PC makers can't count on brand loyalty. If you want a PC and your favorite brand is missing something that a competitor has, it's easy to switch. If you want a Mac and Apple is missing something, it's harder to switch. Enterprise sales are a bit stickier, but not that much stickier.

So Dell, Lenovo, et Al end up trying to address every niche except the focused product catalog niche.

▲ JohnBooty 3 hours ago | parent [-]

    If you want a PC and your favorite brand 
    is missing something that a competitor has, 
    it's easy to switch

Yeah. Although, there's no "logical" reason for their for their psychedelically large laptop lineup with 50-100 base models. It's purely psychology I guess.

Like Dell Vostro, their "small business" line. Versus Latitude, their "business" line. What on earth is uniquely needed by a "small business" versus a... regular business? Why not introduce a third "large business" line? Maybe a "sole proprietor" line too?

It can only be explained as a psychology play. The dizzying array of options is designed to, I suppose, make you feel like Dell surely has the exact right laptop for you, even if that is bullshit.

It doesn't entirely make sense to me from a psyche standpoint either -- I have no idea why purchasers would possibly feel anything other than anxiety and analysis paralysis. But whatever!

	▲	toast0 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Like Dell Vostro, their "small business" line. Versus Latitude, their "business" line. What on earth is uniquely needed by a "small business" versus a... regular business? Why not introduce a third "large business" line? Maybe a "sole proprietor" line too? My vague recollection is that Latitude were nice business laptops; coming with all the enterprise goodies, replaceable parts, service manual, next-day onsite support available and also the enterprise usual costs, lack of sexy displays, and slow model turnover. Vostro was a lot closer to the Inspirons (sold for personal use); I think just badge engineering a couple selected Inspirons to have a bit longer of a product cycle and better parts availability. Re: analysis paralysis, that's a real issue. I try to find some feature that really narrows the field and then it becomes easier to decide. If I required a wired ethernet port, memory slot(s), and a specific cpu family, it narrows the field a lot; then I can figure out from what's left. For laptops, off-lease entrerprise refurbs are pretty price competitive with new models targetted for personal use; then it's really a matter of what's available, and how they differ ... and then looking at the units with specific damage/defects to see if the compensating price drop makes sense; personally, I'd take several dead pixels for $100 off, cause I don't do pixel peeping work anyway.
	▲	nradov 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It's the old General Motors product philosophy of "A Car for Every Purse and Purpose". That market segmentation and badge engineering approach worked great for decades and allowed them to earn huge profits. But eventually customers figured out that there was no actual difference between a Buick versus a Pontiac, and more focused competitors ate their lunch.
	▲	ssl-3 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Many moons ago, we used to buy Dell Dimension desktops at work. They were fine. They were very quiet, robustly-built, and were expandable to fit individual users' requirements as things changed. They were usually easy to work on when that was necessary. Dell also had the Precision line, which was very posh. These cost a lot more. The Vostro line eventually showed up. They were noisier, and lighter/flimsier, less-expandable, and harder to work on. But they did cost less to buy. --- I would never buy a Vostro computer for myself. I think that buying cheapness as a primary feature is dumb. Given a choice between good/better/best, I tend to pick "better." I like being able to get what I think is a better design, even though it generally costs somewhat more. I don't want the cheapest car tires, the cheapest hand tools, or the cheapest PC. But the company chose to operate as cheap-at-every-expense. The Vostro line was a perfect fit for their buying proclivities, so that's what they started buying. (I didn't like that, but those decisions were above of my paygrade.) --- Was Dell wrong for offering several different classes of computer back then? Are they wrong for doing so today? Why? Why not? (Remember: In the insatiable quest for the bottom dollar, the company kept buying Dell computers. We could have began giving those dollars to one of their competitors instead, but we did not do so. This suggests that the model is not bullshit at all: After all, they are in the business of selling computers, and we kept buying them.)