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.

Comments

Local Guys

[Skyshadow]

I actually would choose Dell at this point over anyplace local.

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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Good

[Foogle]

Dell's systems are consistently of a higher quality than Compaqs (at least, home-systems are). In my experience, Compaq tends to use more "all-in-one" solutions, particularly on the low end with integrated peripherals on the motherboard. When those peripherals are cheap, the whole systems suffers and they're hard to upgrade. Dell's Dimension series are seriously a joy to use, and I'd recommend them to any potential buyer.

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."

Why Compaq Drives Me Nuts

[Effugas]

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