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Dell Knocks Off Compaq
With the 3rd quarter results in, it appears that Dell has beaten Compaq in sales, at least in the United States. Compaq continues to be ahead worldwide, however, they are expected to be overtaken by Dell in that realm as well, according to IDC. The article also has some rates of growth information on other computer retailers, which clearly demarcates the difference between direct sales vs. the traditional method.
In the college setting - its usually the users not the boxes that are the problem.
There are no warrenty stickers on Dell desktops, we I mean they don't care if you are in the box. Put whatever you want in it.
Ahem. All modern (486+) Compaqs use standard memory, but I remeber the Deskpro 386 had a really wierd memory card/module that looked somewhat like an ISA board, but used an extented connector.
Exactly what hardware in a Compaq box are you classifying as "exotic"??
You can purchase dell precision workstations with redhat pre-installed. Also, for large orders, dell offers dellplus, where you can get whatever you want basically, you just have to pay for the customer integration. This includes x86 flavors of unix (linux, *BSD, SCO, Solaris x86, etc...) check th is out. You can ws410's, 610's and 210's and optiplex systems with redhat 6.0 (probably 6.1 real soon)
Yeah, the DeskPro case was awesome to work on, the way everything came apart easily, with no tools, everything folded out nicely on hinges. Absolutely fantastic. Almost as nice as some of the Mac's I've worked on. . .
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's an industry watchdog which reports which vendors are having problems. Dell are having major problems with quality concerns and misconfigurations for new customers.
Quote "Reported
> problems have included misconfigured hardware, product delivery delays
> that surprised the related IT staff, a tendency to make commitments in
> order to get a signed contract that are not met once the contract is
> signed, and actions that showed an arrogant disregard for the customer and
> questionable business practices. "
What you might not find in the news is the fact that Compaq is having serious problems in supplying retail computers right now. I work in the retail industry and if you go to any retail chain store, like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc, you will find they are for the most part completly out of Compaq computers. Compaq's built to order computers are also backed up atleast 3 weeks. So basically we can expect to see a tremendous drop in 4th qtr earnings for Compaq.
Maybe its just my area (I live in the typical American middle-sized town; so typical that we're one of the major test markets), but the caliber of the people who own/work in the local computer stores is really disappointing. Prices are high, the service is rather sluggish and the quality of the end products leaves something to be desires. Add to that the fact that two of the local places (and I don't mean like Best Buy here, I mean local) routinely sell illegal copies of software -- one of them even got raided by the feds last year.
Given the choice of walking into a store and having some high school student in a stupid shirt try to push the most expensive system or going to Dell's website and choosing exactly what I want for a lower price... Well, that's a no-brainer. It goes against my instinct which tells me that mom-and-pop shops ought to be supported, but the factors which beg against my local options are just overwhelming.
That said, I know that there are a few really good local shops (we had one in Madison, where I grew up), but I find they are exceedingly the minority. Maybe it just has something to do with the sort of person who would go out and start a local computer place; maybe it's just a matter of the stress of maintaining a storefront and competing with a thousand other companies all making due with razor-thin profits; maybe I'm just sick of dealing with high schoolers. In any event, mailorder computers rule the way they're done today.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
In my experience, Compaqs are unreliable, buggy, loaded with junk, and hard to upgrade. Compaq should be thankful that they've actually been able to keep up with market growth. I would rate them a notch above Packard Bell and no higher.
I wonder if this includes corporate sales? If so I can see why. My company is all Dell and we are one of the larger it employers in this area.
Only 'flamers' flame!
both are horrible computer systems. I think Dell has better tech support, but thats about it. I actually run the computer labs at a local college, plus the office computers too. About 100, nearly every computer in the buil;ding, are Dells. I've never had so many problems with a computer in my life.
Of course, Dell haven't actually invented anything to deserve being where they are, they've just found a better way of putting a clapped out system called a PC into a better-perceived box. So, Mr.Dell, now you've nicked Compaq's place, are you going to do any better than them and actually innovate, or are you just going to ride the PC system until it dies a death then jump on someone else's bandwagon? Someone's going to have to take the frst step ... will it be you?
Adam:What kept you?
God:Rome wasn't built in a day
Dell still don't give that real sense of the warm and fuzzies that some very large corporations have when buying Compaq.
:). I've had decent service from field engineers from both companies (turn up on time, fix the problem in the time allowed etc), while other offices I hear from tell horror stories of Dell taking three weeks to send an engineer etc.
Dell have hit Compaq on the break, with very competitively priced desktop systems that *are complete*. You buy a PC from Dell, you get the whole 9 yards, PC, Monitor, Speakers, etc etc.
With Compaq, if you don't explicitly state that you want these things, you don't get them.
That's not so bad for corporate buyers, but it's a big deal for the home user. Also, Dell's software deals are fantastic, especially when it comes to getting Office real cheap. That's a big hit across the board.
Support? Well, *my* experience of Dell and Compaq support is that they're both pretty good. Dell's online stuff is better (dial in your asset tag and your stuff appears), while Compaq's is confusing and obtuse (and WTF *is* a SoftPaq?
