undefined | Better HN

0 pointsssl-317d ago0 comments

> There are a lot of variables at play there. Pricing, branding, perhaps even your CIO's solid golfing relationship with the Dell sales rep... or their not-so-nice relationship with the HP sales rep.

No, there's really not. I've already explained the main variable here: Price.

The other driving variable, which I left to implication, was inertia.

We didn't have a CIO. Nobody from Dell or HP was taking anyone from this company out for golf outings, dinners, strip clubs, or nose beers. We merely bought and used computers, with perhaps 50 desktop systems at peak that slowly rotated over time as needs ebbed and flowed.

We could have switched to HP or Acer even some box-builder with a non-English name instead, and maybe we would have done so if Dell hadn't introduced cheaper products. Who knows. That version of reality never happened.

It sure seems like the introduction of the lower-cost Vostro line strengthened our inertia. I don't know if that was good or bad for us, but it was almost certainly better for Dell this way than in some alternate reality where it went in some other direction.

---

Anyway, I looked at Dell's laptop lineup after I read your previous comment. It's a damned mess. But I'm not sure that this mess qualifies as 70 or 100 (or whatever) base models: It's plainly evident that there's a lot of overlap within this list. :)

0 comments

JohnBooty15d ago

    The other driving variable, which I left to implication, was inertia.

Right. That's pretty orthogonal to "how many laptop models is enough laptop models?" though.

    No, there's really not. I've already explained the main variable here: Price.

So, I would like to be very clear: I understand that price is an important factor. Vostros are cheap and though you disagreed, your company viewed price as the most important thing. Many people and companies feel that way. I do understand that.

That does not even remotely explain why Dell has so many lines and models.

Most companies manage to have budget lines/models without such a brain-melting array of choices. You keep writing, essentially, "well we kept buying dell so I guess it worked!!!!"

But I could just as easily say "a lot of companies don't buy Dell, and Apple has like 100x the market value with like 1/10 of the models so obviously Dell is stupid" but that would not be accurate either because there are a looooooot of other variables.

Anyway, this conversation is going nowhere, and you don't have anything insightful to say, so thank you and good bye.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse