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Dell Protests 'Not Wintel's Lapdog'
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on a protestation by Dell's CTO, Kevin Kettler, who says quite loudly that they are not Microsoft and Intel's puppet." From the article: "Essentially, Kettler argued, Dell was responsible for selecting, if not necessarily developing, many of the technologies in today's desktop computers and servers. Among standards for which he said Dell deserves credit are 802.11 wireless networking, PCI Express communications technology and 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 line of processors."
Dell doesn't really need to be defensive. They do one thing, and they do it really well: Dell builds cheap computers. There's a lot of value there, the quality of their product and support notwithstanding.
Sure, they don't really do R&D. But they don't need to - they have Intel, Microsoft, Lexmark, and the rest of the OEM partners to do that. They are a gateway to the market, not a market-maker. That's their niche. It's a really big one, and they do it really well. After all, they do make billions a year. And unlike Microsoft, they do it without being a monopoly.
Isn't this like Pinocchio claiming that he isn't Geppetto's puppet?
I want a new computer.
On www.dell.ca, I selected a Dimension 3100 - it's all that I need in a general purpose PC. I clicked on the "Customize it!" button. And it seems that I can't get it without Windows. (Not sure if that link will work, it set a few cookies in Firefox.) Furthermore, I have serious issues with any technology company sufficiently ignorant to run IIS.
Though I've always liked Dell hardware, Pinocchio gets no sale from me.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I worked on Airport while at Apple and I can confirm that we did indeed work with Lucent but we did not simply rebrand their tech. Lots of effort from many Apple Engineers went into that product. I personally spent a month at their HQ in Holland working on the freaking thing.
Unfortunately, unlike other Apple efforts, this one gets little to no recognition today. (Parent's parent post excluded of course).
He specifically said Intel 64-bit x86 extensions, and that's absolutely true. Intel had 64-bit x86 extensions in the works for a long time, even longer than AMD, but did not want to release them. Why? One word: Itanium. Intel was fully aware that the main differentiating feature of Itanium versus Xeon was that Itanium was 64-bit, and that adding 64-bit extensions to Xeon with the commensurate promise of full compatability and performance for their 32-bit apps would kill off the already anemic Itanium sales.
When AMD released their 64-bit parts, Intel didn't respond and let AMD take the technology leadership position in the x86 market, in the name of preserving Itanium. Opteron started doing very well in the server market, though, and Dell's server division was getting knocked around. Their customers wanted 64-bit, and they vastly preferred an x86 chip to do it. "Why can't we have a 64-bit x86 chip?" they were saying, either directly to Dell or indirectly by buying Opteron-based servers. Thus the pressure Dell put on Intel to come out with x86-64, which they surely knew Intel was holding in their back pocket. I imagine an ultimatum to release a 64-bit Xeon or Dell would start selling Opterons is what did it.
People understimate the pressure Dell can apply to Intel. Sure, Dell really needs Intel and definitely benefits from preferential pricing, and thus wants to make Intel happy. On the other hand, Intel needs the world's largest OEM to be pure-Intel, creating a marketshare buffer zone (and commensurate dependable income) to help in their battle with AMD, and thus must keep Dell happy too. A Dell defection would be very bad for Intel, and issues like 64-bit x86 could have forced Dell's hand.
The enemies of Democracy are
You might be on to something.
Why would Dell making noise about this now?
You'd think their competitor had just announced something that Dell suddenly perceived as a threat...
No need to get snippy. I would personally just rather read a story about some company actually making new standards that will make next years computers even better than they are now, rather than some tired article about what OEM is claiming to have driven what standard in the past.
It isn't that I so much object to the *actual* political stories that effect technology, but rather these "geek club politics" kind of stories. They always seem to boil down to some variant of:
Dell is stupid.
Microsoft is evil.
As is Sony.
But Google isn't.
Open source will save the world.
DRM will destroy the world.
Standards are the world.
Apple invented the world.
This season's fashion report on what all the best coders are using.
It seems like a lot of these stories aren't really even news stories at all, but just another excuse to forward one of the above arguments. There is plenty going on in the world that could excite some really interesting discussion that geeks might be interested in aside from these rather well beaten paths. I don't really think there is much of value left to say on any of these subjects, since they all get weekly coverage, if not daily coverage. You might think it is interesting to have the same conversation about different aspects of the same subjects over and over and over again, but I find it pretty boring.