Next it will be "Dell to sell laptops at local computer shows".

The problems start when their total sales at Wal-Mart exceed 10% of their total sales. This is known as the Wal-Mart effect. This means that Wal-Mart can begin to apply pressure on Dell on everything from pricing to quality.

I'll bet the 4,000 people losing their jobs aren't getting many yucks.

Who the heck buys a computer from a land-based store anymore? Really. This is like buying a car on the lot before researching online. You're going to believe everything the hacks at Dell and the wingnuts at Sam's are trying to hock? I got some gold mines in Texas I want to sell you if you do.

[edit]: oops, I forgot about the mac-heads — they have gateway-like stores now!

There's a lot of people who still do that. Smart people like doctors, lawyers, etc. I know because they are relatives or friends. It's sad but it takes education.

Silly me. Here I was thinking one could actually do both--first online research and then purchase from a brick-and-mortar store.

Now incorporate one of them boogers into a stainless steel barbeque and you got somethin'.

Who cares? Why cant a company sell where they want to sell? Why is this even news?

Because if you have your product in Wal Mart you are guaranteed to produce volume on a massive scale. Walmart hasn't traditionally just let any pc manufacturer in to sell their brands, that must meet specific cost/structural requirements.

Yeah, that means it must be CHEAP........ At all costs.

I don't always believe it. You can buy very high end HD LCD Screens there, same exact you buy in Bestbuy or any other store.

If you were a Dell retailer with customers telling you they can get it for 20 dollars cheaper at Sam's Club, then you would care.

I used to deal with that all the time, but it was usually Best Buy and Circuit City because I sold home theater, audio, and high end custom car audio.

*sigh* Now Dell's reputation will plummett down the tubes even more than it has in the past two years. Selling consumer-line laptops at cheap prices through retailers always lowers product quality standards.

Now, Dell has to ship out so many Inspiron's and rush to meet that shipment, rather than Dell meeting demand on their own terms and only selling products when Dell is ready to sell them rather than when Sam's and Wal-Mart pressure them to sell them.

I don't think that will be the case. If anything, this will make their laptops *more* reliable. With their existing build-to-order business model, customers can choose multiple options of how they want their laptop built, including what hardware and software is installed by Dell.

With this new retail business model, they can focus on a single uniform set of hardware and software. Their QA department can test the hell out of the exact same configuration that is being sold in the retail stores. That's simply not feasable to adequately test every possible hardware/software configuration on a continuing basis with the current build-to-order business model.

Interesting point of view. I hope you are right, although I fear it may not be the case...

This is when you hit the bottom of the barrel. BOSE's supposed high end audio is available at Sam's Club as well.

Spoken like someone who's never owned a decent BOSE system.

Compare it to comparatively overpriced Klipsch equipment and BOSE will win hands down.

This will not only give Dell a much needed bump in market share, but it will spur Vista sales as well.

Glad to hear they're putting 2GB in these things. Every time someone tries to sell a Vista system with less, God kills a kitten. :p (Dell's been responsible for the deaths of many a kitten)

You know, i've often wondered about Bose... on the one hand some folks love the brand + i see some commercial establishments use it... but then you see plenty of dis reviews...???

"Spoken like someone who's never owned a decent BOSE system."

That's the whole issue at stake here, PC_Tool. Bose has a ruined reputation in many people's eyes simply from selling their low end systems to retailers like Sam's, but most of their high end stuff is just awesome.

Problem is, there are so few decent BOSE system's for sale at Sam's club. The good ones are sold to pro audio stores and such--with few exceptions, most of the Sam's Club Bose systems are crap from what I've been told.

Same will be with Dell. Dell will likely still have pretty solid Optiplex PC's sold online, but the Wal-Mart Dimented--er, Dimension--PC's won't be any better than HP's Wal-Mart models are. The masses will ditch Dell because the masses will start buying the crappy Dells rather than the good ones for more money.

