Dell has been making immense losses over the last 2 years. What started out as a booming bussiness, a market unexplored and swiftly conquered, they reached their top about 2 or 3 years ago. The market didn't expand anymore, people are said to have become smarter ( although I doubt it ), but especially the experience people have with Dell is one of the main factors their bussiness is no longer top of the line.

As I've said a couple of times, I've seen some early Dell PC's on the inside. Actually having some of the hardware burned into the case was one of the normal things you'd come across. Also the so called help desk is one of their budget cutting factors.

Their helpdesk is effectively counter-acting the production efficiency Dell has. As Ass said, they don't sell in stores, so they remove that part from the chain and add it to the budget. They also only manufactor the PC when the order is made, not long before. (on demand)

Over the past years Dell had to expand its helpdesk (and thus employees) and salery is the single largest cost in any company ( except goldfarmers, or childlabor ), because the issues people had were not addressed quick enough. Not to mention, and people that sent their dell pc back to dell know this, they were severely undermanned and it could take several weeks up to monthsb efore the PC would be returned. Which didn't bring them much goodwill.

I believe Dells objective is to have a leading position on the market by a fair percentage, because of their "cheaper" chain, they should be able to produce far more and be attractive to alot of companies, but since 2007 it's placed second, HP being first. And HP is still one of the old system.

Personally I'd say the horrible quality of the hardware inside the Dell PC must've costed them some customers as well, but who knows.