Over At Marketnews: Blu-ray In Budget-Price Acer PC

Marketnews: Acer Offers Blu-ray In Price Point Desktop

When you see Blu-ray drives adopted in budget PC boxes, that's a pretty telling indicator that the technology has truly arrived.

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Let's see what's happening over at Dell

Anonymous tech/biz blogger Below The Crowd, makes a couple of interesting points in relation to Dell.

First, the idea of using order times as a bellwether for the state of the computer biz:

Below the Crowd: The Dell Indicator

The indicator is simple: If Dell (NasdaqGS:DELL) takes more than one week to complete a custom order on something with the parts fully in stock (per their website), business is pretty good. 4-7 days means business is OK, but not great. 1-3 days and it's pretty weak.

He makes some good points, although the downside is that if you seriously want to use this method to keep your thumb on the pulse of the computer business, you've got to buy a lot of computers.

Moving on, he then goes off on a tirade about what he deems disproportionately expensive memory upgrades:

For upgrading my system's puny 1GB 667Mhz memory to 4GB of 800MHz memory in 2 DIMMs Dell wants $550! Buying the same memory directly from Crucial costs $116. I saved a bit more by skipping the unnecessary ECC memory that Dell forces you into buying, and dropping my memory cost to under $100

Below the Crowd has a valid point, and I've noticed this when futzing with Dell's order configurator thingy. If customer service advocate RichardFromDELL is reading, I'd love to hear his perspective on this.

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Key search terms for June

Okay, I'm a little late. I blame the Canada Day long weekend.

Without further ado, and for no one's edification but my own, here's the search terms that brought people here in the month of June:

The number one search term was "Compusmart closing," with 27% of the total. In fact, if as many people who searched for the story about Compusmart's store closings actually shopped there, they wouldn't have gotten into trouble in the first place.

In a close second (22%), Oakley's sale to Luxxotica garnered a lot of interest.

Lululemon's impending IPO (shouldn't that have happened by now?) showed strong interest for the third straight month (15%).

My personal favorites are, as always, the wild cards. The "what the hell is this person looking for?" category:

vole problem Calgary
vole exterminators Apparently it's worse than I thought.

Tweeter stops severance to employees. I hadn't heard this elsewhere and failed to corroborate it, but it makes a good story, doesn't it?

distad pain tool I have no idea what they were looking for, but if I start a heavy metal band, this will be our name.

For great t-shirts, check out the fine folks at Dirty Microbe, from whom I stole borrowed the above illustration.

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What Dell needs to do if it insists on being available through retail channels

Despite my initial rude comments about Dell's decision to be available through Wal-mart and other big-box retailers, it is possible for them to successfully execute this strategy.

One great big important key to that plan will be to take customer service out of the hands of the retailer. Customer satisfaction is something so precious, it would be an error to delegate it to someone else who lacks the same buy-in and commitment to your values.

More and more, CE manufacturers are taking personal responsibility for customer service, which is a smart move considering how many mass merchants totally suck at after-sales support. In order to short circuit frustration-based refunds, and the margin drain that Wal-mart's merciless vender-return programs causes, each box needs to have a bright, friendly label printed on the inside flap in font so large even the semi-literate can't miss it:

Is there a problem?

PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS UNIT BACK TO THE STORE!

Call 1-800-WWW-DELL and we would LOVE to make it all BETTER!

Note: it probably wouldn't hurt to have this pledge reprinted on every third page in the owner's guide, and maye even a sticker on the front of the machine itself.

It would be trite if it wasn't so true, but take care of your customers and your customers will take care of you. Referral business bought me a house. If the customers have warm, fuzzy feelings for your company, their support will take you far.

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Dell demonstrates excellent customer service, and only needed a little prompting

After the lengthy and sometimes acrimonious thread of comments in the post entitled "Wal-mart to sell Dell computers" I put RichardatDELL together via e-mail with my offline friend who goes by the name Charles Farley. I don't see the value in reprinting the e-mails that I was cc'ed on, but I can summarize:

RichardatDELL was grateful to have Charles Farley's experience of Dell dropping the ball brought to his attention, so that he can work on improving the strength of their service teams.

Charles Farley was grateful to have his voice heard, and feel that he matters as a customer.

Dell jumped to the pump, and because they did not think that they could prevent his hardware problem from recurring, are sending him a brand new computer. Not a refurb, but a new one.

