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'White Box' Makers Take Up The Slack
n3hat writes: "This story in the business section of the Baltimore Sun points out that the 'pooter bidness isn't as bad as the publicly-traded companies report. Seems that as much as 45% of systems are assembled by screwdriver shops and other white-box makers, not the big guys." No huge surprises here.
You control all your components and the way they're installed. I've seen too many of these boxen have loose ribbon cables impeding air flow, insufficient heat sinks, cheap PC Chips motherboards *shudder*, and any number of other problems. Even the good pre-built deals have a catch somewhere.
Build your own, learn something about hardware and software, and feel more confident to upgrade it. It's only slightly more difficult than putting together Ikea furniture.
This is quite understandable, considering the increasing population of computer-confident consumers, who are no longer worried that they don't have 80 years of tech support and a pretty logo (though some of the white boxes come with pretty logos now). My father is convinced that for his needs, a big national manufacturer is the best way to go, but as for me, I want more bang for my buck, a sentiment I think is becoming more common.
This article is interesting in that it talks about "... surging white box volume" and the industry taken as an aggregate -- because Plexus' stated 150 units by themselves aren't going to impress anyone but Plexus -- is an ever-more-important market for components manufacturers and for customers in the position to consider alternatives.
But I don't think anyone really ever disagreed with his final point: "The lesson: Publicly traded companies are not the whole computer industry, and the publicly traded stock market is not the whole economy." Was this ever a source of controversy?
The reason Dell and Gateway and large manufacturers are so important have to do with the support contracts they offer, the shipping options, the warranties, the phone support, the willingness and ability to ship next-day in the event of component failure: In short, the security blanket that makes department managers at large companies feel comfortable purchasing those systems.
Now we could argue back and forth about how you know some guy that purchases systems all the time from Little White Box Manufacturer and they're great and cheaper and you don't know why everybody doesn't do it, and that makes sense because to the Slashdot community those white boxes are very, very important. For many of us it's our job and for the rest if it isn't directly our job then it's an important facet. But for the typical purchasing manager the irony is that they are just white boxes. If he feels he can *safely* cut costs he might, but he will check on the support features and he might not want to be bothered with long term concerns about equipment. Not that small manufacturers don't have excellent support. But he doesn't know them and here enters the important issue of brand value, identity, and leverage.
Not to mention that the Dells and Gateways can, in fact, ship in the hundreds of units per day, manufacture in the thousands per week and purchase components in the billions of dollars per year. That's why they're important and has that really ever been a mystery?
This reporter got a good story and then took the wrong angle.
So if the market's still so healthy, why can't they sell parts?
I'll tell you my theory, which is just that - a theory. I don't have numbers to back this up, it's just based on what I perceive.
Gone are the days that we drool over our friend's new rig with oodles of megahertz and megabytes. A 400 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM and a 15 GB hard drive will run pretty much anything a consumer requires, save for games. Before everybody you know had a computer, the machine you bought two years ago isn't fast enough now (meaning 2 years after you bought it) to run those productivity apps that really would make a difference in the way you work.
Add to that the fact that the low-end PC market has become hugely competitive, with computers down into the sub-$400 range. Profit margins are lowered, and while methods of reducing costs have been introduced, they haven't kept pace with the dropping "going rate" for an entry-level computer.
It used to be that $3000 would buy you a nice machine that would be a top performer, even in terms of 3D graphics. The Dell sitting next to me was about $3300 back in April '98, and it was definitely one of the nicer desktops available at the time. But to get similar performance relative to current technology now, I'd only need to spend about $2000. And there are lots of ways (including lots of companies) to arrive at that price.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
With http://www.pricewatch.com/ out there to help folks find the best deal on a Whitebox, pricing has even become competitive in that field. Having had a number of folks who look to me to help them find a good deal on a PC, I've done lots of shopping and talking to people. I would suggest that it comes down to a couple of things.
1.) How much can you spend?
2.) Avoid such and so, who have bad track records.
3.) Does the local shop/whitebox builder have good support, if we have a problem?
If you get #3, and they don't use questionable hardware, then usually the'll have a fair price. Anywho..just my $0.02.. (which is probably only worth a red cent.)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
My computer 6 months ago consisted of an AMD-K6 300 processor, 64MB of SD-RAM, AWE 64 sound, an ATI 3D Rage Pro 4MB and the rest of the usual suspects (CD/Floppy/etc).... now it consists of an AMD-K6 300, 256MB of SD-RAM, AWE 64 sound, and a Hercules Prophet 4000XT 32MB gfx card. Have you got it yet? **Upgrade as you can afford it** Owning a "white box" has brought the greatest amount of computing pleasure and none of the headache's that a pre-built Compaq clone would. Now on to the OS ::cough:: =o)
[JJ]
"Insert Dead Smart n Clever Sig Here So I Look Brainy"
Gone are the days that we drool over our friend's new rig with oodles of megahertz and megabytes. A 400 MHz machine with 128 MB of RAM and a 15 GB hard drive will run pretty much anything a consumer requires, save for games. Before everybody you know had a computer, the machine you bought two years ago isn't fast enough now (meaning 2 years after you bought it) to run those productivity apps that really would make a difference in the way you work.
Exactly.
My mother's been using a dual celeron 366, a hand-me-down after I got my P3-866. It's enough for her to do everything she wants (MS Office, surfing, email, IM). It's a 3 or 4 year old machine hooked up to a 10 year old laser printer and a new monitor. She doesn't plan on upgrading it anytime soon, and neither do I.
I run a P3-866. I do web graphics, DTP, animations, NLE, etc. on it and find it only lags while working on full pal dv clips. I plan on upgrading it to a dual athlon setup sometime within the next 18 months.
Computers are powerful enough, really. Hell, I bought the P3 used, payed about 3/5ths of what I paid for the dual celeron 18 months earlier and it came with a larger HD, twice the ram, a better gfx card and so on. If I hadn't gotten into NLE I wouldn't even be thinking about an upgrade.
Games run fine, I can work. What more do I need? It's the same question everyone asks. And it's about time. Not many people switch up their car every 18 months because there's a newer, faster one out. Hell, almost nobody buys a new TV every year because of some new features. It shouldn't be that way with computers either.
The fact that white boxes are at 45% would seem to me to indicate that the PC market is indeed in the toilet, as they should probably be less than 20% in a healthy market. They aren't doing more business, they are just doing a bigger percentage because the industry's total volume has shrunk.
If you want five PCs for your plumbing supply company, that looks like a good deal. Buying your own machines at Costco means figuring out how PCs work, which is a distraction from plumbing.
that both Dell and Gateway started out as "White Box" system builders. I wonder at which point they became important enough to be counted?
The dogcow says "Moof!"
If you can find a local shop with good support...
In my experience, the inability to find such a shop is the #1 reason for turning to Dell/Gateway.
You get the good components. (at a local shop)
While it is more likely you'll get good components from a trustworthy local vendor, it can be very hard to find one that is trustworthy. It's easy for me to spot the scum, but it is very hard for people who are not so tech savy like my parents. When a normal person goes computer shopping, they see some numbers like 1.4GHz, 512 MB Ram, 20 GB hard drive. They have no idea what an AGP/PCI slot is, what it means to have onboard sound/video/ethernet/modem. They don't recognize brand names like Asus and Abit. Local dealers often take advantage of this by selling you a system with cheap/slow RAM, crappy offbrand all in one motherboards, in a case with an inadequate power supply.
That said, 5 o'clock computers, best shop I know of. Won't buy anywhere else.
I got my last two computers from a local shop less than two miles from my apartment. They're called GamePC and they're great.
They had a wide range of high-quality components so I could choose my own motherboard and case and stuff. They also burned it in for 48 hours and gave me a good warranty. I also got custom restore discs plus regular Windows CDs. They'll also install RedHat Linux if you want.
My next computer will be from them also. They're not dirt cheap, but high-quality and I don't have to cut myself up trying to put together my own system. :-)
I also like the idea of supporting a local small business.
-- Jessica
The mutant geek grrl from Hell.