CompuServe Messages

"A Pentium 90 for under $2,000? that must be a sight. Only recently has the 66Mhz gone under $2,000! (resonable national brand)" Lemme see here. In the Circuit City ad I'm looking at, a Packard Bell P60 with 420Meg HD, CD-ROM, 8Meg RAM, monitor and stuff is $1,999.94. My P90 box from an integrator had a base of $1,625. with 250Meg HD, 8Meg RAM, SVGA and the other basics. "It is very unfair to compare the cheapest put together import clone with a name brand. Everyone agrees you get what you pay for." C'mon, Andrew, you're far too bright to rely on an aphorism like "you get what you pay for". You get what you buy. You can buy a Zippo lighter for $10 or a Dunhill for $250 – and they both do the same thing well. "Last quarter Apple had the _highest_ margins in the industry, being slightly ahead of Compaq." Apple has traditionally had higher margins – and that's the core of their problem. Remember that Apple once had closer to 20% of the market and has been drifting generally downward for several years now. In Apple's case, higher margins have resulted from being able to sell at higher prices – a luxury the market is increasingly denying Apple and everyone else. "The 6100 is the best selling model they have. It sells more than any other single machine in there line. It outsells the other PPC machines 2:1." Well, maybe MacWeek and a couple of other books were wrong when they cited their stats. "Packard Bell does "okay", but don't spend a dime on improving the system. They buy commodidy parts and slap them together. The only real R&D is IBM, Microsoft, Compaq, and Apple." You mean Packard Bell's work in creating a broader distribution base, efficient manufacturing and better marketing doesn't count? Packard Bell has become the best selling brand in the industry. Perhaps they're simply applying their "research" to different areas? Making technology readily available is in some ways even more important than making it work. <G> I think there are many others whose research is also important, but not as visible or, as in Apple's case, so incredibly overhyped. "People have been predicting their death for a decade. Eventually they might be right." Goes without saying. But the bottom line is simple: as they become increasingly more marginalized with a smaller and smaller share of market . . . which is precisely what is happening . . . they lose critical mass in that market place. The things Apple brought to the table in 1994 are commonplace today – and it doesn't look as if they have any real hope of coming up with some stellar new technology. That doesn't mean bankruptcy: just that they become yet another ordinary company, which in my opinion they have been for several years now. Jerry