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

To: Frank Ellis Morris who wrote (40631)	12/21/1998 10:58:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 97611

Frank - If you are really a Dell shareholder you would be concerned too. What I am concerned by is the tone of the many posters to Annette on this information, not the information itself. Dell ships millions of PCs a year, more than 20,000 a day. Even if they have better than 99% perfect shipments, that still means that hundreds of boxes go out every day with some kind of problem. There is a point at which the cost of increasing the percentage of perfect systems is far outweighed by the cost of finding the problems. DELL would certainly not intentionally ship bad product, but they are an extremely well-managed company, and they can rely on one of the best field organizations in the business and a general reputation for quality to ride over the inevitable bumps. I have absolutely no cause for concern about this story, even if true. Every large vendor has hundreds of 'horror stories' every year, one only needs to examine the level 2 escalation reports to understand the dimensions of the challenge. As long as the vendor proactively 'makes it right' and does its best to minimize such occurrences, there is no reason to be worried. On the other hand, the attitude that says that without any real understanding of the problem, posters on a public forum will nuke anyone who posts something which might be viewed as negative has the primary effect of limiting the information that we as investors have available to make choices. The posts sent to Annette were intentionally intimidating, and for the most part sent by people who obviously had no understanding of how the manufacturing process works, what a sensible business practice around quality control consists of, or whether this particular story is true or not. Anyone who believes that a public forum like SI should encourage as much information exchange as possible must take a stand against the kind of posts which appeared in response to Annette's post. To paraphrase an early advocate of free speech 'I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it!'.