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

To: Earlie who wrote (46590)	2/11/1999 4:58:00 PM
From: gbh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

A visit to electronics stores can be useful. Earlie, believe me, I spend far too much time browsing these stores and ads, only to find its almost always cheaper to buy online. I suspect at least some of what you see in retail toughness is due to this fact. Maybe more than some? On the business front, who am I to argue with IDC and the big resellers. They all say, "forget 1999". Corporate is the large fraction. Again, the big re-sellers are just now beginning to see that they will be impacted by the direct move of all the big guys. As far as "forget 1999", this is not at all what IDC and Dataquest (and the companies themselves) are saying. With respect to "service" margins, check last 8 quarterlies of IBM. Their figures don't "demonstrate it", they state it. Black and white. (See breakdown of revenues). No need to check. I get all the quarterlies. I still have most of mine and my wife's shares accumulated through over 10 years of employment there. They don't break down PC sales versus other much higher margin HW (like mainframes, AS/400, RS/6000, etc.). So yes, service vs, HW looks light. But I suspect, service vs. PC looks pretty good. And IBM is about the worst company example you could use. Talk about general corporate bloat <g>. Obviously you expect a continuing ascent by Dell, GTW, HWP, MSFT, IBM, CPQ, etc. I think they are about to be crunched. Time will tell. DELL and MSFT yes, pretty much straight up for awhile yet. Of course, not a bee line, and each could see sizable pullbacks. But I guess a buy at any time for the forseeable future, will make the buyer happy six months later. The others are likely to trend up, but with more choppy results. Of course I'm biased here. Large positions in MSFT and DELL, medium IBM, small CPQ. None the others. Thanks for listening... Gary