Dell’s Life After Wall Street

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/03/business/dells-life-after-wall-street.html?ref=technology

by constantinum • 12 years ago

104 74 12 years ago

cpks2• 12 years ago

Dell, and the computer industry as a whole (sans Apple) has been flailing for years.

Lack of progress and innovation: Before Apple shipped the Retina iMac, the best laptops had the same resolution displays as the best cell phones. Typical laptops were both slower and lower resolution than phones.

Confusion: Buy a 4k display. Figure out what graphics card you need. DisplayPort, MiniDP, DVI, VGA, HDMI, versions of all of those, "dual link," maximum graphics card resolution. It's a disaster. Things don't just work. I called Dell asking what would be needed for a quad monitor 4k setup with Dell monitors and computers. They didn't know, and they didn't know who might know. Dell has Inspiron, XPS, Alienware, Latitude, and Precision as major product lines, and most of those have 3-4 sublines. What's the difference? Even Dell doesn't know (hey, Dell, did you know your reputation is set as much by your business stuff as consumer stuff? People don't differentiate). Resolution? Always labeled by weird labels like "SXGA" and "SXGA+." If you want the actual resolution, best of luck. And don't get me started on processor speed. What does i7-3500 even mean? If the config options have an 8 core with 4MB cache and 2GHz, and a quad core with 8MB cache and 2.2GHz, and one is of a different generation, I doubt even Intel knows how the speed compares. Going for the cheapest always makes sense, given how long it would take to figure it out.

Lack of choice (or nice products in general): The lines are close enough to each other that the computer you need is almost never there. The old Inspiron 8000/8100/8200, and corresponding Latitudes had interchangeable parts. You could configure to order. Today, want that high res display and a trackpoint? Can't get it. Or want that in matte (not glossy?). Tough. Want to drive multiple high-res monitors from a laptop? Boohoo. Don't like wide screen? Well, we don't like you. None of those options, individually, are big sellers, but the lack of any of them demolished the high-end computer market.

Consumer-unfriendliness: It's 2014. Why do I need to lug my power adapter with me? Couldn't we get a standard that worked with Dell, HP, IBM, and everyone else, and when I go to a conference, hotel, or family, I just plug into their adapter? Of course not. It would hurt power adapter sales. How about standard batteries where it makes sense? Even if I upgrade a Dell to a newer Dell, my batteries all go obsolete.

It's no wonder PC sales are dying. This stuff isn't rocket science, but the organizations making PCs are f-ed up enough internally they can't even get any of the basics right.

seanmcdirmid• 12 years ago

DELL is at least trying and making some progress. Now looking at Samsung and Lenovo...ugh.

Consumers are pretty flexible: just give them a decent product and they are willing to give up some choices (evidenced by mac sales).

omonra2• 12 years ago

I think your gripes have nothing to do with the state of the PC industry. It's not like after calling Dell and not getting an answer to your question "How do I set up quad 4k monitor off a laptop", you say "Oh, fuck it - I'm going to do gardening instead". You are still going to buy a laptop because you need one.

Instead the major determinant is how good is your last laptop - is it good enough? In the early days computers used to get better very fast - so upgrading was required. Today whatever was built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today, hence less need to buy new PCs.

gioele• 12 years ago

how good is your last laptop - is it good enough?

No, it is not.

My last "perfect for the moment" laptop was the latest G3 iBook (late 2002).

After that nothing as been "perfect" anymore. I went thought many "good" laptops but I have always found hardware glitches (NVidia card overheating), missing ports (dear Dell, where is the SD card reader?), proprietary ports (Samsung and its three proprietary ports for video out _on the same laptop_), annoying keyboard layouts, glossy and too wide screens, chargers with connectors that are produced only for six months, firmwares with weird-but-well-known bugs that will never be solved.... There is always something.

yequalsx• 12 years ago

Yes, I still need a laptop and I bought one. I bought a Macbook Pro and I'm very unlikely to ever go back to the MS ecosystem. Perhaps this is why Macs are increasing in sales and PCs aren't.

dded• 12 years ago

It's not like after calling Dell and not getting an answer [...], you say "Oh, fuck it - I'm going to do gardening instead".