...Oh, and I've owned a decent Bose system, and my 'decent' klipsch system blows it away. Now I'm talking about the $4000 Klipsch system not that THX certified 5.1 system floating in all those retail stores. General rule of thumb about audio products and computer products: if Wal-Mart sells it, more than likely it will not live up to its expectations. Something that is produced in mass quantity usually means it hasn't the mass quality, and why the heck would Wal-Mart try to keep $4,000 speaker systems in stock when they're simply not economical to the average Wal-Mart shopper?

I digress, but I think I've made my point...

I don't think BOSE is nessesarily bad, but I think it's like Apple, in that people in the business, i.e. audiophiles, claim the price is exorbitant for what you get, and Bose's heavy handed marketing (Mostly to older Americans who have hard hearing and couldn't care less about sound quality anyway.)

It's like you are an expert in a field, and you continually see the public go with a competitor to that field that is a joke to people "in-the-know"
RDF.

BOSE is overpriced and uses cheap components. You can get a 10x better system for half the price. If you don't believe me do a quick search on this forum http://www.avsforum.com/ and see what they say. BOSE may sound good, but you can get something that sounds better for MUCH cheaper.

By high end I hope you're not referring to Bose's cube speakers (like the Acoustimass 6, 10, and 16 speaker systems for example) that have a 230hz crossover between the cube speakers and subwoofer. Anyone who thinks this is awesome would have to be a moron.

Truthfully speaking,Audio is really more often than not a matter of preference and hearing ability,When i say hearing ability i mean that the most of us humans fall between the usual range which is like 20hz to 20KHZ give or take.I like to consider myself a bit of an audiophile as in i go to great lengths to be sure that my music and movies TV etc sound great to me and that translates to good strong bass and clear crisp highs without hiss and solid level midrange to tie it all together.I wont go into the brands of equipment i use because this is not a contest of who has the best sounding equipment but instead the best sounding equipment to them... Bad or shotty P.O.S equipment is just that.And good Quality equpment takes its respective place as well. Simply put there is no way around that & The brand that garners "The Best" title can vary depending on the genre of music you listen to most often or the types of movies etc you are watching or more specifically, how YOU want YOUR audio to sound in general.

I have used some of the "worst" and some of the "best" but again that is a matter of opinion.I have read a lot in this thread concerning BOSE well the fact of the matter is that BOSE uses a specific method of elimnating certain frequencies from their equipment thus creating a Cleaner sound,ie: some of the lower frequencies of Bass & thats why some music purists of hip hop say that their 400.00 BOSE "cans"(headphones) suck but most people who enjoy classical music or recorded oratory swear by BOSE.While some of the other brands that produce their equipment to respond to those lower frequencies which BOSE tunes out in alot of their high end equipment are the better sounding speakers and cans to other people.That is the reason why you rarely see producers DJ's or Sound Stage Crew etc wearing BOSE headsets or using Bose speakers etc.Not to say that Bose is Bad at all, just SPECIALIZED thats all nothing more nothing less.

The reality of it is this, depending on what you want and how you like your music, once you venture into the pricey high end of Audio equipment there really is not that much of a difference in QUALITY but moreso a difference in HOW the Quality is achieved. It is much like Nascar. At 200 miles per hour FAST is FAST no matter what angle you crash into the other car!! And to further support my point at that speed the race is decided by who punches it on the straight-aways the hardest and who handles turns better, or who brakes the least. This is not a testimony to how good each car is but instead a testimony to how good each car responds and performs to it's driver's particular style.All very different techniques and methods which all have the potential to work depending on the situation in which they are applied.This same principle applies to audio equipment. Sorry for the long oh so long post... Just my $1.50 worth. So long story short always buy what works best for you and be aware though that in the end you ONLY get WHAT you pay for!

Thank you.

LOL no, I wasn't refering to that system. Actually it was some old stereo system that my grandfather had (with big speakers)--couldn't even tell you the model off the top of my head.

