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HP Regains Throne as Top PC Maker
Nick writes "HP is once again the leading PC manufacturer." From the article: "HP has snatched the PC crown from Dell's barely coherent clutches. It has taken HP close to three years to once again lead the market in worldwide PC sales. Under CEO Carly Fiorina and post Compaq, the company largely gave up on the tit-for-tat struggle with Dell for the PC top spot that had been so important to it over the years. Now it has reclaimed the #1 slot during the third quarter on the back of Dell's self-destruction. Overall, worldwide PC shipments hit 59.1m units in the third quarter - a 7 per cent rise from the same period last year, according to new data from Gartner. The US PC market, however, dipped 2 per cent, marking its first fall since mid-2002. Dell is particularly exposed to the US PC market, and it showed." Update: 10/20 16:37 GMT by Z : Switched link to a more current story.
It's good to see HP getting results from the vast improvement in PC quality, pricing, and service. My company used to solely buy Dell's, but lately have become frustrated by the 'here today gone tomorrow' pricing. It's annoying for a small business purchasing manager to go into Dell's Home PC section and find the same PC as the Small Business section for $100 less one day, and $100 more the next. Come on Dell, stop playing games with us.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
This is just the results of dirty back-handed wheeling-and-dealing committed by all corporations and is probably nothing to be particularly proud of.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I think Zonk had a Kent Brockman moment, he saw HP taking market share and took it from there, posting the article was basically his way of saying "I for one welcome our new, top-selling PC-making overlords."
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
Four years ago, I purchased a Dell laptop for my son when he went off to college. It lasted all of a year before the hard drive died. After quite a bit of trouble with customer service reading scripts in Indiglish we finally got an RMA. The machine worked for about two weeks after it was returned and then developed some unrelated problem. Rather than waste another 4 hours on un-intelligible tech support, I bought my son another computer from a different manufacturer. It's worked flawlessly for the past 3 years.
Judging from what I read on the net while I was researching my son's second problem, I don't think my experience with poor quality product and poor quality tech support from Dell is unique.
There's a limit to cost cutting - go too far and you destroy the reason people initially bought from you. In my case, it'll be a long time before I ever buy another Dell. In the past 4 years, that's 3 computers Dell hasn't sold me.
I'm about in the same place with Apple. My wife's old iBook G3-600 was in the shop four times under warranty, and she's had to replace the power adapter three times, with the current adapter being a third-party model that is *much* sturdier (and way cheaper) than the crap Apple shipped with the iBook. Against my better judgement, I bought her a new 2GHz MacBook (she much prefers OS X to Windows), and I've yet to get that machine to a usable state. Random shutdowns that resetting the PRAM/PMU won't fix, and the machine won't stay connected to the wireless network for more than 10 minutes at a time when it *is* able to stay powered up. And for those that will ask, yes, it's set to a preferred network and the software is up-to-date, which wasn't easy to do with the constant shutdowns. Which reminds me - I need to call Apple *again* tonight.
It's a shame, as I have a number of older Apples, none of which have given me the first bit of trouble. I just don't forsee another Apple laptop anytime in my future, though.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Just for the record, never buy a first generation apple. I will wait till they do a complete line update on the macbooks before buying one. Every new design has bugs. Even from Apple. But the story is always revision a models tend to need more TLC(with /without a hammer) than later versions.
My 12" powerbook G4 acted up once. I finially figured out that several of the fonts had gotten corrupted on the HD, ncreasing their size by an order of magnitude.(yea 3 gigs of fonts when it's supposed to be less than 200 megs) and it was doing random things to the OS. I was upgrading to 10.4 at the time so I wasn't too upset. But I also waited until the second or third revision came through of the hardware.
Personally I would deal with it for a couple more months and upgrade to the "new" macbooks when they come out in a few more months. Then sell the old one on ebay for as much as you can.
there is a sucker out there who wll pay you good money and at least underwrite part of the replacement costs.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I have some stats that would actually contradict your situation. I attended a 4 year university in their business school. Part of being in the business school, every student reveived a brand new laptop, and then two years later, you turn it in for another brand new one. When I was a freshment, the school had a deal with HP, and all of us received HP OmniBooks. Everyone complained. They were always causeing problems. The next year, Dell won the bid and now the CIO of the school will not even consider giving the contract to another manufacturer. The reason? The number of hardware related complaints/cases received by the schools help desk dropped 50% after switching to Dell Latitudes.
However, I think Dell needs to seriously reconsider its hard drive suppliers. Whenever I have seen any hardware related problems with a Dell laptop, it has always been the Harddrive. Most people with the school laptops ended up replacing the hard drive at some point during the 2 years the school suppported it. I'm a rare exception and it continues to chug along. The GF's hard drive also failed recently (bought herself, bargain laptop, but from Dell). I believe the hard drive I took out was a Seagate, but I think most of the latitudes have Toshiba, so not sure really what to say there. I have always had success with WD, so I'll be sticking with them.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
HP has IBM to thank for the lead they now have. Since IBM sold off its laptop division to Lenovo, the corporations ran for cover. I know my own company stopped buying Thinkpads, and now buys HPs... The corporate types want to buy from the biggest, most reliable vendor. For many that was IBM, but Lenovo didn't fit their bill, and I'm hearing a lot of them went with HP over Dell. It is an indictment of Dell and Lenovo more than a vote of confidence for HP.
The article only says "worldwide" growth, if you read between the lines. Dell is still #1 in the US. Dell has admitted to being behind "world wide", which is actually one of the few good things to its credit. You don't greatly increase your world wide sales in India, for example, without a fair amount of job exports to go with it. That's changing of course, but Dell is admittedly behind, and it's employees (below director level), are generally happy about it. Contrary to popular belief, a substantial amount of engineering for Dell is done in the US, not in Taiwan. Employees have constructed an effective wall to foreign design centers and have actually left the company any time mgmt has tried to tear it down (thanks to HP for showing employees what to be afraid of).
Obviously in a year with slow US growth, Dell is going to underperform. The question we should be asking, is why is US growth so low, and how can we fix it. Perhaps because US citizens are still not sure about their job stability and future in the face of a complete absence of morality on wall street.
I told you, Dell is a one-trick pony.
Dell's penchant for hollowing out suppliers is just one of the 'thin-line' tactics that finally knocked the company off. No one wants their business these days and they certainly can't compete in the current growth markets.
Don't expect Dell to ever regain from this...going down, down, down.
Good riddance to bad rubbish!