Posted on 05/28/2009 7:33:56 PM PDT by traumer
Dell has seen its latest quarterly profits decline by almost two-thirds as the worldwide recession continues to hit sales of computers.
The world's second-largest maker of personal computers made a net profit of $290m (£182m) in the three months to 1 May, down 63% from $784m a year ago.
Revenues at the firm fell 23% to $12.3bn. However the results were better than analysts had feared.
Dell said the global trading environment remained "challenging".
'Cutting costs'
Dell has already moved to cut costs in the face of falling sales, reducing its global workforce by more than 9,000 positions over the past year.
While it made no new announcement on possible additional cuts, it said it was continuing cost reduction efforts.
"We're continuing to transform the company on the cost side and delivering strong cash flow," said chairman and chief executive Michael Dell.
The firm's results come a week after rival Hewlett-Packard said its latest quarterly profit declined 17%, and that it was cutting 2% of its workforce, or 6,400 jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Apple (AAPL) NewsBite - AAPL Is On the Move
Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:16 AM
Apple (AAPL) appears to be on the move today and is now at $133.43, up $0.38 (0.29%) on volume of 2,596,342 shares traded. AAPL was covered in a Lee Allen report today. To read the report, go to www.gotomic.com/la052809 . Over the last 52 weeks the stock has ranged from a low of $78.20 to a high of $189.95. Apple stock has been showing support around $128.91 and resistance in the $137.05 range. Technical indicators for the stock are bullish and S&P gives AAPL a positive 4 STARS (out of 5) buy ranking. If you are looking for a hedged play on AAPL the stock seems like it could be a candidate for a June out-of-the-money bear-call credit spread above the 140 range. [ABR-Seven Summits Strategic Investments NewsBite]
I was curious.
Great time to buy a new computer?
Guess I should be looking for a new job tomorrow.......
Might be a great time to buy a new computer, but don’t buy a Dell. The recession is only one reason their sales are down. Another is that their products don’t last long and their customer service is abominable, nightmarish, horrendous. I wouldn’t take one as a gift. I don’t mean that as an exaggeration, either: we’ve had Dells as gifts for my kids and they ended up causing so much trouble that I wish very much we had never accepted them.
My last few computer have been Gateways … mayhap I should stick with them for my next one? Can’t afford a MAC, nowhere else to go.
Every experience I’ve had with a Dell has been bad.
Ya know, I’ve had just the opposite. I’ve owned a number of Dell business laptops, and have three commercial grade servers from them - never had a single hardware problem. I, of course, completely wipe the machines when I get them and do my own install of everything.
Just ordered another server - an amazing box, 2x Quad core 3Ghz processors, 32G RAM and 500Gb Raid 5 15k rpm drives. Under $7500, 36 months 0% interest - same as cash. Can’t freaking beat it. Will be running about 10 VMs on it.
The last time I ever called they're support, (8 years ago) after being on hold 15 minutes, I got some guy from India...I must have said, "Huh, what, I can't understand you" 500 freaking times....
I finally just hung up out of utter frustration.
Never bought another DELL again.
Lots of nice Dells on craigslist.
Michael Dell personally invested with Soros, JC Flowers and John Paulson to buy Indy Mac after it was wiped out probably by hedge fund shorts (soros, flowers and paulson).
So they wipe out companies shorting them for a huge profit, buy em up cheap with financing from uncle sam plus have billions in tax loss carry fowards.
I will never buy another Dell computer.
I always buy Dell. Never a problem.
How about HP?
I’ll trade your worst Dell story over the “best” that HP 1st tier customer service can offer. Hands down the fn worst.
You might consider building your own. It’s quite easy. If you want to make sure all the parts will work together well, just buy a “barebone kit” from Tiger Direct or NewEgg, along with an operating system to install.
I build my own for home use, but at work I've never had a problem with a Dell server.
still profitable.
When I get the VOIP transfer to India I tell them i want to speak to someone in the United States. I think I did that once with HP and the American kids solved it in 2 minutes.
HP’s stuff generally runs forever.
The school district I work for switched from Dell to HP computers. I’m guessing things like this are not helping Dell.
I have no idea how well their machines work now, but I have a brand new one in my cube at work. It's only been five weeks, but so far, so good.
Check this out; you may be able to upgrade to a Mac for less than you think:
20" starts at $1199 (complete; no extras like antivirus, etc)
Don’t know what to say, but I have had mostly Dells since the first Compaq and they like any other computer can break and have problems.
Compared to what I hear about other computers, Dell is head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to standing behind their product. Dell’s Customer Service is at times a little slow, but I’ve learned to tell them I’ll go over their head and that works almost every time.
