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Student Surpasses Master (11/14/00)
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You know, when faithful viewer Tom notified us last week about Dell's stock plummeting 18% overnight and dragging the rest of the tech sector down with it, we sort of dismissed it as "dog bites man"-style news-- not too interesting, especially when there was dirt about Bill Gates's investments in Viagra alternatives to dish. These days, issuing earnings warnings and then getting crucified on Wall Street is practically mandatory if you're a big-name computer maker. Simply everybody's doing it. (Heck, Hewlett-Packard did it yesterday.)
However, we've taken another look at the Dell situation, because whereas all these other companies are simply jumping on the bandwagon, as we all know, everything Dell does is driven by CEO Michael Dell's incurable obsession with Steve Jobs. So does Dell's latest earnings warning and resulting stock dip herald a new low in Mike's acute Steve-itis? We think it just might. Faithful viewer Tom Bank forwarded us a Morningstar.com article which indicates that the student may well have surpassed the master; apparently this latest warning constitutes "the third time Dell has cautioned investors this year."
Three this year? But as far as we can make out, Apple's only warned us twice-- once with that fateful "slow sales" announcement that halved the value of its stock overnight last September, and once again at the earnings statement last month, when Fred and Steve made it clear that the following quarter would pretty much suck, too. So that means Dell's actually out in front of Apple when it comes to issuing dire financial news. Holy Hannah! What's next? Will Dell actually start coming up with its own product innovations before Apple does?
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SceneLink (2678)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/14/00 episode: November 14, 2000: Forget the iMac rip-offs-- Cube copycats are where it's at today. Meanwhile, Microsoft's upcoming Tablet PC bears some suspiciously Apple-looking earmarks, and Dell's most recent earnings warning and subsequent stock collapse puts Mike Dell one up on Steve...
Other scenes from that episode: 2676: It Was Inevitable, Really (11/14/00) Given the firehose-like stream of incredulous mail gushing into the AtAT inbox (faithful viewer KillSwitch led the charge), most of you had the same reaction to DA Computing's Komodo Server that we did-- namely, it's that same rush of righteous indignation that fired us up when we saw the first iMac knockoff, Future Power's ePower... 2677: Newton's Second Coming? (11/14/00) A Cube knockoff's not the only noteworthy thing that surfaced at this week's Comdex convention, industrial design-wise. As faithful viewer Michael pointed out, a Reuters story discusses Microsoft's upcoming "Tablet PC"-- a slate-type device that the company "hopes to bring to market by 2002."...
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