I don't think its Symantec maybe Motorola? idk

Let em buy GM - that'd solve a lot of problems - and cars could be ordered over the internet with whatever mods chosen in a drop down list - like their computers

^^ good idea

I think dell should spend their 10 billion into using better computer parts. every Dell has been sucky for me.

Whatever dell is buying, im not touching with a 10 foot pole.

yuk!!

If anyone mentions AMD, I call dibs on being first to beat them violently.

I would buy Motorola. It could get them into phones real quick. Maybe Nvidia would be

Dell has gotten better (A little.) My Dell Studio Slim works just fine and my sister loves her Studio notebook.

I hope they don't buy NVidia, they make it suck, just like Alienware. And if they bought AMD they would go out of business. I bet the EU is going to make an antitrust case if they buy anyone important, for monopolizing the market, like MS supposedly does w/ its IE8 bundle

Tom's needs an edit. I didn't want to put the Nvidia thing on my post.

They could spend that money on good tech support. Sitting on that much cash and treating your bread and butter like crap is plain wrong.

I wonder if they could afford to buy ASUS. That would be about the wisest acquisition they could make. They need to buy someone that will help them innovate as this company is in desperate need to do something new and bold. Drive the market or be driven by it.

you'll have to fight me for that right.

Dell sucks my pen15

Dell has sold a few good PC's so long as you just stay within the predefined functions of that PC.

in other words, if its in the office area, use it for office stuff only.

however, i did have a huge problem with a Dell PC i was workin on with a friend. it was an XPS 7** [forget the model number, 760 maybe?] they had the processor i7 overclocked to about 3.7gHZ, way to high for system stability because it went down as soon as a game pulled up. After replacing the whole entire PC 1 component at a time, after i had told them it was their setup, they finally sent out a new one with the same problem. This new one they sent out was 3.7gHz as well, so we sent it back. The third one that came out worked like a charm, nice and fast. 2x GTX285's and 4 Gigz DDR3 ram. however, the processor was 3.4ghz OC'd.

I really hope they be more careful next time i see anyone buy an XPS model, i mean honestly putting it at the tippy top of the performance graph is ok but if it even goes over an inch it falls into instability. I do note however that the 2 cards were placed right on top of eachother and ran about 84C in game. It was stable i guess, just a little warm. i dont understand sacrificing quality for the sake of a little extra noise in the system. that's mainly why i dont trust dell i guess.

We can share.

To Party?

yeah I bought a dell inspiron 700m back in spring 2005 and its still chugging along after I have spilled paint and dropped it at least 4 times. The hinges are getting loose and the button that turns the monitor off broke off but the computer keeps trucking. None of my other computer have lasted this long. For me dell rocks

Crap, do I have to add to the list of companies that I won't buy from because whenever Dell buys something that company turns to crap ... Alienware used to be good before the Dell buyout.

Dell's crap and everything it buys turns crap.

Dell makes shit, Asus makes awesome tech...

Though buying out or atleast buying as much of the company as they can, would likely help improve all Dell products substantially. Nothing a little R&D can't fix.
However it would be a shame if they brought Asus to the same level of shit they are in themselves, and if they stopped investing in R&D.

That's what's wrong with capitalism when it gets too big. Big companies take excess cash and just buy other companies out. Buying companies don't add much value to a companies sustainability but more to enhance it's stock performance. Ultimately the consumer suffers with bloated companies hording cash, stalling innovation, and providing products that copy-cat or lackluster.

Hey Dell! Since you have $10B to spend. How about taking some of that money to create good jobs for good people and not hire criminal inmates for contract work? Build new systems so you can operate in the US effectively and maintain strong profitability with little to know outsourcing. Spend more money on R&D to create more products internally rather than re-brand. Grow some balls and create novel software and even your own OS. There's a lot of money you can spend on yourself... stop buying other companies out. We don't need another M$ or IBM. What we need is an agile company that still has a decent reputation, cash, and for it to innovate organically.

And if your run out of ideas - I have a couple of business plans for you to peruse. Seriously. PM me.