230Hz crossover you say? Dang, that explains it...

Dell sells PC's in Wal-Mart & now Sams Club, thus making it more of a pain in the a** for us Dell Premier Partners who have to deal with clients who say "...well I saw this system at Wal-Mart/Sams for $###.### less." Nevermind that it had the base proc, half the RAM you ought to have, a 5400 rpm hard drive, on board video, no Office suite, and a 1 year mail in warranty. but hey, it came bundled with a crap printer and some useless garbage software bundles that you'll never use. GG Dell, thanks. Maybe you should pay more attention to your IdeaStorm site.

Hey PC,

BOSE is the ultimate lowest common denominator home audio equipment. Bose puts a paper cone driver that costs $1.50 in thier tiny cube speakers and another paper cone driver in their Acoustimass subwoofer that costs about $3.00.

They then sell that Lifestyle speaker system for $1800 to people like you. I've heard home theater in a box systems that cost ten times less and sound better than BOSE. You've been duped by thier catch phrase "Better sound through marketing".

I've pulled this junk apart to see what is so magical after we removed a system from a clients home and replaced it with Paradigm Reference on-walls and center channel with a 12" powered sub. It's a complete joke.

LOL smarter,

I love when someone talks crossovers, I used to build second and third order passives for car audio from scratch.

BOSE is the ultimate uninformed suburban family product. They have convinced people into thinking it's high end audio.

Not true, have you ever used an Audio Control Spectrum analyzer / SLP meter? When you run a pink noise test on a home system, you can see exactly where the speakers fall short.

Right before a big car audio show, I would be the guy who had to adjust all of the customer systems we put in who were competing. I sold a lot of Audio Control EQT's which are separate left and right third octave full bandwidth EQ's. I've had several first place finishers and a perfect 30, I know a little about equalization and what speakers sound more natural than others. In car audio a/d/s was close to perfect with no equalization depending on the final location of the drivers and tweeter placement.

There are huge dips and spikes with BOSE, especially at 1Khz, which is the most annoying tone known to man. They do a terrible job of matching speakers to give you the flattest response. Thier cube speakers roll off at 300Hz because a two inch driver cant reproduce low frequency. They use the sub module to fill in the gap and try to get up and over 400Hz but the enclosure they use which is bandpass, rolls off frequencies to steeply over 100Hz.

The end result is a hodge podge, half assed system that attempts to sound full range. Dont take my word for it, check out the opinions and testing done by independent labratories on BOSE garbage. It all sucks compared to true reference speakers.

A flat response from a speaker system will ensure that you hear the original recording as it was intended to sound. All BOSE systems are pre-equalized (badly I might add) to attenuate the 200 - 500Hz range, which is right where all your punchy midbass is. This takes away any warmness of sound and results in what we call the BOSE effect. "No highs, no lows, must be BOSE".

Anyone who owns a BOSE system needs to compare it to a really nice set of matched components. Why do you think the BOSE display is always in the middle of nowhere and not next to the rest of the gear so you can A/B it.

Also, you are never allowed to put your own reference material to listen on a BOSE system. Why? Because the have thier own recording studio to make thier own demos. They heavily equalize the reference material to get a flatter, warmer sound instead of making better speakers.

Again PC, you've been roped in by one of the best snake oil companies in the world. I dont think anyone has a better disinformation campaign than these guys. If they can make a fortune selling $20.00 worth of parts for $1800.00, good for them.

