Dell swaggers to centre stage

MIKEY'S DELL will post a profit today, as the PC maker demonstrates how it negotiated the slow-down by cutting costs and pinching market share, while others around it have crumbled and merged.

And the company is quite happy to go its own way, minding not who it upsets or who is lining up against it.

In a move that consumers will love and Microsoft won't, the direct seller is reportedly slipping a copy of FreeDos into a range of its PCs this week following Microsoft's own move to oblige PC makers to ship their offerings with an operating system installed.

Although, we understand that customers pay the same price for the PC, whether they opt for Windows or not.

Anyhow, Dell is already public enemy number one over at the new HP, where Dell President Kevin Rollins' suggestion that the company will begin making its own printers before the end of the year has HP executives fretting about the one part of their business that actually brings in the dollars.

And Dell is today expected to report a second-quarter profit of 19 cents a share on sales of $8.3 billion, based on company predictions earlier last month.

Dataquest reckons Hewlett-Packard commands 39 per cent of the market for printers, which means plenty of ink business for the newly-merged monster. It has already banned printer sales to Dell, should its moves towards printers turn out to have substance, and most observers expect Dell to steal back its crown as the world's biggest PC maker before the end of next year.

We can virtually see 37-year-old billionnaire Michael Dell kicking back in his Texan hideaway, enjoying being in the position of doing exactly what he likes. And is anyone going to stop him? We thnk not. µ

See also
Microsoft non-OS dictat down to greed, not megalomania
Microsoft "forbids" Dell, other PC firms, to sell non-Windows PCs