Daewoo and other far eastern manufactures have used Ireland, sometimes in the Republic of and in Northern (which allows "Made in UK" to be stamped on products). Government often gives grants for the establishment of new factories.

Now "Made in EC" is achievable by manufacturing in low cost Hungary and other ex-Soviet controlled parts of Europe.

It's likely the contracts Dell has with the workers in these factories is different to the ones the low cost, far eastern manufactures would want.

This all seems very short term, Dell need to ride out the storm. They are not Apple, if they outsource flexibility will be lost, they will have to have much tighter controls and excellent specifications/contracts.

I.C.T directors guide to the galaxy.

1. If you cant manage your business.

A. Outsource

1. If you need to make savings because you have no proper growth plan.

A. Outsource

1.If you cant bid for a contract because the finanicals are in disney land.

A. Outsource

1.If you cant find a way to increase your bonus this year or share options.

A. Outsource your Outsourcing.

1.If you need a whooping horse for all the blunders your comapny makes then (data loss etc).

A. the outsource the blame to whoever you have outsourced to.

1. If like above you have to blame your outsourced provider for destorying your business.

A. demand they outsource your business that your have outsourced to them( the more links in the chain the harder it will be to pin blame on you ).

1.Last Point never outsource the directors canteen.

A. because Outsourcing is crap.

Dell's downfall will be the world moving to laptops and away from build to order desktops that benefit their manufacturing mode. I am convinced anyway that there are two types of Dell customers in the world. Those who were Dells customers and were screwed and those who have yet to be Dell's customers and get screwed. In either case, Dell needs to change or say goodbye

We've been buying loads of kit from Dell because they deliver good stuff, reliably. If they loose reliability of execution, they'll lose us too.

Dell is outsourcing it's manufacturing now? Selling the factories are they? They won't have any control over quality now. Their tech support went down with outsourcing. Expect quality control on their computers to get worse too. Maybe that is way the place I work for has switched to HP. Dell sux.... accept for their Alienware unit... I think....

The Mythology of Michael Dell will have to be updated.

because its #1 customer is the US government. End-to-end ownership of the computer design and component assembly is key to security. If you have the direct oversight to make sure what is and what is not going into your computers, then you can say your computers are fit for high-security environments. If you outsource, who knows what's going into the box, from which country the parts are coming from, and what they are capable of doing? And outsourcing to China? Are they mad?! Talk about bugs in the software...

If the US government is too stupid to see this fact, they deserve to lose their secrets. But I think they're smart enough to see it...and Dell will lose its best customer. Bye bye, Dell, hello, HP (or whatever proprietary shoe-in they'll use). It's too bad. Yet another American company dead, due to outsourcing. And thousands of people out of work, too.

I work in a university.

Dell is one of our contract suppliers.

Dell only remain a contract supplier because some individuals insist on buying equipment from them _despite_ poor service levels.

I am one of the people who rubberstamps purchase requests in our department.

I also happen to be one of the people who maintains the networks and systems....

My average wait time on Dells _CORPORATE_ helpline for hardware problems is 22 minutes, with a minimum recorded wait of 18 minutes. This is at 0870 rates and is on the first call.

I hate to think what kind of raw deal home buyers are getting.

Needless to say, I do not approve Dell purchase requests anymore.

Dell are far from the worst offenders. I had a 2 HOUR wait on HP's 0870 support line last month, which terminated at 6pm with "sorry, our lines are now closed". This was for a UKP 25k disk array with a controller fault.

...with outsourcing, is that now they are outsourcing their own designs. Basically, they will have no more control. Its basically" Lets outsource our business model"

Dell will go the way of IBM most likely, and focus on Services. Its all they will have left.

So does this mean poor old US State Department at foggy bottom is now running out approved sources to buy the newest and latest note books for all it's Embassy Staff ?

What price a choice ?

How can Dell go the way of IBM?

IBM have been everywhere and done everything in the computer world and beyond.

Dell have manufactured and sold a bit of hardware.

Services? What services?