Dell declined to make executives available for an interview. [A Dell official] suggested that other retail moves might be in the offing, however. "Today's announcement with Wal-Mart represents our first step. Stay tuned."
Posted on 05/24/2007 8:55:04 AM PDT by Zakeet
Breaking a purely direct-sales model it has used for more than a decade, Dell Inc. said that it would begin to sell desktop personal computers in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. next month.
Dell said it plans to offer two Dimenson desktop models in 3000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico starting June 10th.
In a statement, Dell spokesman Bob Pearson said, "Our customers are asking us for additional ways to purchase our products and we plan on delivering on a global level. Offering Dell Dimensions in Wal-Mart is a great example of this approach."
Today's announcement represents the largest change yet to come under Chief Executive and Founder Michael Dell, since Mr. Dell took back the reins of the company from then-CEO Kevin Rollins in January amid sluggish sales and profit growth. Dell used the direct model of selling PCs over the phone and the internet for years, eventually rising to be the largest PC company in the world.
But the model began to lose steam in 2005, as consumers -- the growth engine in the U.S. market -- began gravitating to retail stores to buy portable notebook computers. Dell had largely focused on selling desktops to commercial customers, a market that has slowed.
Since then, sales and profits for the Round Rock, Texas company have waned, and it lost the No. 1 spot in the global PC industry to Hewlett-Packard Co.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Dell declined to make executives available for an interview. [A Dell official] suggested that other retail moves might be in the offing, however. "Today's announcement with Wal-Mart represents our first step. Stay tuned."
They have to do something to keep the sales going in light of recent events.
Dell’s getting desperate.
Of course, they still won’t listen to their customers and ship a computer with no OS.
Based on personal experience, as well as those of several good friends, Dell computers are sheer crap, and the company’s customer service is worse than pathetic.
My understanding is HP has been doing very well in retail sales in the Best Buys and Office Depots etc etc. Todays PCs look very very sharp and stylish. Maybe people buy partly on looks and impulse. Mail order from Dell doesn’t give you the same buzz
I remember a friend got a state of the art Dell computer. 300mhz and Windows 95. It was an anonymous white box. A commodity look to it. Todays computers look much nicer and many are smaller. Small is good
Dell computer is so 90’s; or, ummm, at least 2001ish.
The computer world is dog years x100.
Using a brand new Dell Optiplex 745 (dual proc., 2gb ram) at work, the cd burner was defective. But the CS was excellent I thought and all spoke English. I had a new one within the week.
But I would imagine the Dells sold at WM will be the ones closer to the bottom of the tolerance rejects.
I had a Dell Dimension 4100 I just retired a month or so ago. I’d bought it in 2001. I started having problems with applications hanging up. Finally, I reformatted the drive and re-installed Windows 2000. The same problems continued to occur.
Now, I’m using my year-old laptop (Compaq), and have the Dell handy for converting music from LPs. Otherwise, it’s put away in a corner of my home office.
It was a good machine for me, but Dell, as you’ve stated, has gone downhill for some time. I’ll not buy another.
The HPs still run really hot. A good buddy of mine has a laptop, and he literally has to prop it up on blocks on a table when he’s working on it so that it can bleed off enough heat to keep running. Otherwise, it shuts down from overheating after about 20 minutes.
Antec Nine Hundred case
Ultra-Quiet PSU: Silencer® 750 Quad
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS, 640 mb
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
Zalman 9700 LED CPU Cooler
Asus P5N32-E SLI
Crucial 2 GB ram
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10, 400GB, 16MB, Serial ATA-300
Lite-On LH-20A1L-06 SuperAllwrite DVD Burner with Lightscribe
Mitsumi FA404M 7-in-1 combo
Dell Tech Support: You will need to reinstall Windows. I will walk you through it.
I'm happy with my Dell computer, but after the nightmare my father had with their idiot tech support I would never buy extended support from them. If I want and idiot who can only read a script telling me how to fix a problem, just post the script so I can avoid the heavily accented middleman.
One of the reasons I just ordered a Gateway computer.....
They’ll ship with XP and not Vista if you request it.
Plus, they’ve got a really nice ultralight tablet with decent battery life......
Another buddy of mine, retired Major, USAF (ICBMs), bought a Dell laptop for his son, who was going away for college. He had a one-year warranty on it, but when the system began failing after about six-months, he went round and round with Dell CS trying to get it fixed. It never was, and my pard ended up buying his son a HP as a replacement.
I had a Dell I bought over the net in 1999.
I just replaced it two months ago with a HP I bought at Office Depot. It was still much cheaper than a similarly equiped Dell. HP has recently had better reports about service than Dell.
I hate buying computers from retail outlets. They never have the combination of components I want. It’s much easier to order a custom configured machine from Dell. I really hate the way HP computers don’t have a set real installation discs. If you ever have to reintsall the OS, you have to wipe out everything on your boot disk and reinstall from an image CD. Oh also many of the drivers and utilities for using your hardware are located on a nonstandard partition on the boot drive. If your disk crashes, you’re SOL, because HP won’t send you a CD with the drivers.
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