Why in the world would they buy BMC Software, a company that makes 80% of it's revenue from Mainframe? BTW, their new sales management is sinking that ship faster than the Titanic. Hopefully, for their sake, Dell will bale them out before the shareholders and board realize the shell game they're playing.

How do they make things suck? Can you utilize some logic to back up your illogical comments? I worked for Intel for 2 years and now i have been working for DELL for the past 3 years. I can tell you everything they do has the consumer involved in it and if you didn't know, every single computer that they make has their sales team and tech support survey for. It's not just a company that is focused on making profit, they do care about the consumer and if you have ever worked for them you can attest to this. Don't assume and put down a computer company because you have had a bad experience. For every bad case, their is 10 that are good and thats with just about every other company as well. All this bloviationg is nothing but illogical nonsense. There is plenty of people that love DELL computers and I can related to this since my 9 year old DELL is still running better than most computers out right now.

^^ That's probably cuz you use it for what it is capable for or less. The main reason people don't like dell because their computers aren't as reliable as others and aren't as flexible as the other guys.

They should buy AMD, that way at least we'll get rid of one terrible company (amd).

Amd isn't a bad company at all, in fact they're better for the normal consumer than Intel, AMD actually has some pretty good procs,like the AthlonX2 and Phenom. Intel just rips off people for thier name. Intel is mainly good for gaming, and fast processing.

you sound like an intel fanboy^^

AMD isn't a bad company at all, in fact they are better for the average consumer than Intel, they have more bang for the buck than Intel.Intel is mainly for gaming and fast processing than normal stuff.

^^ u sound like an Intel fanboy

sorry about the double post, my browser was being stupid. (IE8)

My first thought was a company that makes hard drives or SSD. My second crazy thought was Red Hat.

I don't Dell to buy ASUS. They are the only motherboard maker I will buy other than Apple. If Dell were smart they would spend half the money on QC and put the other half someplace where it draws interest (A bit of cash in the current economy would not be a bad thing).

Note: I use Macs for my UI systems and Linux computers to do the real work.

I dunno - dell has been better then most companies lately (compaq/hp) and crappy others like MSI etc

There badmouthed a bit too much i think, mainly because either there's heaps out there hence more issues reported, or because they arnt as upgradable as other pcs (in which case there for business and basic home use where minimal upgrading and work is done on them etc) - there not a bad unit all in all.

"AMD isn't a bad company at all, in fact they are better for the average consumer than Intel, they have more bang for the buck than Intel.Intel is mainly for gaming and fast processing than normal stuff.

^^ u sound like an Intel fanboy"

You sound like an amd fanboy.

The most bang for the buck comes with i7 CPUs, which will get you more than the most expensive amd chip. I wouldn't touch an amd chip for real processing with a 10 foot pole.

Linux on i7/xeon chips for real work. Windows on i7 for gaming.

So what happens if i cannot afford an i7 rig?

I agree 100% here mate - i work in a similar IT company which shall remain unnamed and we care to make a decent product but when idiots ignore our advice, choose a rubbish selection of components to make a "good system", or do something stupid with it, decide either build (aka f***k) it them selves, void our base warranty, or whatever else they do because they think they know best or whatever we get the blame because of it or there $400 budget PC wont boot up in 10 seconds or doesnt play the latest games on max etc

In the end we have a massive rep of both great systems (to those who arnt up them selves and listen to our advice) and poor quality systems (which the customer made unreasonable demands like price vs overall performance/quality etc) - people our way would prefer saving $5 on branded ram vs generic, prefer a 500w "generic" PSU over a 400w branded PSU thats $15 more, a cheap case (we call the oven - only an 8cm rear fan) thats $25 less and so on - they save what, $60, when they pay and leave, we say "see you next time" with a smile knowing that the components they choose aint going to live long.

If we could we wouldnt stock rubbish, but then the other companies around us would have cheaper systems then us and we wouldnt sell anything - its a f***d up way but what can we do?

As for lifespans of hardware, dell rigs if serviced/dusted and looked after will last a long time, and there usually cheap but you dont get much of a warranty compared to a custom build rig (eg 1 year standard Dell vs components warrantys - CPU ~3 years, ram "lifetime" aka ~3 years, motherboards ~2 years, hdd's 3 years and so on)