I'm glad that this ended well for everyone. Poor communication leads to distrust hard feelings. Dell was listening, and looking for an opportunity to improve, which we should all do, both as companies and individuals. Most importantly, when faced with a challenge, a sour customer, they stepped up to the bat and made it right. If RichardatDELL is a typical example of the commitment Dell's people are making to change, then their future may be rosy after all.

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Compusmart closing stores

From their website:

And from an early morning email from one of my inside sources:

Well, whatever else you can say about Dell.... At least they were savvy enough to stay out of Compusmart. Don't know about you but my experiences vending to Compusmart were pretty pathetic. One clueless bunch that thought that they could just jump in to the home theatre game.

I had said earlier (but am too lazy to Google it and re-link right now), that there is going to be a lot of consolidation this year in the retail CE business. This is just the beginning.

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The flipside to Dell expanding its distribution: cutting jobs

Hot on the heels of news that Dell is expanding its distribution into big-box retailers like Wal-mart (not to mention the veritable train wreck going on in my comments section), comes news of Dell's planned workforce reductions.

BBC: PC maker Dell to cut 7,000 jobs
At least 7,000 jobs are set to be lost at computer firm Dell after it said it would cut its global workforce by 10%.
The PC maker has struggled with falling sales and rising costs, prompting founder Michael Dell to take direct charge of the firm earlier this year.
Mr Dell said the job losses would be "difficult" but stressed they were critical if the firm was to deliver better value to customers.
The US firm employs more than 78,700 staff worldwide.

So in an effort to make more money in the last year, they've slashed prices, opened their doors to retail, and are now giving some workers the sack. No dissrespect intended to my new friend RichardatDELL, but is there any broad, generic, textbook strategy that they haven't tried?

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Something's wrong with Dell

WC Varones is even more vitrolic about Dell's announcement that their computers will be sold in Wal-mart than I was.

WC Varones: Short Dell

This is a last gasp ploy by a really screwed-up company.

He also lists the key reasons why Dell was successful, and why none of those reasons still apply today.

Like me, he just doesn't see it going well for them.

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Laptops outpacing Desktops

WSJ: The Laptop as Desktop
Until now, conventional wisdom has held that a desktop personal computer is essential at home for heavy-duty tasks such as editing video. But with a slew of more powerful notebook computers hitting the market, consumers could ditch their desktop and make a laptop their primary home computer.
PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Sony Corp. and Acer Inc. this month unveiled laptops that rival desktops at performing multimedia tasks. Many of these notebook computers use a line of Intel Corp. chips -- called Centrino Duo -- that offer greater processing power and faster wireless networking.

It's not too terribly surprising that users want all their wicked processing power and bulk storage in a tidy, portable package. I'm currently being seduced by the idea of writing from my kitchen table, via wireless, rather than at my desk.

This is also the same manifestation of the portability zeitgeist driving the evolution of "smart phones," which is still a dumb name and needs a better one. The power and capabilities of handheld wireless devices is progressing to the point where it is becoming inappropriate to call them phones anymore. "Personal Computer" would be more accurate, but that's already taken.

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Wal-mart to sell Dell computers

TWICE: Wal-Mart To Carry Dell Computers
Bentonville, Ark. – Dell has opened up distribution to Wal-Mart Stores in a dramatic expansion of its retail strategy.
Beginning June 10, over 3,000 Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico will carry up to two Dimension desktop SKUs. The multi-media models are being built exclusively for Wal-Mart, and will be sold in brick-and-mortar stores only in package bundles for under $700.

...

According to a Dell spokesperson, the agreement with Wal-Mart represents the first step in a new, overarching global retail strategy. The new plan follows a shakeup of senior management, and CEO Michael Dell’s declaration that the company must look beyond its traditional consumer-direct model, as it endeavors to restore its marketplace dominance. Dell continues to sell its custom-configured PCs direct through its Web site, catalog, kiosks and lone retail store in Dallas.

Do you know what this strategy is called? It's the Throw Everything On The Wall And See What Sticks strategy. By basically opening their distribution to Wal-mart, QVC, Costco and any other big box store who can write a cheque, Dell is looking for a quick and easy boost to their numbers by being available everywhere. Dell will be in Best Buy before you know it, mark my words.

As far as choosing Wal-mart to promote their brand, there is no truth to the rumor that Michael Dell thought that the level of service offered in their call centers wasn't low enough, and he figured only some poor disenfranchised soul in a blue smock could take the service level down a notch or two.

I tried to come up with some insulting variation of the iconic "Dude! You're getting a Dell!" but I've got nothing...

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