Perhaps not, but it influences the answer to your next question:

Instead the major determinant is how good is your last laptop - is it good enough?

The more effort it takes to buy a new computer (given that I already have one), the less likely I am to buy one. Eventually customers get to the point of need, and buy. But sales could probably be noticeably higher if the purchase experience were straight-forward. In addition to the need-based sales, there'd be want-based sales.

cpks2• 12 years ago

I have a Thinkpad T60. An IBM Thinkpad T60. Retrofitted with a 2048x1536 LCD from an even older R60, a 512MB SSD, a 64 bit processor, and maxed out to 3GB of RAM. It's running Linux. I'd love to swap that thing out for something modern. My requirements:

* Same resolution or higher * Trackpoint * Same battery life or better * Runs Linux without headaches * Reliable

There are no laptops on the market which are anywhere close to this profile. With the exception of the Retina MacBook, no high res laptops have sensible battery life. No high res laptops whatsoever have a trackpoint. All of the high res laptops, when I last looked, either had headaches for Linux support, or no information.

That's not even to talk about the nice-to-haves (quiet, drives external 4k display, swappable battery, and reasonably maintainable). On most of those, you can't even get information.

I'd love to upgrade my desktop too, which is almost as old, but figuring our processor speeds and graphics card compatibility makes it more hassle than it's worth.

Today whatever was built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today, hence less need to buy new PCs.

You're right that things built 5 years ago can reasonably run most programs of today. That's exactly why the PC industry is dying, and it is exactly a measure of stagnation and lack of progress. Today's programs and computers ought to make us more productive by having e.g. quad 4k monitors. If you sold computers like this, and they had even a 5% boost to productivity, businesses would easily drop $5k each on them. My business would buy a hundred of them, no question. Sadly, neither software nor hardware has kept up with high-res multi-monitors. These aren't hard problems to solve. My 2048x1536 15" panel is nearly a decade old. Heck, cell phones now hit 2560x1600. Microsoft wouldn't move without the hardware vendors, and vica-versa. Everyone was waiting for someone else to move, no one did, and now, they're all dying.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

Everything you just said applies to Apple as well.

SandB0x2• 12 years ago

Apple first gets you to choose between tiny (Air) or powerful (Pro) and then makes you choose one of two screen sizes. If you then want to upgrade any components you can but you don't see all the options at once presented as different models. All the information and options are very clearly presented, e.g. https://www.apple.com/uk/mac/compare/notebooks.html

SandB0x2• 12 years ago

The Dell customer experience 2014.

1. Go to http://www.dell.co.uk/. For Home or For Work? Choose For Home, I guess.

2. Click on the For Home link but it doesn't open a new page for some reason. Here's where my mum would give up on it. Eventually manage to get to the For Home website by right-clicking and choosing "open link in new tab".

3. Here's the For Home homepage http://i.imgur.com/aiuN5Gq.png Click on Laptops and Ultrabooks

4. The usual overwhelming and terribly designed "choose a laptop" page. http://i.imgur.com/WRZU5pT.png with vague descriptions like

Inspiron: For home and home office (didn't I chose home not work?)

Stay connected with computing that’s easy and inspiring. With this versatile family of laptops, you can count on Inspiron to deliver exactly what you need.

XPS: For the ultimate experience

XPS delivers the ultimate experience with the highest resolution displays, exceptional build quality, unique materials and powerful features.

Alienware: For high-performance gaming

Fuel the epic win and enjoy the most immersive PC gaming experience anywhere. Choose from ultra-powerful notebooks powered by high-end technology.

