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

To: Art C. who wrote (2350)	1/30/1998 10:56:00 AM
From: John T. Hardee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8219

Click of death" strikes Iomega (Salesmen did not tell me this) By Paul Festa January 29, 1998, 5:30 p.m. PT Users of Iomega's Zip drives are reporting serious malfunction of their drives and disks, a problem that has come to be known as the "click of death." The problem is being discussed in newsgroups including "alt.iomega.zip.jazz" and "comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc," and on Web sites such as the New Unofficial Iomega Page and the Click Death Home Page. Users report that after a time, their Zip drives will no longer read disks and instead will produce a loud clicking sound, from which the problem gets its name. Afflicted units reportedly no longer work once they get the "click of death," and numerous users reported damaged disks and data loss as well. The problem is not reported to be associated with Iomega's new storage product, called Clik, for handheld devices. DJ Breslin, a consultant and programmer at Intel, told NEWS.COM that in the past 18 months he has lost five Zip drives to the "click of death" problem. While he lauded Iomega's customer service department for replacing his broken drives, he noted that the company had not responded to a letter of complaint he sent in November. Breslin said Iomega's products were the most convenient to use because of their large installed base. "But if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't go with

To: Art C. who wrote (2350)	1/30/1998 6:25:00 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 8219

Art: No more office space and no more bean counters, I agree (g) Maybe a lot more money into research, especially on new software applications. I worry that the company is throwing out a bunch of engineers, and hiring a bunch of service related people. Used to be that IBM was a proud engineering oriented organization that developed plenty of new products and applications. It looks like there is a lot less today. I also worry about the way in which the service contracts are booked. Unfortunately, one can't get access to that but it sure is suspicious that the revenues seem to come in flat every quarter, even as hardware, maintenance and software revenues fall. Somehow, the company just manages to bring in enough new service revenue to make up the deficit. That makes me suspicious. With respect to multiple, if you go back 18 months, stock was at $49.. The revenues and earnings were essentially the same then as now, but the revenues were of higher quality (higher margins). The price of the stock has doubled to purchase the same revenues and earnings, which means the multiple paid for those revenues and earnings has doubled. I totally agree with you that Gerstner has done a great job with the stock. Last year he spent $8.0 billion to keep it up. That will prove to have been an expensive and ultimately foolish use of the money. ( Rainy days, and all that) Best, Earlie