From: David Ross (ross_at_math.hawaii.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 12 2001 - 05:09:56 EDT
> RANT ON
>
> If you read the Times article I believe you'll see that the woman who
wrote it
> didn't have a clue!
>
> She didn't go to the IBM website to buy a computer, she went there to find
> someone to sell her one. There's a VAST difference. She did ZERO homework
before
> she went to the site and had very little idea as to what she wanted beyond
"a
> laptop".
As it happens, I did read the article, and had just finished a new computer
purchase (not a laptop) after
having spent much time at the IBM site, the Dell site (which she explicitly
mentioned for comparison), and many
others. I'm sorry, but I have to agree with her that it was much easier to
locate and buy a machine from
IBM's main mail-order competitors' websites than it is to buy at IBM.com
(Only Compaq was worse!).
Dell has some other big problems (the price of a system seems to vary quite
a bit depending on how one enters
their site!), but a shopper with money and some idea of what she wants can
find and buy a suitable machine there quite quickly.
While this wasn't an impediment for *me* - I have more experience with the
IBM site than I'd ideally like -
and I agree with Bill M. that keeping a site for a huge company current is a
difficult endeavor, I
don't think we should judge the writer from our own level of experience.
In any even, the point of my previous post was not so much to criticise the
site but to give a possible
explanation for why it changed format again recently. That IBM is
responsive to this kind of complaint
is a *good* thing, yes? So *my* post at least is not a criticism!
- David R.
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