CalRobert4• 12 years ago

I recently ordered an XPS 13 developer edition (comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu). I didn't particularly want a Dell, but the difficulty in finding an ultrabook with good, documented Linux support combined with Lenovo's slow decline (No function keys??? Seriously?) more or less dictated the choice. I'm glad it was an option, even though I'm merely ambivalent about Dell, and what I REALLY wanted was essentially a macbook air that didn't come from a company trying to force walled gardens on everyone.

For the record, I bought and returned a Galago Ultra Pro from System76, and was grossly disappointed by the keyboard and build quality. I'd like to support the small guys, but it seems the manufacturers of their laptop hardware (Clevo, etc.) haven't put out a decent ultrabook yet.

davidw• 12 years ago

I've been happily buying whatever Dell sells with Ubuntu for the past 10 years or so, and have been pretty happy with it. The few problems I've had have been promptly corrected, on site here in Italy (and previously in Austria), even if I usually buy the computers in the US.

vinceguidry• 12 years ago

I like my Galago Ultra Pro, but I wound up replacing my work MacBook with it and took the MacBook home to use as a personal machine. So I really don't use it as a laptop at all, except for the portability.

What's nice about the Ultra Pro is that I can easily use two extra monitors on it, I just had to plug them in. I was kind of worried that it would be like OSX where you can't use more than two or the main display cuts out, but nope, I have three displays on this and it's awesome.

If you really want Apple-like build quality on a Linux laptop, what I would do is just install Ubuntu on a Macbook. You want a company to do all the work for you but there's not enough of a market for that yet to support a company that does everything Apple does only with Linux. I'm happy with my System76 purchase, and hopefully the quality will go up in the future so that I can continue being a System76 customer.

rbanffy3• 12 years ago

The lines are close enough to each other that the computer you need is almost never there.

I felt this precise pain last night. A burglar took all my computers yesterday. Luckily, a friend of mine is coming for a visit and offered to bring replacements for us from the US. I went to Dell for a simple, no frills, Linux-friendly, inexpensive laptop.

There seems to be no such thing.

The only machines that came with Linux were more expensive than similar Macbooks. There are cheap and light Windows boxes, but their friendliness is unknown and, with the current drive for touchscreens enverywhere, I am anything but sure about which one will run smoothly.

dublinben• 12 years ago

You can use h-node[0] to figure out Linux compatibility of a notebook. You can also just buy one with it preloaded from System76 or ThinkPenguin.

[0]https://www.h-node.org/notebooks/catalogue/en

digi_owl4• 12 years ago

Welcome to the black hole that is Windows bulk discounts.

Some years back a slide made it online that supposedly showed the kind of discounts Dell and others got from MS.

I think the prices were down to 1/10 of retail for both Windows and Office combined.

Then on top of that they get all kinds of payments for bundling Symantec 30 day packages etc.

At the tail end of the Netbook craze, Dell managed to release 3 models. 2 Windows and 1 Ubuntu Linux.

Crazy thing was that you could get a $100 rebate on the Windows models. And if you tried to up-spec the Ubuntu model it would cost slightly more than the top end Windows model even before rebate.

The unit margins are razor thin, and Linux do not provide the economic alternatives that Windows does right now.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

Consumer-unfriendliness: It's 2014. Why do I need to lug my power adapter with me? Couldn't we get a standard that worked with Dell, HP, IBM, and everyone else, and when I go to a conference, hotel, or family, I just plug into their adapter?
(sans Apple)

Oh, is it like the mobile world is SO, SO MUCH better? Like Apple-only accessories? Apple-only cables (with specific, non standard ports)? How about changing the battery on the shiny MacBook? Well no luck, you have to bring it back to the Apple Store. That's unfriendliness to me.

I like it when people pay a grey picture of the PC world while Apple is all shiny on the other side, while having exactly the same practices or even worse.

parasubvert3• 12 years ago

Having been a Dell, Acer, and HP customer: yes the Apple world is so much better. It's staggeringly focused on a smooth customer experience. The other manufacturers are as well set up for customer friendliness as a kitchen appliance manufacturer, ie. Not at all / that's up to the retailers.

