Vostro - Why so cheap

just had a look at the new Vostro range.

They are offering a dual core, 1024mb ram, 160 GB Sata HDD, with Vista
Business and a 19" Wide screen TFT for £275

considering that the TFT alone would be about £100 I cant see how they can
be making any money on these systems.

does this sound too good to be true?

This price is in line with many of Dell's earlier promotional offers, some of
which I have taken advantage. The earlier systems were constructed well, and
Dell's LCD/TFT monitors seem to hold up quite well. I have not looked at the
inside of a Vostro, but if its construction is reasonable and the parts are from
well-known manufacturers, it could be a great deal.

As I discussed with someone today, the advantage Dell has over the mail order
(and some retail) build-it-yourself barebones dealers is an economy of scale in
buying the millions of CPUs, motherboards, memory modules, hard drives, and
(lest we forget) Windows licenses. Dell has also optimized its factory direct
delivery model so the system comes from the contract manufacturer in China to
you almost untouched by human hands and with another economy of scale via
containerized shipping.

Vostro is supposedly targeted for small/medium businesses, so it is the heir
apparent to the venerable Optiplex brand name, dating from Pentium II days.

Hey, order one and tell us how you like it... Ben Myers

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:31:35 GMT, "Wan Ker" <Wan.Ker@itsp.ch> wrote:

>just had a look at the new Vostro range.
>
>They are offering a dual core, 1024mb ram, 160 GB Sata HDD, with Vista
>Business and a 19" Wide screen TFT for £275
>
>considering that the TFT alone would be about £100 I cant see how they can
>be making any money on these systems.
>
>does this sound too good to be true?
>