Several billion in the bank are a nice boost to profitability. The interest was enough to keep them profitable through several bad years (not terrible ones, but what would be small losses are tidy profits).
The big reason Dell is different than Gateway HP or Apple is that Dell doesn't sell PCs in stores. That means that they don't own any PCs waiting to be sold, it also means lower selling costs. PC prices have been falling fast enough that it gives Dell a fairly significant cost advantage (a few percent).
GE, and the auto companies in a different way are both very much large banks with smaller manufacturing companies. By revenue GE is 20% insurance, 10% commercial banking, and 8% consumer banking (they finance a ton of those interest free no payments deals). Aircraft engines and power stuff is still a big business, but nether is close to as big as finance.
You generally have two choices in business, have the best offering of product or service or be the cheapest. Note that if you were formerly doing this and stop, you can survive for a long period of time, but you are slowly failing. There isn't a whole lot of middle ground. Rolex, BMW, Apple and speakeasy all offer better products or service than their competitors. Dell figured out how to make computers more effeciently (mostly on the component purchasing side of things) and Walmart found better ways to predict daily demand for products, than other retailers. These innovations allowed them each to lower their costs, cut prices while still making more money than their competitors. It has been very difficult for competitors to replicate the things that caused the low cost success, in Dell's case becasue HP depends on it's retailers and resellers, so they can't sell a computer and then order the parts and begin manufacture.
I've never used those devices, but I connect an X-Box to my montior through something similar. It seems to work well, and I haven't noticed a significant reduction in quality running the monitor through the extra few feet of cable.
I consider myself to be an excel user who knows and earns a fair bit, and I've used all the competing products (I haven't tried abilty, but I could switch to Lotus, Quattro, or open office tomorrow and not miss a beat). Yeah, we have some propretary financial services addin's that are excell only, but they've adapted quickly in other areas, so they'll switch with the users. It would seem that part of the reason that the person makes $150k/yr is that they are smart and flexible enough to learn a new spreadsheet within a few hours time. Better yet, they've already know how to use all of the office tools. Office is definitly an easier hurdle for windows, I'm glad Sun had the gumption to buy a suite and give it a try. FYT, I think office is makes more money than windows, now.
The courts are still working out (everything works very slowly in the court system, so we as a society have a ton of time to reflect on it) just what kind of PR is commercial speech and what is protected free speech. Nike is in one of the major battles, in a case over their east asian factories. Nike claims that their responses to the worker's rights group were not commercial speech, and the worker's rights group claims that it was commercial speech. It will be interesting to see how the case wraps up.
I didn't realize quite the rate of fire that some of those old games required, until I picked up a bundle for the GBA. On the Space invader clone I flat sucked, could barely beat the first level mostly because I could only fire a few shots rather than the usual barrage.
Realize that the terms of a deal of this size would be closer to $50 for windows, and $75-$150 for office depending on the version. Microsoft has long given discounts to larger organizations. Add up the cost of components in any major OEM system, and see what is left over for Windows (give em 5% in a budget system for profit, and figure $30 on assembly).
It's all just a matter of Thrust, you need a good elastic band.
Re:Look harder, get a hobby, improve your resume.
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Exporting Myself?
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My sister lived out by the Fred Meyer out in the valley and I think every time I went to see her they were building something new out there. It's a madhouse, of course this is from a Montana boy who thinks a traffic problem is having to stop for more than one light cycle.
Re:Look harder, get a hobby, improve your resume.
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Exporting Myself?
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· Score: 1
I thought Spokane was doing pretty well for itself. Portland or San Jose are suffering from economic problems, Washington is still diverse enough that it holds up pretty well in recessions. Not a ton of jobs there yet, but that's a growth issue more than an economic one. Aren't they still building like crazy out on sprague and up division?