The points you bring up are rather suspect:

1. Besides the Lightning port, which was arguably created because dual-sidedness is a unique feature no standard has, what port is non-standard? MagSafe I guess - but it is pretty much standardized across their laptop lines and I still have a power supply from 2007 that work with my 2013 laptop using a $5 MagSafe 2 adapter.

2. How often would one take a laptop in for a new battery? It's a once in every 4 year event, at best. Pretty much never unless they bought it used.

I think there may be drastically different understanding of what customer friendliness is. At least with Apple I can talk to someone to fix my problem at the local mall, or have Apple support call me almost immediately with a specialist via their website -- as opposed to waiting on hold to talk to someone that knows nothing, only to be placed in another queue.

c1sc0• 12 years ago

Well, FWIW within the Apple ecosystem it's pretty standardised: I pretty much know that wen I go to a coworking space someone will have on of the two cables to charge nearly all current Apple devices: MagSafe or Lightning. Sure, not an open standard, but widespread enough to be a de-facto "standard".

pnathan3• 12 years ago

I was looking for a new Linux laptop this last week and I completely agree. There are far too many choices with far too little nuances between them.

I want a 15" laptop with Linux support, > 4 cores, 16 GB RAM, CD drive, no touchscreen, Thunderbolt-y video out, 2-3 USB ports, 250GB platter w/ SSD cache. Probably a few other ambient things I take for granted.

I really don't want to see 6 different models all roughly the same, but slightly different.

polskibus• 12 years ago

I can only applaud Mr Dell for not going along with Wall Street and rejecting short-term planning required to do so.

If you look into how Apple and Amazon is coping while being public, you'll see that in both of those companies, the CEOs actually have very good deals with shareholders that allow them to reject short-term stock market greed and lets them focus on long-term goals.

The ultimate goal of a private company should not be going public - this is a false dychotomy created in part by Wall Street. Growth, innovation and long-term survival (meaning average positive cash flow over many years) should be that ultimate goal.

awinder• 12 years ago

Even companies like Apple have to deal with shareholder revolts / major pressures from time to time though. Notably Icahn pressuring Apple to use it's stockpile of cash on large stock buybacks when Apple wants to keep that money for investment / possible acquisitions, or anything more related to direct investment in the future.

theicon• 12 years ago

Dell is trying to follow the Big Blue "IBM's" path.

dj-wonk• 12 years ago

Any thoughts on http://software.dell.com/products ? To what degree do the the products shown there factor into Dell's new direction?

coldcode2• 12 years ago

I still find it ironic that Mr. Dell told Apple to sell itself and give the money back to the shareholders back in 1997 and 15 years later Dell sells itself and gives the money back to its shareholders. Will it make a difference? I guess we will see.

theandrewbailey• 12 years ago

Almost everything you said is incorrect. Mr. Dell said Apple should close, not sell, and Dell didn't sell itself. It bought itself, and is still in business.

coldcode2• 12 years ago

For now. Time will tell. They will never pay off the debt.

mikestew• 12 years ago

It's easy to mock Dell's comment about AAPL now, but in 1997 what Mr. Dell said wasn't a bad idea. And if what you said about Dell the company were actually true, just because Michael was wrong (against strong odds of being right) once doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good idea for his own company now.

But as another commenter pointed out, you're wrong about what actually happened with Dell recently.

netcan• 12 years ago

There are a lot of things that can be said that toe the line between empty cliche and profound concepts.

