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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Perfect Hedge who wrote (30131)	7/22/1998 1:32:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Brox, I think they will beat estimates, at least in the headline numbers. Michael has been mouthing off about what a great quarter this is for months, so he must have some trick up his sleeve. MB

To: The Perfect Hedge who wrote (30131)	7/22/1998 9:26:00 PM
From: Earlie	Respond to of 132070

BB: Can't speak for MB, but I think Dell misses mildly but not enough to do damage. Dell is starting to hurt because it is running out of high end customers as the whole market migrates to the "under $1.000" price points. Dell is already scrambling to figure out how to compete down there and not get cremated. They have to do it even though they hate it (no margins) and realize that coming in late is bad news. Dell is a great manager of BTO and inventory control, but that can't be translated into consequential market share gains or margins in this kind of bloody shakeout or in this kind of glut. How the heck the company manages to persuade sane people to send a cheque and then wait for delivery of the same product they can buy at their corner emporium and get immediate delivery as well as local service is a full-blown mystery to me but one that won't last for forever. Certainly they have marketed the concept well (appeals to the ego?,....you're so special that a very special computer has to be assembled to meet your super-special computing needs?) Dell still has all the accounting gimmicks (that their competitors have already resorted to) in their quiver. No mortal wounds in evidence yet, but its turn will come. A while back, a rumour circulated that Dell had serious accounting problems. We dug, but came up empty. Best, Earlie