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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.
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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.
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.
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.