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

To: Fangorn who wrote (31671)	3/2/1998 2:36:00 PM
From: freeus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 176388

re comparing 3 year old thoroughbred to aging saddle horse Great metaphor And right on! Freeus

To: Fangorn who wrote (31671)	3/2/1998 2:58:00 PM
From: David Harker	Respond to of 176388

My IBMer comments, DELL vs. IBM Steven Call wrote: >Jeff, Comparing Dell today to IBM in 87 is at best foolish. >In 87 IBM was an aging giant that had lost its way. >Dell today is arguably the best managed company on the planet >with laser like focus on its business plan. You are comparing >a three year old thoroughbred to a twenty year old saddle horse. My first summer job at IBM was in 1984, and I've worked at IBM full time since 1990. I agree with Steven's post! IBM's past decline was due to its (at the time) very ignorant, arrogant culture, bloated costs, etc. It is now MUCH leaner, responsive, etc - I'm biased, but it is true. In spite of these improvements at IBM, there is still no comparison between IBM and Dell - Dell is much more cost-effective internally, responsive to industry changes, etc, etc. My experiences here at IBM have taught me something about the industry, including manufacturing issues (we manufacture lots of computers here in Rochester). Dell's model of 7-day inventory turnover, extremely fast order-to-build-to-ship times, etc blows away ANYONE in this industry, and are not just numbers to brag about, but directly help the bottom line profits in a big way. I owned lots of Dell (and IBM, by the way...) and wish (really really big time) that I still owned the 100 sh. of Dell I bought in 1993 at $16.25 - would be 800 sh, going on 1600... People rant and rave about Dell 'only being a box maker' - that is silly. Dell is by far the BEST box-maker of PC's, in a world (not just USA) that wants LOTS of these boxes! The low-cost manufacturer has huge advantages in ANY market, not just PC's, and Dell is the low-cost manufacturer of PC's, period. By low-cost, I mean the amount of money they must spend internally to produce a given PC configuration, measured from taking of the order through actually delivering it to the customer's front door. I worked in IBM's order fulfillment area here in Roch, writing configuration SW for manufacturing lines - an order was the input to our SW, and configuration file used to guide the manufacturing process was the output of our SW. I know the complexities of processing/configuring/building orders for computers, and Dell has a huge cost advantage here. This cost advantage lets them charge less, while still keeping more $$ for profit.