Ultimately Dell & PC manufacturers have for the last 20-30 years been lucky enough to exist within a growth market. There's a requirement to innovated & such, but it's all bolstered by the fact that computing as a whole is growing. That's the reason why Dell was able to grow so fast and big early on.

cpks makes some good points about product lines and I think this is one of those places where cliche and substance can sail silently past each other. Dell's product lines are meaningless words and digits. It seems like they think of a new tablet as something that can compete in the 8" under $230 "segment." That's not just boring, it's either lazy or timid. They names are noncommittal barcodes because no one believes in this past the idea that some people might buy an 8" tablet for $230. If not, the might try a 7.5" @ $190.

Dell came to be because the process of buying parts and assembling them into a computer you can take home and plug in was fat. Small computer shops were doing it all the time. Dell did it at scale. For the time, it was a bold enough idea.Today it isn't. Dell need to figure out what Dell is for. Right now, I don't see a huge gain or loss in Dell going out of business beyond Dell employees and investors.

digi_owl4• 12 years ago

And i suspect we will soon see, if we are not already seeing, this play out in the mobile phone business as well.

virtualwhys• 12 years ago

I choose Dell for their business offerings, specifically PowerEdge rack servers and Precision series laptops, both of which provide beastly specs at reasonable prices.

Wouldn't touch their consumer level "Home" product line, nor would many here on HN I asssume, given that programmers and designers abound (who typically need/want quality hardware).

If expanding outside of their niche helps Dell survive/thrive for years to come, I'm all for it, just keep the business products alive and well, we needs them ;-)

shiftpgdn2• 12 years ago

Dell is going to die as Super Micro continues to get better. Their server offerings are very affordable compared to Dell and I know a lot of data centers/cloud providers are moving away from Dell entirely. Look at the Super Micro stock price over the last few years.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

It generally astonishes me how bad the major PC manufacturers have gotten at this. They've completely sabotaged their own brand names to the point that the only "trusted" name anymore is Apple. I loathe Apple, but at the same time I'm frustrated that if I want a consistently good experience they seem like the only option.

StevePerkins• 12 years ago

I had a lot of bad experiences with Dell laptops a decade ago, and swore off ever owning one again. For what it's worth, they've definitely seemed to step up their game in the quality department over the past couple of years. Not quite to Apple (or even Lenovo ThinkPad) levels, but enough that I find them clearly head-and-shoulders above Acer or ASUS now. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but I'm hopeful that going private will be a good thing in the long run.

chaostheory2• 12 years ago

One of Dell's major problems is Microsoft. In order to really bet on the future, they need to just take the hit on MS's OEM Windows prices and to start offering more selection again in terms of OS choices. That and offer more configuration options again like in the past (graphics cards, OS, and so on) and reduce the number of SKUs that they have (e.g. I don't really see much of a difference between Alienware and XPS aside from looks). They need to start catering to the 20% of the market again, instead of 80%-100% which reduces their focus.

scholia3• 12 years ago

Dell has tried offering Linux on laptops: the sales are too low and the costs too high for it to be a viable business. (You can get whatever you want on servers.)

Dell might like to offer OS X on laptops but Apple won't allow it, even if Dell buys its OS at retail.

offer more configuration options again

Dell offered a load of options when it built desktops in its own factories. Most laptops (including Macs) are built in huge factories in China owned by Foxconn (Hon Hai), Quanta, Compal, Wistron, Pegatron etc, so configuration is generally not an option. (Or not at a price people are willing to pay.)

chaostheory2• 12 years ago

Dell has tried offering Linux on laptops: the sales are too low and the costs too high for it to be a viable business.

Well it's no surprise since the configuration options were extremely limited. Also the available specs were really crappy. There wasn't an XPS or Alienware option.

so configuration is generally not an option. (Or not at a price people are willing to pay.)

Well then what differentiates Dell from anyone else?

mathattack• 12 years ago

I'm surprised by the sales increases, as it takes many years to reclaim the trust of consumers burned by crappy products and services. I recall a personal laptop breaking, not being covered by warantee, and then being shipped to the wrong location halfway across the country.

Dell’s Life After Wall Street

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