Made in the USA

 

I want to start off by saying I’m not a fan of Dell BUT this is not a Anti Dell post either. I just want to add a few notes of mine to the blog so they are out there in case somebody might just want to see them

 

First off take a look at this image which just goes to show that Made in the USA Dell is anything but:

 

http://tinyurl.com/n54ts

 

Now this is no different from any other vender, HP, Whitebox, etc. Basically about the only thing found in a PC anymore which may be made in the US might be the CPU, Power Supply and Memory as motherboards, video cards, hard drives and all the other odds and ends come from China, Taiwan and such. The odds are fairly high that the CPU, Power Supply and Memory will also come from overseas as well even though there are companies with plants in the US making those parts. Just about every Intel chip I have ever picked up said made in Malaysia on it although I seem to remember one that had Puerto Rico which surprised me.

 

What I’m getting at is for those of you thinking Dell or HP or IBM make a better PC than another vendor or your local whitebox shop you should think again. All of them use the same parts, from the same overseas plants and the basic difference between any of them is the quality of the parts they buy. In simple terms each of the big box guys go overseas and find a part that meets their quality vs. price point. Dell might go to the same plant HP went to and buy a similar part at a different price point or quality level. Sure they may get something spec’d out for them directly like when Dell use to buy Intel motherboards but had Intel switch to a cheaper lan chip (non-Intel) but odds are for anything other than the system board they buy what the plant has coming off the line.

 

Your local Whitebox vendor however is another story, or maybe I should say he usually is. Most whitebox vendors do not have the pockets of a Dell or HP so they buy off the shelf parts. Since the profit margin on a PC is near nothing a whitebox vendor will usually want parts he is familiar with or trust or that carry a nice warranty. The last thing he wants to do is to answer tech support calls about bad power supplies or memory on something he probably made less than 10% on. In our case when we build a system we buy only name brand parts with at least a one year warranty and prefer three year. This means no off brand memory, Intel or Intel design reference motherboards and so on. If your buying whitebox PC’s ask your vendor what parts he is sticking inside and ask to see the boxes. If he is legit and using good parts he will have no problems with that at all.

 

Lastly I want to add that rumor is Dell is in trouble, Their stock is off in a big way over the past two years, their margins are thinning and the competition is picking up. This resulted in Dell recently saying they would finally start using AMD chips in their servers but I’m betting that’s only the start. Further rumor is that Dell will announce the use of AMD in the desktops and maybe even notebooks this month. Dell really has no choice as they no longer get the HUGE discounts from Intel they use to get on CPU’s so their profit margin on a PC was shrinking. With a stock that is not moving, a market that is tired of endless upgrades and no Microsoft OS release this year to force upgrades Dell had to do something to spark some interest in their stock. People far to often discount the value of a companies stock in how the company does business but I’m saying it right here Dell is on the verge of a major implosion of their stock which will have huge impact on how Dell does business. If Dell’s stock was to drop to under $20 it could cause a full out bail which in turn could drop the stock further. When the stock drops like that the big houses that own tons of a stock get right n the phone with Mike and tell him to get things moving which usually means cut cost. With almost 65% of Dell’s stock owned by the big funds and such you can bet those calls are already taking place.

 

 

But hey what do I know. This is not a tock board and I’m not giving sotck advice. Let’s just keep an eye on Dell and see what happens over the next month or so.

What a month for Microsoft

Well the past month has been an interesting one for MS. From getting caught putting spyware on users PC (hehehe, sorry Jim) to Mr. Bill saying so long here’s a list of what’s happening at the Evil Empire.

 

1. Mr Bill says so long. Bill says he’s moving on but that won’t be until July 08 so only time will tell. More calls for Steve Ballmer to step down by various market watchers, some with very strong words about Ballmer’s failure to direct MS in the right directions. 

 

2. Corporate Vice President Martin Taylor was most likely fired by all accounts. After just getting his VP for MSN and MS Live Marketing in March the news was a surprise to most including MS’s own PR group who when Taylor was late for an interview stated Taylor had been bumped from his plane in Dallas.

 

3. Mark Zbikowski, architect and development manager, left MS in early June. More or less with MS from day one (DOS 1 days) he was working with the Vista group from what I gather and was a key person at MS. No news on where he has gone.

 

4. Robert Scoble decides to split as well after being one of MS’s biggest mouthpieces. Scoble is headed to a podcasting startup company.

 

5. Vic Gundotra, general manager for platform evangelism at Microsoft  has jumped ship for Google. Gundotra was with MS for a year and will actually take a full year off before starting at Google due to a non-compete.

 

6. MS Office 2007 delayed. Ok that’s probably not news but par for the course. Rumors pick up that Vista as well is being pushed back but MS denies it.

 

7. MS gets nailed about WGA and is it spyware or not due to it’s phoning home and lack of uninstall. At least one CAL filed in WA. MS releases an updated WGA that only phones home every 14 days (wow) and a 12 step process for removing the older version that I’m sure no admin or consultant would want any average user attempting.

 

8. MS tells 1000 contractors to take a week off, no pay and to schedule two more days off before June 30th.

9. Rumors of layoffs or re-orgs at MS abound. MS confirmed they were laying off 214 salespeople but others are reporting certain groups within MS are being cut by as much as 50%.

 

10. Microsoft and the EU go at it again with MS looking at 2.5 mill a day in fines. An internal MS email says MS feels they have complied however they feel it is likely the EU will impose the fine and back date it to Dec. 15, 2005. This will be in addition to the nearly 500 mill the EU already fined MS which MS has appealed and it looks like they are going to lose that one as well putting the fines at over 1 Billion.

 

 

I’m sure I missed a few other items but what a month for MS.