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

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (20233)	3/7/1998 2:14:00 AM
From: Roads End	Respond to of 97611

Doug..Bless you, what you said is dead on. The diminishing returns threshold has been reach with respect to Moore's law. Another doubling is not really going to give an adequate return on the cost of producing that doubling. Anyone, what are you doing on your pc you couldn't do with the p200 and 32 meg ram? 95% or better at a min, the rest is mostly Tool Time Tim Testosterone.

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (20233)	3/7/1998 3:19:00 AM
From: WeisbrichA	Respond to of 97611

DF, You are right on about your replies. I have long since given up talking about productivity to people buying PCs. Everything today is OVERKILL. In my wife's office recently, where everyone has a computer on their desk, the gal with longest time there wanted a faster computer like the HP the gal in sales admin just got. She had a perfectly good P5/120 clone with 15" VGA monitor. The only apps were a network Order entry running off remote server, and Excel5 (using tables only). They went out and spent better than $3K to replace a system that works just fine. She now has a 17" monitor, a sparkling clean new keyboard, and a box with the fancy HP logo.. She still has to wait on the server all the time. Spreadsheet (tables.... no calcs) that run at the same speed. Maybe her games run faster. You would be surprised at how common this "one upmanship" is the offices of USA. It is an emotional thing, not a productivity issue. RW

To: Doug Fowler who wrote (20233)	3/7/1998 2:28:00 PM
From: Jack T. Pearson	Respond to of 97611

Doug, We use a range of PCs at work. Everything from 100Mhz to 300Hhz. The high end users never have enough speed. I suspect 1Ghz won't be enough for some of the engineering stuff we do. To other users, we give a PC with enough speed so that their isn't a significant delay for their applications. Applications are the key here. Microsoft and other vendors are what drive our mid to low speed PC refresh cycle. But I don't want to over-simplify it. The PC speed decision process is complex. On the other hand, you should consider that large companies, and I suspect smaller ones, make long term agreements with vendors both to get better prices and service, but also to simplify support and minimize support costs. If a company doesn't support Compaq machines currently, I believe it is less likely to buy at a Compaq fire sale. Furthermore, Microsoft is about to release Windows 98. I suspect some are delaying purchase decisions until they see what kind of performance they get with Windows 98 on their current equipment. If Windows 98 is faster than the current Windows, I believe PC sales growth will really drop off.