Comments on: Dell poised to benefit most from PC market recovery

The PC maker will see improvement when its corporate customers start buying computers again later this year and into 2010.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

Many indications are there will be no large spending when Windows 7 comes out this fall, thats hopeful wishing on Dell's part. This holiday season is gonna be all about Netbook pcs. Dell still suffers from crappy customer service and higher prices

[Renegade Knight]

True on Customer Service. They crapped me right out of ever buying Dell again until there is no other choice.

[BogusBasin]

Analysts are beginning to see the writing on the wall. Microsoft's best days are behind them. Rest in peace Microsoft. Amen

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/07/16/analyst.says.sell.ms.stock/

[gggg sssss]

just close down India, dude

[mbenedict]

@Basin:

Whoever wrote that macnn article is an idiot. At any given day you can find numerous analyst to recommend anything... hold, buy, sell, whatever. It's not "a rare move" to change recommendations... usually happens about once a quarter.

Here's a recent price target upgrade for Microsoft:

"June 16 (Reuters) - Jefferies & Co raised its price target on Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) stock to $26 from $22 and recommended buying shares of the world's largest software company ahead of a possibly large, rapid corporate PC upgrade cycle starting in late 2010.
[...]
The brokerage said it expected Microsoft's stock to SIGNIFICANTLY OUTPERFORM ITS PEERS and the S&P 500 index .SPX over the next 12 to 18 months."

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssSoftware/idUSBNG31831820090616

[JavaMan09]

Uh, I didn't get it. Dell is going to do better because Windows 7 will be released? Won't that benefit, if there will be one, be spread around?

[Seaspray0]

Many companies will purchase from a single vendor over each fiscal year. The benefit is having a more uniform computer environment which reduces management costs. Alot of companies choose either Dell or HP. If anything, I see both of those being the main benificiaries of the winddows 7 release.

[gggg sssss]

pound for pound, ghz for ghz, gb for gb, dell will deliver more for less. IMNSHO

[JavaMan09]

Ah, ok I see.

I agree gggg ssss. I just got a Dell Studio XPS 16. Way more power for my money than I could have gotten with a Mac.
I do love this thing, even though it runs Vista it is very fast.

There are a ton of businesses limping along with older computers with XP and millions of patches. I think those sales are going to increase, but home users would be looking at netbooks or other Atom-based computers. So the biggest winner should be Intel, double dipping in both sides.

[gggg sssss]

have you ever used a netbook? Too small, strange keyboards, under powered, and not much cheaper than a real notebok. AND if you were going to buy a netbook, you might as well buy one from dell.

[BigGuns149]

Atom based desktops don't make much sense imho. For <$400 I have seen slimline machines with an Intel E5200 that would run circles around any of the Atom desktop machines. Add to the fact that AFAIK most of the Atom boards don't have PCIe slots and you couldn't put a modern video card in the thing if you wanted makes the Atom boxes with little in the way of upgrade options. Heck, I have seen Dell do bundles with a 530S with a E5200 and a 20" monitor for only $400. You would have to be incredibly cheap to not be willing to spend an extra $50 for a much more versatile and powerful desktop.

Atom based Netbooks I understand, but Atom based desktops I think are a bit of a harder sell. People are trying to save money, but I don't think people would buy a desktop that ironically is less powerful than their old desktop. Even a lot of recent Celerons have more performance than the best Atom processor.

[jessiethe3rd]

No question Dell will see increase in sales as they have a low cost solid distribution system. HP has been clobbering them as of lately but the company not to sleep on is Acer who has been catching serious steam especially with their netbook offers. 40% of business polled recently said they planned to move to Windows 7. That is a large number (don't sleep on this.) I think within the first 2 years of the products the vast majority of companies will move if simply for support reasons

[kaisdaddy]

Shill much for the Fed?

What economic indicators are you using to substantiate this impending turnaround in 2010? Did the government stop printing up money? Are we as a nation producing more goods and services than we consume all of the sudden?

That's what I thought...

[JavaMan09]

Good point. I think it funny how I hear all these prediction when the market is going to turn around. But, it isn't-yet Back when we had Bush the Fed said the whole thing would collapse if they didn't get their stimulus bill. Well, what happened--we continued to collapse. Then Obama came on the scene and said pretty much the same thing, and another bill. What is happening? Were still going down, the US isn't producing any more than they used to. We still have the same problems of over-powerful unions, unbalanced "free" trade, and a happy-growing government. So, how are we going to get a turn-around?

[i_made_this]

I agree with Otellini's bearish view that the PC market will not recover to previous levels.

The American consumer has shifted demand for desktops over to notebooks. This pretty much leaves the future of desktops in the hands of business and government buyers. Value is the target issue.

Otellini's marketing team will be trying to convince enterprise buyers to vacuum up all of his old Pentium chips lying around; or they could take his Atom chips for half the price.

Still, AMD will be the force for Intel to reckon with on the enterprise value proposition. If demand picks up, I'd have to forecast that AMD will walk away with the relatively strongest revenues improvement.

No matter the hardware selected, these deep value enterprise buyers may finally consider the Ubuntu operating system loaded with OpenOffice, Firefox etc. Other highly developed countries have done so and it's overdue we do the same. If we're talking about government buyers, then its your and my tax dollars being spent. I encourage everyone to make your feelings known to your local Senators and Congressmen about the election of hardware and software.

The article infers they'd tried Vista and will be ready for Vista's big sister, Seven. I suspect what it meant to say was they'd tried XP and will be ready to make two jumps up to Seven.

Either way, for government sales, I'd prefer my tax money go to Ubuntu with Firefox or Opera, OpenOffice and the rest.

Enterprises seem to be saying it's time for a change and I agree. I hope they make the move to Ubuntu - some will for certain, but others will need people to educate them that there are options to Windows - particularly if the taxpayer's goal is deep cost savings with significant productivity gains. Other Linux distro's like Red Hat Enterprise can be significantly more expensive than Ubuntu Enterprise, which is why I favor the latter for government accounts. The difference versus Windows must be significant enough to motivate large enterprise buyers to make a change.