Acid test? We put Dell PCs on every desk. Compaqs are used for deliverable machines and test rigs.
We use Dell servers, because they rock.
But as for the sales figures, the massive buying power of Compaq's biggest customers will knock Dell back into 2nd place.
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Peter
There's a complex of issues surrounding whether to 'do it' inhouse or farm it out to a contractor - it's just competition for jobs - I keep a stock of spare parts to fix our PC's, known tested, good parts, often run everyday in the shop, to do *quick* swaps outs and minimize down time - but I'm expecting this to become more difficult as more and more people WILL buy 'prefab-warrentied' PC's as they succumb to the vendors sales pitch of how great it's going to be. A few examples of the difficulties on this path: One vendor offered system boards with CPU's and fans pre-installed, all under a 'warrenty' - what happened in reality is that their cheap fans crapped out, and I couldn't change the $10 things w/o voiding a warrenty sticker! We had to suffer days of down to to ship the whole mobo back just to get a stinkin' fan replaced. Another brand of pre-fab showed up with 'no disks present' and we had to wait a day for a tech to drive over and pull off the "Warrenty Void if removed!" sticker and plug it in. There are other considerations.
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
As a hard core (and nosed ;-) Alpha user this may be a little biased.
Ok first, some of Compaq's x86 line may be crap. I've only had experience with a few of the Q's x86 systems and those were fine. Since I use Alphas I don't really care...
Now that a new head has been sewn on we'll have to just wait and see if it was a good choice or not. The Q does need to be more price competitive with the other major players. Some of their x86 lines could also use a little quality improvement. In general their systems are pretty cool. I think the Q's new K7 systems are awesome, but they still can't quite touch an Alpha!
Compaq as a company, at least the enterprise group, are a bunch of pretty cool people! The upper management may still need some work, but the enterprise group from what I've seen has their head screwed on stright. As an Alpha user I find the quality of their Alpha systems to be the best! Of course, most of the quality came from DEC...
As for DELL, I would rather build myself a system then buy one from them!
rbf who is typing this on a Alpha running Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 with Linux 2.2.13.
LONG LIVE ALPHA!!!
btw, these IDC general servey surveys divide into 3 groups - entry level ($1,000,000). It also splits into Unix and general server. For Sun, "entry level" equates to its E450 and below, mid-range = Ex500 range, and high-end = Starfire. Over the last year Sun has more than doubled it's shipments of Starfires! (They recently finished building a new factory for them) For almost all of Sun's products, demand is exceeding supply - Sun has nearly $1billion in unfulfilled orders at the moment! It's also continuing to grow pretty steadily at 20-25% per year, and is still getting that despite it being some time since it introduced new hardware - their nice UltraSparc-III is rather late.
The only big computer hardware company that is growing faster than Sun, is Dell. However, Sun is pure-Unix and Dell is pure-PC, while the other biggers (HP, IBM and Compaq) are all mixed...
Completely
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Obscure
Messy
Proprietary
And
Quirky
I still remember the time I was troubleshooting a backup problem - Netware, several of our largest clients had this problem where SPX would just hang up intermittently. Since backup on Netware used SPX, it was the backup software that hung on top of that, so to the customer, we were the bad guys. I searched through our call-tracking database and noticed a pattern. Every last one of the customers that had this problem were using high-end Compaq servers (Proliants?). We couldn't reproduce the problem in-house, so our coder's couldn't pick it apart. So we *ahem* borrowed a Proliant from IT, blew away NT and installed Novell, and whaddya know? we were able to reproduce the problem. But by that time, we had lost three of these major accounts, and our company was already in the early stages of being slowly digested following a rather unfriendly merger, I moved on. I don't think they ever did solve that problem. It happened with various brands of ethernet cards, so we couldn't pin it down to a specific driver, and we couldn't pin it down to the OS or SPX itself, because it only happened on those Compaq Proliants (in fact, when we replaced the Compaq at one customer site, with a generic off-brand clone, the problem disappeared.).
Nothing torqued me off more than the disk partition crap though. You never knew if repartitioning the disk was going to break something or not. Sometimes you could do that just fine, other times, you'd never boot the machine again. .
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Is this a victory for Dell specifically or direct sales generally?
Selling PCs is different from selling dishwashers or shoes, since short product cycles and rapidly-dropping prices makes inventories a millstone around the neck of channel marketers, but if I were a manufacturer in any industry who relied on a sales channel to reach my customers, I'd be looking over my shoulder for a Dell clone.
Sure, any major computer vendor has customer problems. The real question is, what percentage of Dell's customers are having problems? I'm sure it's far below most other PC vendors.
Dell is a good company. They make good quality computers at very competitive prices. Compaq computers, on the other hand, are utter piece of crap, specially Presarios. You won't believe what you see when you open one of those. Very propietary, usually with a built in sound/video/winmodem, their computer are underpreformers. A 500mz P3 Presario can be beaten by a typical P2 400 Dell because of crap Compaq components. And don't even think of running linux on a Presario. Compaq DOES not support NT on Presarios, so you get the idea, they use crap Win9x-only hardware...