I don't know why so many people are shocked when they come and ask my advice on computer purchases and I tell them not to worry about the box, and the places to shell out are on faster drives and a good monitor, and be picky. I don't think I'll mail order another monitor I want to see the thing work. On graphics cards, I've found the best value for my dollar comes in the $50-$100 range, I get the newest card to enter that price range, and keep it for 2 years or so. My Radeon is getting a bit old now, but so is the rest of the system, Athlon 64 and Serial ATA are begining to call.
I heard about a laundrymat that uses knoppix cds and just reboots on each use. The other advantage is that it keeps the hardware costs low too. Our libraries use a checkout/honor system, you sign up for a 30 min slot, and then are free to continue until someone asks you to move.
The thing(s) it the middle of a list are demphisised, if you watched the news last night, you are more likely to remember the first and final segment but the middle ones are less likely to be recalled. Try it next time there are several news segments before a commercial break, the first one and the last one are easy to recall, the middle ones might get forgotten.
They surely knew about the disc piracy problem, but thought it moot for the extra value that comes from not having a large grey market. DVDs are region encoded partly because of piracy. If the going rate for a legit dvd in Bangkok is $5 because of a whole host of factors, region encoding prevents wholesale buyers from buying movies intended for Thailand that are reintroduced to the US or western Europe where the going rate is $15. The tiny amount of piracy is pretty insignificant compared to the value derived from this. I have no idea why your BBC series example required region encoding.
On a side note, his CFO has stuck with him for more than a decade. the new VP and Director Safra Catz (or possibly Chuck Phillips), is likely to eventually be his successor, I think the Peoplesoft merger is her project.
I would suggest reading both this and Softwar (a somewhat friendlier bio, that allowed Larry to add footnotes to the manuscript which is sort of a cool idea it lets you read what the character was thinking when something happened). Odd that two books about the same person were published within weeks of each other.
Slashdot Mirror
Several billion in the bank are a nice boost to profitability. The interest was enough to keep them profitable through several bad years (not terrible ones, but what would be small losses are tidy profits).
The big reason Dell is different than Gateway HP or Apple is that Dell doesn't sell PCs in stores. That means that they don't own any PCs waiting to be sold, it also means lower selling costs. PC prices have been falling fast enough that it gives Dell a fairly significant cost advantage (a few percent).
GE, and the auto companies in a different way are both very much large banks with smaller manufacturing companies. By revenue GE is 20% insurance, 10% commercial banking, and 8% consumer banking (they finance a ton of those interest free no payments deals). Aircraft engines and power stuff is still a big business, but nether is close to as big as finance.
You generally have two choices in business, have the best offering of product or service or be the cheapest. Note that if you were formerly doing this and stop, you can survive for a long period of time, but you are slowly failing. There isn't a whole lot of middle ground. Rolex, BMW, Apple and speakeasy all offer better products or service than their competitors. Dell figured out how to make computers more effeciently (mostly on the component purchasing side of things) and Walmart found better ways to predict daily demand for products, than other retailers. These innovations allowed them each to lower their costs, cut prices while still making more money than their competitors. It has been very difficult for competitors to replicate the things that caused the low cost success, in Dell's case becasue HP depends on it's retailers and resellers, so they can't sell a computer and then order the parts and begin manufacture.
Ebay's success came more from taking the want ad to a much larger scale, than from their method of transactions.
I've never used those devices, but I connect an X-Box to my montior through something similar. It seems to work well, and I haven't noticed a significant reduction in quality running the monitor through the extra few feet of cable.
I consider myself to be an excel user who knows and earns a fair bit, and I've used all the competing products (I haven't tried abilty, but I could switch to Lotus, Quattro, or open office tomorrow and not miss a beat). Yeah, we have some propretary financial services addin's that are excell only, but they've adapted quickly in other areas, so they'll switch with the users. It would seem that part of the reason that the person makes $150k/yr is that they are smart and flexible enough to learn a new spreadsheet within a few hours time. Better yet, they've already know how to use all of the office tools. Office is definitly an easier hurdle for windows, I'm glad Sun had the gumption to buy a suite and give it a try. FYT, I think office is makes more money than windows, now.
