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

To: Jack T. Pearson who wrote (44141)	5/21/1998 4:54:00 PM
From: Michael Burry	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Re: problems from last Q. I recently went shopping for a PC in mid-April. I needed a 400 Mhz for my small business soon. Called MUEI, Quantex,GTW, DELL. The first three couldn't get me a 400 Mhz until around May 12. Dell promised the first days of May. I ended up ordering from Unicent cuz they said I'd have it in 5 days. It took over a week. During that week, I noticed Circuit City had a sale. 400 Mhz Pentiums from HP and NEC. For less than the direct systems, with the only major difference being less RAM and no monitor (with $100 64 MB chips and $350 17" monitor the prices equilibrate). I called to cancel, but Unicent promised to ship it next day air. Didn't happen. Even if Dell had made its promise, HP and NEC had products at retail with the same components in better time. Dell, Gateway, and Quantex all told me that the delay was waiting for the 400 Mhz chips. Yet HP was quicker to the draw even though it had to deal with the channel. The net of it is if I could do it all over, I'd walk on down to the Circuit City. My feeling is that the channel is not yesterdays dishwater and that it is just a matter of learning to do it right. Could the JIT inventory model become a timing liability if/when HP and IBM do the channel right and Dell is still having to assemble each PC as ordered. IOW, JIT doesn't need to be in the channel, and and the channel may just have been caught with its hands down. HP and IBM don't need the PC margins of a Dell. Their cost of equity is much lower, and they are much more diversified. Even if I were a high end customer requiring service and many machines, why would I choose Dell? Cost was never an issue except for Micron. All were pretty much in the same ballpark. When I see predictions of 40% into perpetuity, I am confused. The recent 40% number is part of a downtrend. Especially when I think that IBM is developing technologies that could lay the foundation for next-step chips and Intel's next generation chips are a 50/50 with HWP. Good Investing, Mike