Well no wonder...Deskpros suck...stick with their workstations and you won't go wrong. Same with Dell.
Doh, the Compaq Alpha servers/stations are produced by the Digital division of Compaq which they bought a year ago. I DON'T think Compaq spends a penny from PC sales on the Alpha developemnt. If you want to help Alpha division, buy an AlphaStation/Server. And 95% compaq PCs are utter, worst pieces of crap I have ever seen when compared to good computers like Dell or Micron. See my post below.
Who wants a pre-built computer anyway?
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Moo, Baby. Moo.
That is what happens when you stuff sub-standard parts in computers. Death to prefab computers!
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...considering the fact that Dell is on the Giga Group's "Vendor Watch"...
Ungh
Strange, the last thing I heard about Dell is that they were experiancing supply chain problems which where leading to large DOA machines. Still, the problems I am having with Compaq don't make them any better!
Given the choice I would buy a Dell direct from them. If something goes wrong I have one number to call and one comany to deal with.
Of course, both companies are Linux-supporters, so it's sad they can't both come out on top :(
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
in general, i have had good experiences with both companies - and i wouldn't go back to the guy down the street.
Any kind of competition has got to be a Good Thing (tm). Now, Compaq must either a) supply cheaper or b) supply better quality.
For my own part, whenever I've used Compaq, they have been awkward. Non standard partitions on the HDD's for the diags (can you say CDROM, Compaq?), crappy cases which have n different ways of removing them across supposedly equivalent product models, and don't get me started on Token Ring NIC's. I'd prefer a DOA box to one that drops off the network for no apparent reason.
Dell, on the other hand, have been exactly what I've needed. Easy to remove cases, components are laid out intelligently inside. You actually get the idea that Dell understand that people will want to perform maintenance on their PC's at some point, and they realise that your average PC engineer doesn't have hands as small as a 4 year old.
So, smart work Dell; put more effort in, Compaq. Interesting to draw parallels within the OS market - take this as a case study of how market forces can drive prices down and quality up. American DOJ please take note!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
For once, the better product is succeeding, athough I don't think we should be cheering Mike Dell on his way to another $billion. Micron is still making the best mass manufactured systems...
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E2 IN2 IE?
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
Basically, a computer is a computer and they all are going to live about the same lifespan from whoever you get it from. But the difference between these two vendors is one actually puts money into research for better and newer technologies. Compaq spends a lot of money on research such as developing the alpha chip or trying to save battery life while typing or other cool technologies. Dell just builds computers. That is why i like IBM more then any of them because they spend a whole lot on research and don't just build a clone computer.
Are there any figures on how much linux sales are affecting their bottom line? That would be interesting to see.
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We hope your rules and wisdom choke you....
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
- Drew
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
The so-called added value in compaq PCs is in their proprietary design: ranging from connectors, modems, various cards built in, to even their version of Windooz. The most visible result of proprietary designs, is that you can hardly change or upgrade anything, or they break down completely. That's why I consider compaq to be amongst the lowest quality pc vendors around.
No matter how much money they put into marketing, I'd rather buy anything else before considering compaq.
My impression of Dell is that they are still ok, but they may soon develop a penchant for proprietary designs to *differentiate* their products from the crowd and command a *premium* on top of the market prices.
I'd rather stick to no-brand clones that sports hardware components that follow well-known standards. Even if the pc is going to run Windows, I'll make sure that all components are on the Linux compatibility list, not because the pc is ever going to run Linux, but because that means that the components have well-known interfaces and properties; and then I know what I am buying and then I can compare prices and quality.
Compaq PCs are for people who want quality, but do not have the brains to assess it by themselves. In the end they just get crap.
I go to Santa Clara University. From our tech guides-- "If you have a Mac, do X. If you have a PC, do Y. If you have a Compaq, go get this alternative guide." I'm not joking. While Dell doesn't make purely standard "clone boxen" with a name and a hell of a support infrastructure, they're far less willing to play games with their motherboards such that they manage to create more instabilities than they're designed to ostensibily eliminate. HP Kayak's? Sorry, no NCR-810 support in the BIOS. Packard Bell? I'll just say nothing. Compaq's the world leader in creating motherboards with spiffy but grossly untested and non-standard features. Dell makes boxes that work. That's been my experience, doing tech support for a couple hundred machines on campus. You'll never see a Dell box with an arbitrary 32MB RAM limit(must have saved a few pennies per motherboard), for instance. That being said, if I remember right, Compaq did the initial reverse engineering of the IBM BIOS. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have PC clones. I just wish they'd(or anyone, really) would start advertising that they use Asus or Abit mobo's. Yours Truly, Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
... they offered an Athlon based model.. Our place buys Dells, I just upgraded my desktop, and had to settle for a Precision box...
.. For me an extra 20% in FP on a desktop counts - not every small test run is offloadable to SPARC farm...
Good thing Dells run Linux perfectly... Though we still had to pay for that NT license..
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