http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD0xNjAxIn the marriage between Intel and Dell I always wondered who wears the pants in the family. For years I thought it was Dell, but now I’m not so sure. Dell is an operationally excellent company, and they know exactly how to trim costs and gain market share. Their business is an exact science, and due to the volumes Dell sells, Intel most likely offers generous MDF to keep them profitable so they can continue to grow their business.
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IMHO Dell are still catering for their target market - big business. you compare the turnaround time on their workstations, servers and business desktops to that of machines designed for SOHO or Home use, and you'll see that an order for 50 workstations, 20 laptops and 12 servers will be delivered, with all requested custom features before that of a home user has wormed it's way out the other side of the order process.
Until AMD can show real businesses the cost savings associated with their processors, Dell won't be prepared to jump ship. Dell remains and probably will remain a very beige company in terms of design and innovation. fine they've gone for black/gray/bluuu led motif on their "newer", but they're still beige.
A big who cares. Dell has huge market coverage and saturation. AMD simply cannot supply enough CPUs for them, nevermind all the 'support' intel gives them when designing systems themselves.
And most people who wanted 'geek performance' wouldnt head Dell's way. Pfftt waste of time that article was.
While I agree with some of the opinions raised here, I will disagree with the belief that big businesses only care about how much it won't cost them.
The days of IT managers & directors throwing money around without researching performance & scability are long gone. That's why they employ people like me to guide them with thorough proven evaulations for potential hardware purchases & architectural decisions.
If it costs x more but performs y better, then don't believe that any IT director won't be interested in those numbers. They will. The larger the company, the more definitive the answers & solution must be.
Im an AMD fanboy, for which I will make no lies but when it comes to choosing what is best for a solution, Il choose what gives me the best performance vs cost.
If a dual opteron blade from IBM will accommodate 30 terminal server users and the equivalent dual XEON blade from IBM can load test to 40, Im interested and vice versa. Il take whichever works best and is the right price compromise.
When you times that by a factor of ten and you need to spot spaces for 400+ bodies, the mechanics mean that I can buy one to two less £3000 servers. That's a saving ANY IT director wants to hear.
As it was, the Opteron crushed the Xeon in our performance testing using Segue SilkPerformer. The Opterons won the day but that may not always be the case. Don't discount any serious IT architecture or systems departments sway in technical decision making or spend.
"In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
Disagree with the article here too.
Dell know what they are doing from the business front. Their machines might not suit the true enthusiast but I don't think that's what Dell are going for. The XPS machines aren't even completely enthusiast machines, but where do you draw the line? I don't see many large companies offering liquid cooled, overclocked machines with the tightest timings possible. Voodoo's UK site still has prices in dollars and gives an american toll number.
Dell stick with intel chips because they need a guarenteed, very high volume, supply. If you don't like intel, go buy a non-dell machine - they're not going to stop anyone looking elsewhere. The joys of an open market are such that if we don't like something we can go elsewhere. If Dell are missing out on a market or not selling a product then they aren't making money, so it's in their interest to make things that sell, or at least make things that increase sales elsewhere. The XPS systems might be just that - raising the dell profile. That said, I looked the the on offer gen 5 XPS system and found it to be the most competitively priced system I could find anywhere for the specification I wanted. The fact they are happy to use NVidia m/boards suggest it's not all tight bonds.
It's all very kind for voodoo to point out dells flaws and try to encourage them to enter voodoo's own market by adressing them.. or is that the sceptic in me suggesting voodoo are just trying to bash on a competitor?
And as for tips for voodoo - I'd suggest providing a proper service to the UK and other markets, improving the website and for goodness sake offer some better looking cases
Last edited by kalniel; 15-09-2005 at 04:00 PM.
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