has reaped $25.3 billion in revenue over the past four quarters. Affected models include the Latitude CPiA, CPiR, CPt, CPx and CS and Inspiron 3500, 3700, 7000 and 7500.