COMPUTER

PROBLEM & SOLUTION

PROBLEM: Petroleum-filled plastic
SOLUTION: Make cases from corn
New bioplastics—plant-based polymers—require less oil and energy to produce than traditional plastics. One challenge: upping heat resistance so electronics won’t melt them. Fujitsu makes a laptop with a half-natural, half-conventional case and is now testing a castor-oil plastic that’s up to 80 percent bio-content.

PROBLEM: Landing in landfills
SOLUTION: Upgrade, don’t trash
The EPA estimates that Americans discard 19,000 tons of laptops a year. But soon it may get easier (and cheaper) to upgrade your laptop than to replace it, keeping e-waste out of dumps and saving the energy and materials needed for a whole new computer. Laptop-maker Asus recently released a model that lets users change the processor, graphics card and other parts just by removing one panel, instead of spending hours disassembling the computer.

PROBLEM: Power-sucking displays
SOLUTION: Create greener light
An LCD can eat more than half of a laptop’s power, mostly due to its fluorescent backlight. Some laptops are lit with more-efficient LEDs instead, but the next step may be to nix backlights altogether. Displays made of OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, form images with electroluminescent films. In small sizes, as in cellphones, OLEDs can significantly cut power use (depending on the image’s colors); companies hope that this advantage will scale up.

PROBLEM: Guzzling power from the grid
SOLUTION: Harness the sun
Portable solar chargers suited for laptops already exist. A company called MSI Computer has even developed a prototype laptop with photovoltaic cells integrated directly into its case.

PROBLEM: Toxic waste
SOLUTION: Get the lead out
Concerned that dumped gadgets could leak poisons, the law is cracking down on dangerous ingredients. (The lead in solder, for example, is now being replaced by silver and copper.) Last year, the European Union enacted legal limits on toxins in electronics sold there, and the U.S. introduced a similar (though voluntary) rating system for computers. President Bush recently mandated that 95 percent of government-purchased electronics meet the American eco-standards, eliminating about 3,000 tons of hazardous waste by 2011.

PROBLEM: Tricky recycling
SOLUTION: Make a digital parts list
Recycling computers can be expensive and time-consuming. Dismantlers usually pull out valuable parts for reuse or resale, but they have to examine each computer individually to determine what’s in it. If manufacturers add a radio-frequency ID tag to a laptop, says Valerie Thomas of Georgia Tech, it could instantly tell recyclers how to recover components.

PROBLEM: That spinning hard drive
SOLUTION: Switch to flash memory
Future laptops could knock 10 percent off their energy use just by replacing hard drives with solid-state, or flash, memory, which has no watt-hungry moving parts. Dell debuted a laptop with a 32-gigabyte solid-state drive this year. By 2012, manufacturer Samsung says, the drives may hold about 30 times as much data.

PROBLEM: Energy-intensive manufacturing
SOLUTION: Build more- efficient factories
Producing a laptop requires nearly as much energy as it will use over the rest of its life, but new plants may slash this consumption. One of the world’s greenest computer–chip factories could go online as early as 2009. The Texas Instruments plant in Richardson, Texas, will consume 20 percent less electricity and 35 percent less water, spit out 50 percent fewer nitrogen oxides—and cost 30 percent less to build—than TI’s previous plant. In one energy-saving measure, the plant uses the waste heat generated by its huge air conditioners to warm water for free, eliminating the need for four polluting gas boilers.

DELL
Company History & Background

Dell Computer Corporation was founded in 1984 by Michael Dell while a freshman at the University of Texas. Michael was an early computer hobbyist who found that the computer store salespeople knew very little about the products they were selling. He began buying computer components and assembling them into complete, high-end PCs, which he then sold to friends and classmates. The little dorm-based business grew at a rapid rate, and he determined that a large opportunity existed. He began running ads in computer magazines under the PCs Limited brand, and within a year had sold over $20 million.

Michael’s next brilliant move was to offer a one year, on-site service policy with every system, along with a 30 day money-back guarantee. This effectively removed key barriers to purchase, and in fact enabled better service than other customers could get from PC retailers.

In 1985, Michael hired Lee Walker as President and COO, and assembled a high powered Board of Directors, including Admiral Bobby Inman (Executive Director of the CIA), and Tracor founder George Kozmetsky. Lee provided guidance and direction for the young company, and drove its expansion into international markets, starting with Great Britain. (Dell’s current highest market share is in the UK, at over 12%).

In 1987, with revenues of $169 million, the company made a determined push to move away from "clone" status. This push was comprised of three parts: 1)Changing its name from PCs Limited to Dell Computer Corporation. 2)A key initiative to develop strategic alliances, and 3)The hiring of Glenn Henry, an IBM fellow, to drive development of unique and high performance products.

The name change coincided with hiring a new ad agency. Both these moves started the process of creating an aggressive, but professional image and position for the company. Dell went on the attack against Compaq, and its dealers, saying they charged too much for PCs and didn’t give good service. This campaign was one of the most memorable and successful in business-to-business marketing history, and forced a dramatic legal response from Compaq, and ultimately, the removal of Compaq’s CEO and founder, Rod Canion.
Dell recognized that to achieve a leadership position in the industry, they needed to have the same access to new technology that IBM and Compaq did. The company began carefully courting Intel, who until this effort ignored, and was even disdainful of, Dell. Dell’s message was that due to the direct sales method, Dell could both obtain real-time customer feedback and requirements, and, could launch Intel’s newest technologies faster than IBM and Compaq. These were key benefits to Intel, and the relationship quickly became a key weapon for Dell. Even today, Dell is perhaps Intel’s staunchest ally and the least likely company to use a competing processor in its systems.
Dell also realized that truly innovative products could not be snapped together from off-the-shelf parts, and began making plans to increase R&D efforts. The hiring of Glenn Henry, the developer of the RS 6000 chip, and the IBM System 34, dramatically increased Dell’s R&D profile and capability, and further cemented the relationships with Microsoft and Intel.
In 1990, Lee Walker resigned and the executive staff reorganized with Joel Kocher heading US sales and marketing, Andrew Harris heading international, and Glenn Henry running operations, all reporting to Michael.

It was at this time that computer superstores, epitomized by CompUSA, became a major factor in the distribution of PCs. These huge stores, some over 100,000 sq. ft., instantly changed the PC landscape. Their selection, low prices, and service hurt the traditional PC reseller. In keeping with Dell’s anti-reseller bias, and in the spirit of "my enemy’s enemy is my friend", Dell created a line of products (Dimension) to be sold through CompUSA. This was Dell’s first, and only, departure from the direct model. While the experiment was initially successful in terms of sales, Dell withdrew from the superstores within 2 years, due to conflicts of strategy, low margins, and difficulty working with CompUSA, although the Dimension product line lives on today as Dell’s highest performance systems sold directly to small businesses, home offices and technically savvy consumers..

Also in the early 90s, Dell renewed its focus on Gateway 2000, who was growing as fast as Dell, and was threatening to exceed Dell’s US revenue. (In fact, in 1993, Gateway was larger than Dell USA). Dell introduced a line of product, the Precision, that was less expensive and targeted at the Gateway customer.

In 1993, Tom Meredith was brought in as CFO, and in 1994 Morton Topfer was brought in from Motorola. Under their stewardship Dell has accelerated every aspect of its operation, achieving breakthrough results in revenue and earnings growth, stock appreciation, inventory turns, product launches and awards, quality, and new business development.

Dell Product