🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan20.203035.17472@src4src.linet.org>, scottw@src4src.linet.org (Scott Weintraub) writes:
|> People aren't whining.  I've heard horror stories in this newsgroup about
|> people who waited 11 weeks for their system!  We're not talking about supply
|> and demand, we're talking about competition and there are clone makers out
|> there who plan way ahead and make sure that they have enough of their
|> product to last them for the next few weeks.  They demand certain things
|> from their suppliers and make sure they can get the hardware they need
|> immediately.  If they can't do it, somebody else will!  Zeos promises
|> 1 week delivery and as far as I know, they make that deadline.  They're not
|> running out of motherboards.  They're not running out of 256k caches.  
|> They're not running out of video cards, monitors, cases, RAM, and software
|> packages.  

They're probably didn't do $1.2 billion in business in 1992, either...  I just
talked to my sales rep, and he mentioned that GW2000 broke the Gigabuck
barrier last year.

|> Gateway should be suited to fit that demand.  Either that, or
|> they're not qualified to lead the clone market.  

There is no way to fit demand that grows exponentially.  *IF* Gateway had
anticipated that they'd be delivering 3500 systems a day, they'd have geared
up in advance; the burst of orders generated by a combination of Christmas,
several simultaneous "Best of 1992" reviews, and rock-bottom prices apparently
took them completely by surprise.  Sorry if I sound like a GW2000 apologist,
but the reality is that you can't have rock-bottom prices for good hardware if
you order based on your most optimistic projections, because if you're wrong
you end up sitting on millions of dollars of inventory, and that eats into
your margins.  I'm sure that Gateway tries to match their own component orders
as closely to a conservative demand projection as possible, and prefers to err
on the low side -- assuming, usually correctly, that someone who's shopping
price will be willing to tolerate a delay.  I'll bet that if you plotted
orders vs. deviation from promised time, it would have a very short tail to
the left, and a very long tail to the right, with the mean right around the
long side of the promised range and a reasonably low standard deviation.  
The horror stories about 11 week delays are probably 5 standard deviations
out. 

|> I am eagerly awaiting my 66V and if it doesn't come in three weeks (it's been
|> 16 days now), I'm going to be angry.  I have every right to be.

Sure you do.  You also have the right to cancel your order if it takes too
long.  I considered this option, but realized that my face would look kind of
silly with no nose...