The old Raq machines were K6 machines, and possibly some early Athlons and P3s?
The courts are still working out (everything works very slowly in the court system, so we as a society have a ton of time to reflect on it) just what kind of PR is commercial speech and what is protected free speech. Nike is in one of the major battles, in a case over their east asian factories. Nike claims that their responses to the worker's rights group were not commercial speech, and the worker's rights group claims that it was commercial speech. It will be interesting to see how the case wraps up.
I didn't realize quite the rate of fire that some of those old games required, until I picked up a bundle for the GBA. On the Space invader clone I flat sucked, could barely beat the first level mostly because I could only fire a few shots rather than the usual barrage.
Just look at the productivity increases slashdot has posted with several million brains collaborating together.
Realize that the terms of a deal of this size would be closer to $50 for windows, and $75-$150 for office depending on the version. Microsoft has long given discounts to larger organizations. Add up the cost of components in any major OEM system, and see what is left over for Windows (give em 5% in a budget system for profit, and figure $30 on assembly).
High tension lines, a good chunk of California's power comes down from Washington's dams. By the way thanks for the free fiber optic lines.
Yeah till some genious tries to tap ocean curents for power, then it will be 22,000 penguins dead.
It's all just a matter of Thrust, you need a good elastic band.
My sister lived out by the Fred Meyer out in the valley and I think every time I went to see her they were building something new out there. It's a madhouse, of course this is from a Montana boy who thinks a traffic problem is having to stop for more than one light cycle.
I thought Spokane was doing pretty well for itself. Portland or San Jose are suffering from economic problems, Washington is still diverse enough that it holds up pretty well in recessions. Not a ton of jobs there yet, but that's a growth issue more than an economic one. Aren't they still building like crazy out on sprague and up division?
Can't you get new cheapo lan cards for about $10?
I don't know why so many people are shocked when they come and ask my advice on computer purchases and I tell them not to worry about the box, and the places to shell out are on faster drives and a good monitor, and be picky. I don't think I'll mail order another monitor I want to see the thing work. On graphics cards, I've found the best value for my dollar comes in the $50-$100 range, I get the newest card to enter that price range, and keep it for 2 years or so. My Radeon is getting a bit old now, but so is the rest of the system, Athlon 64 and Serial ATA are begining to call.
I heard about a laundrymat that uses knoppix cds and just reboots on each use. The other advantage is that it keeps the hardware costs low too. Our libraries use a checkout/honor system, you sign up for a 30 min slot, and then are free to continue until someone asks you to move.
Perhaps I've been here too long, but I first read that as windows/stfu/defalt.asp, which seems more in character.
The thing(s) it the middle of a list are demphisised, if you watched the news last night, you are more likely to remember the first and final segment but the middle ones are less likely to be recalled. Try it next time there are several news segments before a commercial break, the first one and the last one are easy to recall, the middle ones might get forgotten.
They surely knew about the disc piracy problem, but thought it moot for the extra value that comes from not having a large grey market. DVDs are region encoded partly because of piracy. If the going rate for a legit dvd in Bangkok is $5 because of a whole host of factors, region encoding prevents wholesale buyers from buying movies intended for Thailand that are reintroduced to the US or western Europe where the going rate is $15. The tiny amount of piracy is pretty insignificant compared to the value derived from this. I have no idea why your BBC series example required region encoding.
On a side note, his CFO has stuck with him for more than a decade. the new VP and Director Safra Catz (or possibly Chuck Phillips), is likely to eventually be his successor, I think the Peoplesoft merger is her project.
I would suggest reading both this and Softwar (a somewhat friendlier bio, that allowed Larry to add footnotes to the manuscript which is sort of a cool idea it lets you read what the character was thinking when something happened). Odd that two books about the same person were published within weeks of each other.