When Will Michael Dell Eat His Words?
04/01/2008
When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 Michael Dell was asked what he would do to save Apple if it were him. His reply?
"What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Well, today it’s being reported that Apple has gained 21% of the consumer computer market, and Dell is closing plants and laying people off in order to help the company stay afloat.
I really can’t gloat about this though, knowing that 900 people are losing their jobs, and that that’s just part of the 8,800 total jobs that Dell plans to shed. Ouch.
Selling cheap crappy computers is bound to catch up with you… Personally, I can’t stand Dell machines and dread when students bring them into me with problems.
I know. Several of my past customers (when I was a field tech/consultant) had Dells. I hated them (the Dells, not the customers).
Unfortunately, the school I work at now has Gateways for the campuses that are still PC (all of the new campuses are going Mac - I’m at one of the PC campuses). The machines aren’t that bad, really just standard middle of the road desktops and laptops, but the support is awful. Gateway now has outsourced tech support, through a company called MPC, which is absolutely abysmal.
Oh, and we have Dell servers. But, I will say that Dell’s servers are better than their consumer and business PCs. Their server support is better, too.