Dakota PC Warehouse Blog

Stop out to North Sioux City or Vermillion today and check out our great value Vizio LCD TV’s. The new shipment includes 19″ LCD’s all the way up to 47″. Details below:

Vizio VA19L 19″ LCD 1080i $179.99

Vizio VA22LF 22″ LCD 1080p $239.99

Vizio VA26L 26″ LCD 1080i $299.99

Vizio VW32L 32″ LCD 1080i $359.99

Vizio VOJ320F 32″ LCD 1080p $449.99

Vizio VS370E 37″ LCD 1080i $449.99

Vizio VO37LF 37″ LCD 1080p $529.99

Vizio VOJ370F 37″ LCD 1080p $529.99

Vizio VS42LF 42″ LCD 1080p $629.99

Vizio SV421XVT 42″ LCD 1080p, 240Hz $799.99

Vizio SV471XVT 47″ LCD 1080p, 240Hz $999.99

www.dakotapcwarehouse.com

Find a great selection of colored Gateway notebooks at Dakota PC Warehouse! Choose from Blue, Red, Pink, Merlot and Burgundy…several different models at an amazing value.

Gateway Blue T-6340U $399.99

-Intel Dual-Core T3400 Processor, 2GB Memory, 160GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium

Gateway Red M-6320 $459.99

-Intel Dual-Core T2370 Processor, 2GB Memory, 250GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium

Gateway Pink M-7301U $499.99

-Intel Dual-Core T3200 Processor, 3GB Memory, 250GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium

Gateway Merlot M-6324 $499.99

-Intel Dual-Core T2370 Processor, 3GB Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium

Gateway Burgundy MC-7801U $579.99

-Intel Dual-Core T5800 Processor, 4GB Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, DVDRW, Windows Vista Home Premium

Visit either store in North Sioux City,SD or Vermillion, SD today!

www.dakotapcwarehouse.com

U.S. Government will not get Secret Company Internet Data

Telecommunications providers will not have to give the government sensitive revenue and Internet speed data for a program to map broadband use in U.S. homes and bring high-speed Internet service to more people.

The U.S. Commerce Department said that companies such as Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp and AT&T Inc do not have to share how much money they make from each Internet subscriber. Nor must they say how fast their Internet connections typically run.

Instead, they will provide data by the block, usually about a dozen homes depending on the size of the block. They also will share the speed of Internet service that they advertise.  Companies do not want to share the specific data because they do not want their competitors to see it.  But failing to make it public allows the companies to advertise — and charge for — something that they often cannot deliver, said Joel Kelsey, a telecom policy analyst at Consumers Union, a watchdog group.

Companies that sell Internet service advertise maximum service speeds as a way to entice customers. More speed means faster access to online entertainment and information.  Internet connections can work at slower speeds than the maximum speed advertised, especially when many subscribers are online at the same time.

The American Cable Association and other groups representing the companies opposed some of the rules before the government clarified the data policy. Larry Landis, an Indiana utility regulatory commissioner and chairman of the federal-state group that will map high-speed Internet availability, praised the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration for being flexible.

The Commerce and Agriculture departments will award loans and grants to state and local governments, and nonprofit and for-profit companies, including telecommunications companies, to participate in the government’s broadband program.

The first phase of the plan would release $4 billion of the $7.2 billion program included in President Barack Obama‘s economic stimulus plan. About $350 million will go to the mapping program, but the Commerce Department estimated that $240 million would be needed.

The rule changes come a day after the Federal Communications Commission launched its first workshop to gather ideas and proposals for a national broadband plan it plans to give to Congress in February.

Source: Reuters

August 8, 2009

Vizio Supremacy

For those of you that have been able to visit either of our stores in North Sioux City or Vermillion, I’m sure one of the first things you noticed is the prominence of Vizio’s LCD TVs.  We’ve been a big fan of Vizio almost from the inception of our store.   From the beginning Vizio has done an excellent job of balancing features and price to consistently produce extremely high value products.  Certainly, companies like Samsung and Samsung can, and do, produce great products, but sometimes they try to leverage their brand recognition or a special feature for an obscene price premium.  Vizio doesn’t seem to have ever fallen into that trap.  They simply crank out product after product with improved features and lower prices.

I am fortunate that in my career I’ve had the chance to work with a number of very bright and interesting people, and William Wang, the CEO of Vizio is one of them.  William is a very focused and driven individual who is in it for the long run.  His objective is simply to drive features up and costs down knowing the result will be high customer satisfaction and more sales.  I really appreciate that philosophy and it’s the same one we employ at Dakota PC Warehouse.  There are occasions where one might be able to charge more for something and try to extract every penny from someone’s wallet.  There are plenty of companies that use this sales philosophy and some are successful, at least in the short term.  But, I believe that you’ll do much better in the long run by helping someone buy a product that they love and having walking away with plenty of money still in their pocket.   In general, these two things lead to them also having a very big smile.