Actually there not to shabby, i work at a walmart, there only selling two types of the same model, on without anything except a tower, which has an amd 64 3600+, 1gb ram, 250gb HD, for 498, and the other one comes with a 19"wide, 320gb HD, 1gb ram, and also 3600+, both have dvd burners and that one is 698, but we have been told dell, and walmart are tracking all the accessories we sell, to see if dell is going to stay with walmart or not, thou i doubt it will make a difference

"As said by HOLLYWOOD" A flat response from a speaker system will ensure that you hear the original recording as it was intended to sound. All BOSE systems are pre-equalized (badly I might add) to attenuate the 200 - 500Hz range, which is right where all your punchy midbass is. This takes away any warmness of sound and results in what we call the BOSE effect. "No highs, no lows, must be BOSE". EndQuote"

I agree with alot of what you said and that is the point i was making BOSE "creates" their sound by producing their equipment with certain frequencies in mind.IE: "no lows it must be BOSE"..Now to you Hollywood & to some others as well that might be a problem but some other people appreciate that and are willing to pay for it...Now is it fair for BOSE to price a piece of equipment so high despite the fact that they are eliminating some of the sound and in the end the listener is not getting a truly "complete" sound...hmmmmmm i guess that is for the people buying the equipment from BOSE to decide..

Now i wont say that Bose's techniques are to my liking but i will say that they have been in business for a long time and doing the same thing for just as long i might add. I will go as far as saying that i can GUARANTEE you that MANY other MORE qualified people than an audio installer/technician or an avid audiophile such as myself have gone over BOSE's production methods and marketing/sales practices before and yet BOSE is still in business....WHY?? I'll tell you why, because there are a lot of people who love that Bose name and the performance albeit sub-par for some of us there are just that many more who love it... That same argument can also be applied to WALMART and it business practices as well while we are on that topic!!!

Now to adress the issue of the tools you use for work i cant say that i have used many of the tools you do,but in that same vein have you ever used a Seasonal Sales Trend Analysis or a Graph Chart to map out Rep placement over the next quarter??? probably not, But what i can say is that i use my EARS everyday and have for just a "few" years now. And something else i do know is that that while your meters can and always will tell you where a speakers sound reproduction falls short..The human ear cannot do the same on such a precise level. I had actually addressed that point initially in my first post when i said that the human ear only goes so low or so high as far as frequency response is concerned, so with that duely noted, a meter will always beat out the ear. So if you are in the business of "tweaking" sound so that it can be analyzed or measured by a meter or any other instrument aside from the human ear then of course you will want your sound to meet the most exacting of standards even if said standards are out of the range of the HUMAN ear as you are not using the human ear to guage the sound, but instead an advanced specialized piece of equipment.In the event that a person is being judged with said instruments ie: in a sound competition, then you are right in line to use those same tools to adjust your sound. But the truth of it is that most of us dont have those tools laying around in the media room but what we do have is our good ol handy ears.Now as for what sounds better to the ear hmmm well, that my friend is quite a different story im afraid.And any good sound man worth his speaker wire knows that there is a dramatic difference between what a spectrum analyzer and the human ear will discern from the same audio.(ironically i have used a sound spectrum analyzer by the way) but we referred to it differently.

We all could go back and forth all day about this but its just like the argument of .MP3 format vs .WMA format. In the end can you realllllyyy tell the differnce between the two other than size on HDD or actually running the sound through an electronic device to see where the sound "falls short". I still stand by my point that the only frame of reference that truly matters is your own..DONT buy P.O.S and expect it to perform great and dont buy a crescent wrench to hammer nails because it still all boils down to what you will be listening to or watching or what sounds best to you.....

Again PC, you've been roped in by one of the best snake oil companies in the world. I dont think anyone has a better disinformation campaign than these guys. If they can make a fortune selling $20.00 worth of parts for $1800.00, good for them.

Fooled by the best? Well, I suppose I won't take it too hard.

I'll have to grab some more equipment and take another look I guess. Always nice to have folks around who know more than I do. (At least, when they're willing to share their knowledge, unlike some others).

Thanks, man. Seriously.

There is a reason some have never owned a Bose system. As somewhat of an audiophile, I can tell you there is no such thing as a "decent BOSE system." (Low bass sound waves can't come from little tiny boxes--except via audio trickery.) However, Bose does have a superb marketing department.

P.S. -- I still own a pair of god-awful sounding Klipschorns. ;^) Most likely I always will.