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

To: Jim Patterson who wrote (27131)	1/8/1998 5:51:00 PM
From: Francois H. Gaston	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 176387

Yes, I am new on this board. I am a Dell Bear and a CPQ bull. I can see that CPQ sells and sells "bezillions" of PCs in my neighborhood and many customers come with a piece of paper from a friend who told them to buy that specific low priced Compaq, on sale. I did my Peter Lynch bit and saw that Compaqs sell like crazy, locally and that our schools are leaving Apple Power Macs for cheap PCs. I owned 3 Gateways at home over 4 years and all ended up having a problem like the 3 Gateways I have used at work. Gateways left the lower end market to "compete" with the big guys. So I switched to Compaq: own 3 now at home and two are the black presarios: keyboard is too black and they are noisy: but boy! what a deal. NO breakdown. I will keep upgrading on a yearly basis... with sub 1000 $ PCs... Instead of buying one at 2000$. I don't need the whistles. I buys second hand cars... and brand new, but cheap, PCs. Compaq got my business. Dell never could entice me with their high end PCs. Mr. Dell has not responded well to the sub 1000$ PC war which CPQ started... and which Compaq is winning hands down(IMHO) (41% of average customer are buying sub 1000$ PCs and guess what: my guess is that CPQ will get half of that (a guess here). Market share is the name of the game and Pfeiffer (CPQ CEO) said that the margin on those is very good. DELL has not reacted to this war. Mr. DELL spent his time criticizing Mr. Job. That is how I see it. Oh! Yes! The PE for DELL is about 37 and CPQ 28... both expensive. When one of them will miss their QTR target, you could see a 40% drop... When one of them will see shrinking in their earnings.... They could look like APM with a PE of about 3 now! For Dell that means shares prices down to about 6-7$. I am just teasing here but you get the idea. I am sticking with my Dell Shorts. I don't see a good run up with this high PE in a very unstable market. If the share price goes up before earnings: they also could be a sell off on "good news". Long and shorts beware. Very choppy time ahead. Not trying to be mean. Just expressing my opinion. I receive no benefit in seeing somebody loose money. None. Gaston

To: Jim Patterson who wrote (27131)	1/8/1998 8:40:00 PM
From: Meathead	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176387

Jim... Here is the latest from IDC/Neilson. Does'nt support your theory that sub-zero's are dominating. U.S. Home PC Buying Set to Soar Twice as many U.S. households are intending to purchase a personal computer this holiday season compared with last year, according to preliminary findings from a joint IDC and ACNielsen research study. Of those planning to buy, 48 percent are first-time buyers -- nearly 30 percent of whom are budgeting less than $1,250 for their system. "If intentions to buy are fulfilled at the same rate as last year, then we're going to have nearly 1.5 million new PC households by January 31," said Bill Ablondi, vice president of IDC/LINK's New Media Group. "The sub-$1,000 PC has caught people's attention and many who thought a PC was beyond their reach financially are now coming to market. There is no question this category is expanding the home PC market." The joint study also shed considerable light on who is planning to buy sub-$1,000 PCs. Fifty two percent of those planning to purchase systems priced between $750 and $1,249 are current owners; 48 percent are first-time buyers. "The sub-$1,000 PC has created quite a stir," said Ablondi, "but 70 percent of all those 'very likely' to buy a PC by the end of January are planning to spend more than $1,250 - 38 percent are intending to spend more than $2,000." The survey of ACNielsen's Homescan Panel, initiated in mid-November, runs through Dec. 31, 1997. Preliminary results are based on the first 12,231 respondents and are projected to all U.S. households based on ACNielsen's extensive demographic and geographic profile of panel members. More Key Findings: Sixty-two percent of those budgeting between $750 and $999 for their PC have total household incomes of $35,000 or less. Forty-five percent of current owners are planning to spend $2,000 or more for their PC during the holiday season and another 30 percent between $1,250 and $1,999. Nineteen percent of first-time buyers are looking for systems between $750 and $999, whereas less than 16 percent of repeat buyers are eyeing this category. If intentions to buy are fulfilled at the same rate as last year, then we're going to have nearly 1.5 million new PC households by January 31. End of Article Hmmm, 38% of the 70% who plan to spend more than $1250 on system are planning to spend more than $2000??? 38% of 70% is 27% of all individuals plan to spend > $2000 30% plan to spend < $1250. I'll even give you the fact that $1250 constitiues a sub-zero. Here's another interesting fact. In Q3, 5.4 Million systems purchased were home systems while 14 Million went to business/education/government so home system purchases accounted for 28% of all systems sold. What does all this mean???? One could take a wild ass guess and say sub-zeros accounted for 40% of all PC sales in Q4!!! or, they could ignore the sensationalistic media dogma crap and figure it out for themselves. So, to continue.... sub-zero is NOT being designed for businesses today in any major way nor are those price points being hit. So we can still make the distinction that sub-zero is almost exclusively aimed at and purchased by the home market today. If 28% of ALL sales are to homes and only 30% are sub-zero that means only 8.4% of ALL systems sold are sub-zero's.. I'll throw in 1.6% since I didn't get you anything for christmas and make it 10%<ggg> I used different analytical approach a few weeks back to arrive at a similar conclusion... I'll post the link if you'd like. MEATHEAD