In my years at Gateway we employed a similar approach and it’s no surprise that a number of ex-Gateway folks have senior positions at Vizio.   In the 1990s Gateway and Dell overtook brands like IBM and Compaq in PCs, and the past few years we’ve seen Vizio dueling with Sony and Samsung for the top spot in LCD TVs.  In Q1 of 2009 Vizio rose to the spot and earlier this week they proved it wasn’t a fluke and did it again when Digitimes released the industry sales figures for Q2 2009 (link below).  What is even more amazing is the Vizio had almost 2x the market share as Sony, and more than Toshiba, Panasonic and Sharp COMBINED.

We typically stock Sony, Sharp and Samsung TVs in addition to Vizio, so if you’d ever like to see them side-by-side, please stop in and see us.    And, congratulations to all my friends at Vizio!

Check out the latest Vizio article below, “Vizio maintains lead in US LCD TV market in 2Q09, says iSuppli”

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20090818PR202.html

-By Bob Burnett

Having worked for about two decades for Fortune 500 companies, I’ve seen my fair share of ‘oops’ moments. I’ve even contributed a few myself but, Best Buy’s recent ‘offer’ of a 52” Samsung LCD TV for $9.99 might be the biggest I’ve witnessed. Apparently, the offer somehow worked its way onto the Best Buy website for a brief period on Wednesday and in today’s viral world, word of it spread like wildfire through Twitter, Facebook, etc… I’m sure Best Buy received a flood of orders in the span of a few minutes. Can you just imagine the feeling in the pit of the stomach’s of the BestBuy web team when they realized what was happening and then the absolute panic during the scramble to change it? After realizing the mistake Best Buy corrected the price to $1799, which is fairly consistent with the market price for a product like that (although I can’t help but say that’s pretty expensive by Dakota PC Warehouse standards.) I guess the real question is how they’ll treat the folks that actually got an order into the system. That’s the measure of a company’s commitment to its customers. We’ve messed up a few times at Dakota PC over the years and some advertisements have hit the newspaper for products way below our costs. While they haven’t been mistakes of this magnitude we’ve always honored the advertised price. If we made an error of this same magnitude we couldn’t stay in business honoring it to everyone and the customer’s all clearly know Best Buy made a mistake. While I generally wouldn’t give advice to a competitor, my suggestion is that they create a offer at their cost or slightly less on a handful of other TVs and allow all the people who actually got in an order, the opportunity to buy one, and regardless give each client $50 gift card. They need to have it done within 24 hours to have an impact. If they do something like this, I’m sure they’ll win some loyalty from these folks (and their family and friends), if not, I’d expect the backlash to be pretty wicked. The true test of your relationship with your customers is how you react under adverse circumstances. Let’s see how Best Buy does.

Click below to read the full article:

Best Buy $9.99 TV Offer Was Too Good to Be True

-By Bob Burnett

I’ve been involved in personal computer industry for the past 25 years and for almost that entire time Microsoft and Apple have slugged it out.  Some of the behind the scenes behaviors from both companies have been downright nasty – maybe someday I’ll write them.  About 15 years ago, Apple was almost left for dead but Microsoft couldn’t land the knock-out punch. Apple’s recovery was nothing short of amazing and in past few years Apple has won a number of battles (ex. iPod over Zune), and on TV you can’t help but laugh when a  cool and calm (and somewhat smug) “MAC” is always getting the upper-hand on the frazzled and drab “PC”.   But, the war is waged on many fronts.  From financial perspective, it’s still Microsoft that has the biggest punch and war chest.  In the last financial quarter Microsoft made $4.0 billion and had over $31 billion in the bank without any debt.  That said, Apple is doing better with each passing quarter and has amassed over $20 billion in liquid assets although they have a bit of debt to go with it.  (You can look the financials of each company in the links below).

Microsoft Financials        http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY09/earn_rel_q4_09.mspx#income

Apple Financials                http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=AAPL

In the coming few months you’ll see the battle return to its traditional battleground; the operating system.  Next month Apple will release OS X 10.6 (also called Snow Leopard) and this will be followed by the formal release of Microsoft’s Windows 7.  Much like politics, there are many people that will vote on which is superior based on their current ‘party’ allegiance.  But, also like the political arena I detect a growing number of folks moving toward the middle and independence.  This particular battle will not be the final one in this war but I do think it could be a turning point.   It feels as though the momentum has been in Apple’s favor for quite some time and this will be Microsoft’s best chance in the foreseeable future to gain some of their own.    Below are some links comparing the standard desktop wallpapers that will be included with both Snow Leopard and Windows 7.  Its most just eye-candy stuff and certainly not a reason to choose one over the other, but maybe it’s an indication of what we’ll discover as we explore each one in depth.   Check out these links and decide for yourself….

Snow Leopard Desktop Wallpapers   http://creativebits.org/inspiration/snow_leopard_desktop_pictures

Windows 7 Desktop Wallpapers         http://creativebits.org/inspiration/windows_7_wallpapers

My two favorites both come from Apple:  Leaf and Pond Reeds.   So in my opinion, the first blow in this battle has been landed by Apple.

-By Bob Burnett