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Technology Stocks : DELL Bear Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (2405)	1/15/1999 5:53:00 PM
From: Dan B.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2578

<<There was a time when a pocket calculator had a bunch of un-integrated components and was hand soldered by humans. And they cost $500 each, (back in '79 dollars!). Now pocket calculators are fully integrated with no human labor. And most of the pocket calculator companies of the late 70s went out of business. The remaining survivors do big business, but it isn't considered a big profit source, or a huge growth business. (TXN, HWP).>> I definitely see that cheap computers are selling like gangbusters. This comparison to calculators needs to be considered in the light of the fact these are very different products. Calculators do math. That's all that's needed from them. They've been doing an adequate job for 20 years. Most folks using them have never and will never need nor want the improved varieties of calculators available today. Computers on the other hand have constantly expanded their usefulness and practicality for ever increasing numbers of people. What a computer will do for a person will continue to evolve. The tremendous sales still to come for these really decent low priced internet computers will cause great demand for bandwidth on the net, which will in fact bring us greatly increased bandwidth, as has already begun. Once this larger "pipe" is available at home, the cheap computers will be substantially better at what they do for most folks. Yet the applications the pipe will be able to deliver will require more expensive chips to run on. To imagine that the computer industry would go the way of the calculator, you'd have to see a point where there would come an end to demand for the better applications that will become possible thanks to increasing bandwidth and chip/programing evolution. I can imagine such a point arriving, but it is as a dream- it's way too far off to be concerned about now- and I'm pretty sure it always will be. P.S. Be carefull with Dell- they never seem to have any unwanted inventory to sell- just the wanted stuff- whatever that may become.