Intel Corp (INTC)

[DewDiligence]

An answer to dumb PC salespeople:

[This article should resonate with those of us who have spent any time in computer stores lately. Some excerpts follow]:

http://zdnet.com.com/2102-1107-976326.html

>>
Just like every other red-blooded American with a job this time of the year, I've been out shopping of late. As my wife will attest, I relish this seasonal rite as much as I do an extended root canal. But there are gift lists to fill and, as my president says, it's the patriotic thing to do.

It so happened that I found myself in the market for a PC and a personal digital assistant. If I could pick up a bargain in the process, so much the better, but all I really wanted was to get in and out with a minimum of fuss while making sure the salesman didn't con me into buying a lemon.

But on visits to retail stores on both the East Coast and West Coast, it was the same depressing story: The salespeople may have been scrubbed, cheerful and polite--but they were utterly incompetent when it came to explaining the ins and outs of the products they were selling or the underlying technologies. Even worse, they pretended they really knew what they were talking about.

On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I got a first taste of what I was up against on a visit to a consumer-electronics chain advertising a too-good-to-be-true deal. Asked to explain the difference between a couple of computer systems that struck my fancy, an eager salesman who had attached himself to me declared that configuration A was preferable because "it had more storage and that is good, especially if you want to store files in a computer."

But now congenital mall-haters such as me no longer have to grin and bear it. We have an option--and it's only a single keystroke away.
<<