I can’t help but link to this article about Dell stock. I haven’t been a fan of DELL, the company, since the days that it basically dominated the market with its $299 PC’s that were never really $299, and its relentless marketing that only promoted Intel processors.
Everyone in the industry at that time thought that DELL was misleading customers into buying slow, feature-limited computers, that essentially killed off the local computer shops and left their owners out of work.
DELL essentially forced other computer manufacturers to start making crappier products to keep up. Gateway couldn’t do it. Now they are married to Emachine – and still crappy. And we as the consumers have paid for it. DELL is raising their prices nowadays and delivering higher-quality machines. That means a better value for us, but we’ll see if it means a brighter future for them.