I would not buy another brand. Sorry to hear they are down that much.
I eBayed my Dell laptop (Vostro) and bought a Toshiba laptop - so far so good.
Thanks, will check it out.
Great, I just got a new Dell laptop for work. Wonder what kind of a nightmare I’m in for.
Fortunately I won’t have to deal with their customer service, just our own IT department.
I’m sure Windows Vista couldn’t have helped sales any.
I know several people that have been holding off on buying a new ‘brand name’ computer because they don’t want Vista.
Have you (or anyone else) ever “Hackintosh”-ed their PC into a Mac? Does it really work?
A VERY good recommendation! The best computer I've ever owned, I built myself by ordering all of the parts from newegg. I built it a little over three years ago, and I'm still using it and haven't had the first bit of trouble. I don't even recall ever having to reboot it because of a problem. You get so much more for your money by building your own too, and you know that all of the parts and components are of high quality. I spent a little over $1,000 on mine, and a comparable system from one of the big manufacturers would have been over $2,000 at the time. Of course one could build one for a lot less expense. It just depends on what the system will be used for.
” The school district I work for switched from Dell to HP computers “
I teach in Japan and the school district here in my town is switching from Dell to HP , too .
That can’t be good news for Dell.
I only buy used Dells, and fix them up myself. Never had a problem, but then I'm the geeky gadget grandma.
I’ve owned two Dell PC’s and two laptops. They are OK, but not great. Difficult to upgrade as they tend to be “proprietary” with their components. For example, I can’t install a card reader in my XPS 400 because it doesn’t have internal USB ports.
I recently built/rebuilt two computers for my sons with components from New Egg. Not only are they better than my Dell, I probably only put $300 into each one, and it was actually fun to build them.
I’ll never buy factory built again. I’m custom building on my own from now on.
i own 3 dells. bought a desktop in 1998. laptop in 2001 and another laptop in 2004. All 3 still run great. my 98 box is basically a firewall for the two laptops which make great browsers. the key with their laptops is that if you really like it buy another battery asap and store it away and that will last you 5 years easy. at end of their next quarter I am going to buy a 32GB ram server for under $5000 with operating systems and several TB of storage. Same machine cost over $100k just 4 years ago.
They still made a profit.
Many years ago my desktop started life as a Compaq but since then I’ve upgraded almost every component myself (including the case) so that the only original parts left are the DVD player and the monitor. When I replace this I am definitely building from scratch. It’s easy and fun and I like knowing what is inside my computer.
Laptops are obviously a different thing. I have a Dell and I’ve never had any problems with it. I bought it after observing another Dell laptop on my last ship that ran our digital navigation display software 24/7 for a six month deployment with no problems at all.
Computer companies, in general, are hurting as so many IT departments have skipped upgrading and replacing hardware because Vista sucked so bad in the workplace. Everyone’s been waiting for Windows 7. You’ll probably see a big upswing in sales after it’s released and proven better than Vista.
Time to learn the mother tongue
Not so much: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/apple-tops-pc-customer-service-rankings/
“Apple notched an 80 percent, or “good” rating, in Forrester’s customer experience index, which is an average of responses on topics like whether companies meet customer needs and make products that are easy and enjoyable to use.
Gateway scored a 66; Hewlett-Packard, a 64; and Compaq (a brand owned by H.P.), a 63 — scores that Forrester considers “poor” rankings in the customer experience index.
Dell got a miserly 58 percent, a “very poor” rating. “
Mmm, didn’t people say that about Vista when XP was lagging?
Apple made $1.21 billion profit in Q2 2009.
Dell making a mere $290 mil looks... weak.
Michael Dell should shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders.
Speaking of tongues, the guy from India that called himself, “Bob” sounded as though he had a cows tongue..I only understood ever 6th word or so. I started speaking gibberish back to him at one point and he just kept going on like we were having a normal conversation. The babble went on and on...I just hung up.
Yes, but you need to get certain brands and models of hardware and motherboards, etc., to do it.
My Dell laptop is at least 5 years and going strong.
My new HP laptop, just lost its’ wireless connection and when I went to HP forum on my Dell, I discovered that after a year they crap out. Everyone that had one do this and it was out of warranty, said HP told them there was nothing HP could do. I am now using a Netgear USB wireless on it.
Same with HP/Compaq - their servers are very reliable, but HP consumer class laptops are low quality and have problems.
It's mildly entertaining until you realize they are reading a script and cannot solve your problem.
I know.
That’s why I build my own computers today. I figured out 8 or so years ago, calling support is a sad joke.
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