2005-05-03 19:32:42
It's not really my place to criticize...
I read the papers. All the articles about the IBM/Lenovo deal say that Dell is the "number-one" PC vendor in the world. In the last 12 months, this company took 3 BILLION dollars of profit on 49 BILLION dollars of revenue. This is amazing.
Even more amazing is the fact that they did this selling PCs, a business where they have a thousand competitors selling products that are all basically the same.
Dell is obviously a successful company. They certainly doesn't need marketing advice from a small-time entrepreneur at a little software company in the middle of the giant cornfield known as Illinois. It's not my place to criticize a firm that can generate incredible numbers like these.
So I won't.
But it's just that I went for a walk earlier this afternoon. The cornfield has unusually nice weather today, and I couldn't resist taking a lap around the block to enjoy the breeze. On the way back, I figured I might as well stop at the mailbox and save somebody else the trouble of going out to pickup today's pile of dead-tree spam.
(Holy cow! Do we get this much mail every day?)
As I walked into the building, I noticed that Dell sent us a catalog.
Then I noticed we got more than one.
In fact, we got THIRTEEN of them! Now I'm curious. How the heck did Dell decide that we needed thirteen copies of their May 2005 catalog? Are these all addressed to named individuals?
So let's cut to the chase. Here's the final score:
- Three catalogs to individuals who are employed at SourceGear right now. (In Dell's defense, I'll admit that one of these was addressed to the guy who buys most of our equipment. One out of thirteen isn't too bad.)
- Five catalogs to individuals who no longer work here. All of them have been gone for over a year. One of them has been gone for over three years.
- One catalog to a person who worked for Spyglass, my former employer and the previous tenant of this building, over eight years ago.
- Four catalogs to people I have never heard of before.
But like I said, I'm not criticizing anybody. That's not my job.