our company has been dealing with Dell for years, however, over the past 6 months I have been completely unable to get a quote for kit from them...... they surely are in the shadow of HP as that is where we are looking to go as Dell clearly don't want the business.

Recent experience with Dell laptops suggest the construction is flimsy already so going with "lower cost producers" is not to be recommended!

This was a reason for me to buy an HP one instead, which feels much more solid. If Dell want to compete with HP they should up their build quality, IMHO

Hey sports, THAT'S 27%!! If the "claimed" Apple sales of Macs, iPuds and POS "smart" iPhony were so great, why is it that AAPL is being so REJECTED by the Wall Street insider investors??

Because all the sales claims and market gains are bullshit.

Ps - HP is UP +1.46%! While as of today, AAPL from a high of 190 to 136.54 -3.82 -2.72%

I'm always confused when people complain about Dell's build quality. All the machines we've had on the whole are always well put together. Testing however is a different kettle of fish...Half the time we end up with kit that doesn't work properly for 3 months while they get a bios update out.

HP's kit on the other hand is over priced, awful quality, but on the whole does seem to work out the box.

I rather urgently needed to buy a new XP Pro laptop for pretty much immediate use; I wanted to buy from Dell but they are so pro-Vista they effectively turned me away.

For example the USA Dell website has something like "You spoke, we listened" and make it (relatively) easy to buy an XP machine, whereas the UK Dell website when offering info/choice between XP and Vista just relentlessly go on about how great Vista is, and hides XP purchase in the business choices, and adds something like £60 for the privilege of having XP rather than Vista, with a bit of extra delay thrown in for good measure.

My choices boiled down to Toshiba or Lenovo.

Webster, your dickishness knows no bounds.

Tiger Direct, OEM. They also have great starter kits. I might add that OS in general is less.

--Glenn

@Ian Davies: sounds like you're complimenting him...oops. That's right. We weren't talking about enlargement.

"The firm’s boss Michael Dell recently sought to reassure investors by vowing to save $3bn in annual costs by cutting back on staff and shifting to lower cost producers." really means "to hell with a quality product, average or even less than average will suffice. Oh, and in terms of personnel, we'll just fire all of the talented help and replace them with anybody with a pulse." I'm going to meander a bit and assume that Michael Dell is going to be blazing new trails into the Amazon, in search of unknown tribes of natives, who might be willing to work for grubs, a couple gross of berries and the occasional dell t-shirt, and ditch India, all together, because it's one of the few places where the locals haven't fully embraced the global economy yet, and can be easily exploited for a few years.

Ian Davies, your dumbfuckiness is immeasurable. Apple Kool Aid Drinker .... FACTS are immaterial.

Dell losing value = market correction

Apple losing value = good time to buy AAPL

The difference? One has an expanding market presence and a diversified future. The other is Dell.

... the last refuge of the retard and his straw-man argument... how clever of you to conflate share price and sales figures as though they represent the same thing... how ingenious to pretend that Apple could somehow fake their market share, as though they go out and count the sales themselves, rather than a dedicated market intelligence firm like... ooh, I don't know... IDC?

Go back to bed, you tool.

I agree with all that about the UK site.

I still think that dell's refusal to offer the linux versions as a pull-down on the main page for the laptop stinks. Even if the "recommend microsoft vista" they should be offering the alternative.

I would have bought two Dells this year had the cost of the linux version not come out more expensive than the equivalent windows one by the time the specifications are aligned.

Im not sure whats happening with the enterprise world , but for home consumers dell is under a lot of pressure. These computers are falling in price all the time, and with the arrival of the linux mini laptops pressure is on even more. My eee PC cost £160 , there just isn't much profit in something that costs so much less.

Personally however, I did get work to buy me a new ubuntu dell machine. Its very very nice. When the market does switch to linux, maybe dell can recover. HP dont sell /support that much in the way of desktop linux which will bite them in the arse one day.

(I said when not if, with the expectation the onslaught of ms and apple fans - unless you start giving away your OS , it is simply a matter of when).

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha Apple TANKS worse than ANY other Silicon Valley Tard company!

Hey Apple Kool Aid Drinkers ..... how's YOUR AAPL Portfolio you paid $185 per share at ????

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha .......... Wall Street KNOWS your Apple products are "gadgets".

...urgently required for the terminally gormless Mr Phreaky, I feel.

You still haven't explained how Apple' stock dropping (like every other tech stock) when their market share is increasing, is somehow the same as Dell's share price dropping because their market share is being eaten away. Go on, have a punt. It's a slow afternoon, and I could do with the amusement of watching a dumb animal getting tied up in their lack of understanding of their own argument.