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Dell CEO Tells All

Posted by timothy on from the formerly-of-black-flag dept.

zapatero writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an enjoyable read with new Dell CEO Kevin Rollins. He has quite a critique of the HP acquisition of Compaq: 'They had a great, profitable printer business before. They still have a great, profitable printer business. ... Their profits are 70 to 80 percent from the printer business. So that's the area where the profit pool still lives. It's where it lived before. It's where it still is now. So I just ask, what's changed?'"

1 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Company's brand way too strong by Douglas+Simmons · · Score: 0, Redundant
    I'm interning for a labor union, part of the AFL-CIO. The other day we had a consultant sent in from the head office of the local chapter to our "satelite office" who basically went around showing off his laptop, enticing them to buy it. "Because all the SEIU offices are buying from Dell," he said, "we have a great wholesale deal and I can get you this baby for only two grand. Watch me double click this and look how fast that pops up! Top of the line!"

    I asked for him to list the specs: 1.8GHz, 14", 512MB, "Dell's guaranteed customer support," etc. I fired up pricewatch, told it to list 1.8GHz laptops with Windows installed (argh), and I'm looking at the same machine for $550. The ram was only 128, but pricewatch is listing 512 laptop chips starting at $50.

    So I interject that even without some "wholesale deal" I could save them $1400 per laptop, but the consultant douche jumps in saying "Well you could save a few bucks buying from some no-name chopshop or you could get the peace-of-mind that buying from a trustworthy company that Dell offers."

    My point is that a brand shouldn't be this powerful. Yeah maybe they'll send you a new machine if you step on it or whatever but you could work out similar deals with the little guys. But god damn, we're just going to drop hundreds of members' total dues for the year without shopping around??

    Detecting a wall of office politics, as a lowly intern I backed off to choose my battles more carefully. After all, as far as the guys in my office were concerned, the two grand a unit wasn't coming out of some Christmas bonus fund or anything else that could affect them. My question is, in the interests of keeping our markets more effecient and increasing the flow of stuff being spread to consumers, shouldn't the government subsidize heavy promotion of pricewatch.com?