Re: Is there an equal for the 760ED?

[dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar)]

"I hope all you ex-Thinkpad people are telling IBM why you switched
when you call to cancel your order.  It's disgraceful that IBM took
this long to even start to address the availability problem.  I guess
from their point of view, excessive demand is a "good" problem."

That's a bit extreme, IBM has been trying to address TP availability
from day one. Yes, they have continually badly underestimated the demand,
but that's also a reflection of quality, the TP has repeatedly been
more successful than expected. IBM positioned the TP as a high margin
machine at the high end, with expected modest sales, and has been
surprised to find that a high margin machine of this type has such
a high demand.

For the record, Toshiba has also had terrible supply problems. Industry
wide, for high end machines, IBM and Toshiba are in about the same
shape. Sure, individual experience may differ (I have owned the following
thinkpads 700, 720, 750, 750C, 750CX, 750CD, 760CD, and *every single
one* was purchased within 14 days of IBM's announced availability date,
but you simply cannot judge from individual experience, what counts is
availability in quantity for large corporate orders).

Most of us on this list are trying for individual machines from the channel.
The availability in this context is more a function of allocation than
overall availability compared with demand. Both IBM and Toshiba leak
some units into the channel early, and if you catch them you are fine,
but if you want to order 500 ED's or 500 Tecra's right now for your
company, you will find it hard to get either any time soon.

It's easy to say that a company is behavind disgracefully when they
under-estimate demand, but the penalties for over-estimating demand
can be very high. IBM presumably was badly burned by their wild
over-estimate of the 701 demand, and we saw 701 firesales within
a VERY short time of the arrival of this machine. From a business
point of view, that was equally disgraceful, but of course people
on this list often found it quite delightful to buy 701's so cheap :-)

Forcasing demand in this field is notoriously hard, if you know how to
do it reliably, let someone know, you will quickly be a very rich chap!