gaffo said:
why is this?? did their deal with AMD last summer end their
relationship with Intel?
More the other way around, Dell lost their most-favoured status with
Intel, and then they finally decided to deal with AMD.
Of course, the reason Intel pulled the most-favoured status from Dell in
the first place was because AMD sued Intel, and Intel doesn't want to
give AMD any more ammunition than it already has. The Dell-Intel deal
would've most likely been the most visible evidence against them.
It was obvious from their financial results for the last several
quarters. Also from the increase in chatter they started about going
with AMD.
if it is - who was the retard who decided (and I guess that means Mr
Dell also) to jumped ship to AMD right before Intel released their Core
chip?
Well, it's not so important what the performance parts are doing, it's
the value parts that are more important. It was with the cost
effectiveness of AMD platforms that allowed HP to get back on top of
Dell, even while going with a traditional retail model without going
through a Dell-style mail-order distribution model.
Actually, the Dell-style mail-order model was bullshit, it had nothing
whatsoever to do with Dell's success, even though the analysts always
played up this talking point as being the reason behind the success.
What was really keeping Dell profitable was the most-favoured status
with Intel, they were being transferred close to $1B/yr from Intel just
to stay Intel-only; and they weren't reporting it properly in their
accounting records. Once that subsidy was pulled, the real economics
came into play and Dell found it could no longer compete against HP-AMD
combos. So Dell's only choice, since it couldn't beat them, was the join
them.
Up until recently, AMD processors were making up 50% or more of the
laptops in retail. Recently, Intel just started packaging left-over
inventory Pentium 4's in laptops, and so it's now regained cost
advantage from AMD again. A lot of Intel laptops are being sold again,
but they're not Core or Core 2-based laptops, they're Pentium 4-based ones.
Dell SHOULD have jumped ship in 2000 when Athlon had proven itself - OR
stuck it out with intel until Core.
Then they would've missed out on the cost advantages of going AMD. As I
said, it's not the high-end products that matter as much as their
low-end products.
what is the price of XP these days? why not just use it? it
"works"...........unlike 98/95/3.1...........etc.........
Whether XP or Vista, the cost starts well over $100 for a retail box.
The OEMs obviously get it cheaper than we do, but by how much 50% maybe?
Don't know, it probably still isn't enough to counter Linux prices
directly; so it's probably making sure that the OEMs don't start
offering Linux with some behind-the-scenes threats. If some real
operating system competition opened up, I'd suspect we'd see Microsoft
discounting by 70% or 80%? Maybe just slightly above the cost of
stamping the CD or DVD-ROM? That's really all that Windows is worth in
real-life -- the cost of its CDs. I'd love to see Microsoft give away
its Windows and just charge for support services like the Linux vendors
-- maybe too much to ask for, as Microsoft doesn't provide support
services as it is right now.
Yousuf Khan
