All is not swell at Dell

they had dug their own grave…
highly incompetent..
HP and TOSHIBA are far much better than these stupid people who call themselves pioneer in making laptops..

The fact is that HP is just cleaning Dell’s clock!

Never, never, never again will I spend another dime at Dell. I have never dealt with such incompetents in my life.

I for one am certainly glad THAT AFTER THE MOST DISLIKED CANADIAN ON THIS PLANET RUINED AMR, JUST LEFT DELL SAYING HIS “JOB” WAS DONE AT DELL AND HE WAS LEAVING WITH HIS POCKETS ONCE AGAIN FULL OF OTHER PEOPLE’S HARD EARNED CASH. AND WITH A CLEAR CONSCIOUSNESS THAT HE HACKED ENOUGH JOBS ON HIS WAY OUT. (RATHER NOT GLAD BUT SAD). HIRING PEOPLE LIKE HIM WILL GET DELL A LONG WAY!..Shame

Someone should talk about the Foxconn/Compal deal where Dell blind-sided 30 employees by “selling” them to the suppliers.

First, the unpaid time off is NOT for all employees and not mandatory so please get the facts correct. Second, it is articles like this that reduce consumer confidence. Why don’t you focus on the positive with companies instead of reporting only negative? It is people like you that cause our stock markets to loose so much. Dell is not perfect, no company is but there is plenty good going on as well.

Interesting about the hiring freeze. I was just offered a position for a System Engineer and turned it down due to the dismal outlook even the hiring manager couldn’t hide. I’m glad I made the decision I did.

NO PROBLEM @ IBM!!!????

OH REALLY!!

Keep an eye on Big Blue’s red line
Investor Daily: IBM’s financial loans to customers have made it the undisputed king of business software. But beware: The credit crisis has turned that strategy into risky business.
SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) — Debt has always been a four-letter word, but has become an especially dirty one during this credit crunch. These days, folks with plenty of cash and no debt are cast as paragons of fiscal virtue, while those that ran up credit card bills are not.
But consumers aren’t the only ones who relied on debt during the good times. Companies did, too. And now that the global economy is in turmoil, companies of all sizes are struggling to manage obligations that didn’t seem to be a problem before.
Which brings us to technology bellwether IBM Should we be at all mindful of IBM’s $34 billion in debt? (That’s right, billion. With a B.)
The answer: Yes – but not for the reasons you might think. Most of the debt on IBM’s books is money it lent to its customers to help them buy its products. While Big Blue looks well positioned to ride out a financial crisis, we should watch whether its customers are able to pay back money they borrowed. If they get into real trouble, it could drag on IBM’s earnings and provide an early sign of a tech meltdown.
Normally we don’t think of tech companies as borrowers. Microsoft (and Apple are typical – they’re well known for generating lots of cash and not carrying any debt. IBM, however, has a different strategy for managing its books. It has long borrowed money to help customers buy its products, and it recently borrowed to buy its own stock as well.
How has the debt strategy worked for IBM? The results speak for themselves: Not only is IBM the undisputed king of business software and services, it has used its strength to build a cash generation machine that helps it buy smaller companies and easily pay its bills.
Lately, though, the financial crisis is exposing a couple of potential downsides to IBM’s debt. First, a small but growing number of IBM’s customers can’t pay back their loans, which leaves IBM holding the bill and could cause a drag on the company’s earnings. Second, borrowing money to buy back its own shares at last year’s higher prices may have been a sensible move, but IBM will still have to repay the debt with today’s harder-won profits.
Analysts still express confidence in the company. Louis Miscioscia, an analyst with Cowen and Company, recently called IBM stock “a great place to hide in this turbulent time.”
IBM says it’s comfortable with its debt strategy. Jesse Greene Jr., IBM’s vice president of financial management, pointed out that the company has used its cash to buy back shares for more than ten years, and only borrowed money to do it last year to take advantage of a tax loophole. (Experts have pegged IBM’s tax savings at $1.6 billion.) On the financing front, some customers who borrowed money to buy IBM products are unable to pay their bills, but that’s to be expected in a recession, he said. “We just have to man and keep our provision for doubtful accounts at high levels,” Greene said.
Take a closer look, and there is indeed some cause for concern. The bulk of IBM’s debt – about $24.5 billion of it – is from its financing arm. This works a little like the store credit cards from Macy’s or Banana Republic, except instead of buying bedroom furniture or sweaters, businesses are buying servers and database software. IBM isn’t alone in using financing to fuel its business; Hewlett-Packard’s financing arm has $9 billion in loans outstanding, for example, and Oracle finances 15 percent of its sales. But IBM’s in-house financing operation is probably the largest in the tech industry, and it’s not yet clear how the company’s customers will fare in a downturn.
“Maybe these newer customers in emerging markets might not be able to sustain the costs as well as IBM had thought, so that’s a risk,” says Tom Smith, equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s.
There are signs of turbulence. In the quarter that ended September 30, when the financial crisis had barely begun, IBM set aside $128 million to cover debts that it expects its customers won’t be able to pay. While that’s pocket change for IBM, it’s also more than the company has added to its debt reserve in the previous two years combined – and things could very well get tougher during the next few quarters.
IBM doesn’t sound concerned; its financing customers are an especially creditworthy bunch, and most of them are in the U.S. and Europe. “The exposure to the emerging markets in the financing business is not as great as you might think,” Greene said.
We’ll just have to see whether the downturn gets bad enough to really hurt technology sales. If it does, one of the first places we’ll see evidence is in IBM’s credit statements.

DUDE!!!!!

The youth of today says….

DUDE!!!!!! I’M NOT GETTING A DELL!!!!!

Mac’s ROCK!!!! ITS UNIX BABY!!!

FYI PEOPLE. Dell’s Computers really do SUCK! and the sad fact is its Not entirely their fault….. WINDOZE SUCKS TOO!!!!!

Shortly after Mr. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as part of the company’s acquisition of NeXT, Dell’s founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at a technology conference what might be done to fix Apple, then deeply troubled financially.

“What would I do?” Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

iJah420 Says Mr. Dell the clock is ticking…. unpaid vacations is NOT the solution….it will create bad vibes that will ripple throgh the Co. and in turn create poor morale. Just a side note…. candy coated shells for your poorly designed laptops and PATHETIC Windoze OS that run them wont save Dell. I would not want to be in your shoes Mr. Mike no matter how much $$$ you paid me. Dell’s days a numbered. good Luck cause that all you have left.

Gee IBM still makes PC’s? Sure wish these “experts” would understand what business’s really do.

Didn’t IBM sell its PC business years ago? How can you compare IBM and Dell?

These changes are not new. Dell has been laying off people for a while now. More are being walked out every day and will be till the end of the year. A lot of good are being fired for reasons not of their own making. Dell needs to regroup, stop wasting money, hire managers that actually know what they are doing and retain good talent.

If the ANALysts are so concerned about Dell’s slumping sales in September, why don’t they drastically slash their estimates? EPS is still expected to give Dell a growth of 15% for next year while PE is less than 8. Stock is trading as if the company should actually lose money, yet they have barely adjusted their estimates. Even if Dell warns in a big way, as long as Dell expects any profit at all, their stock is still very cheap. Yet earnings is actually expected at 34 cents this quarter and another 37 cents for next quarter. And 1.58 for next year. These guys are trying to drive the stock price to the ground to load up and save themselves from all the mistakes they made for years investing and creating mortgage backed securities. Relying on deadbeats to pay their mortgages.