Pity Dell doesn't just pick up and go to China. Then, US taxpayers wouldn't have to subsidized his nearly 100% Chinese operation. And certainly the residents of Houston would appreciate him leaving since he doesn't pay real estate taxes at anywhere near value for his multi-multi-million dollar home.

Labeling Dell a US corp is a joke.

Dell had better do something as Acer is going to steamroll them otherwise. Acer has a sales growth rate in the US 4 times greater than the others. They are third and climbing rapidly to the top.

He's going to shut down most of the IT/IS development work in Austin on October 17 - however, has the coward had the guts to tell any staff in person ?

He had an interesting business model, he tampered with it, grew the business in an amateur way and deserves all the pain as a result. I feel sorry for the Dell staff, there are some good ones in the company. The future of IS/IT lies in Malaysia and India and with other low cost countries for product development.

I guess HP are not much better, Apple are suffering (stock price)... where to turn to ?

Please remove this... Image... from the frontpage soon. It's creepy!

There are simple truths. Many great leaders led their company by listening to their customer’s viewpoint and giving them an adequate solution in terms of quality and price (the original Dell model). Then, somehow, Dell lost the contact with the customers, shifting their focus to their own point of view, based on the fact that they were about the biggest computer company, mislead by marketers telling that customers would now (have to) listen to them.

Then came the fall. They started bullying customers, putting aggressive marketing plans in place, deceiving selling techniques, breaking their promises, devaluating models by proprietary standards, and so on. They even managed to massacre the golden consumer brand Dimension (for years THE reference in terms of ‘best buy’, what would you do with a marketer changing the name of Coca-Cola into something else?).

These are probably much more the underlying reasons of their fall than cheap PC competition, because their hardware is still great and customers are willing to pay for quality (look at HP, they’re not cheaper but their customer relation is much more reliable and honest), but consumers don't like companies that don't listen to them...