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Originally Posted by merliin
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Please, you don`t have to give me lectures on some basic cost-oriented economics here. BTW, I have a masters degree in that field so I do perfectly know the rules... 
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Since you perfectly know the rules, I would have thought that it should have dawned upon you that this is how any company would conduct their business. This is no mom-and-pop store, this is a multi-billion dollar company, whose first responsibility is towards its shareholders equity and then its customer base.
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Originally Posted by merliin
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You`re missing the point. I am talking about the long term customer oriented strategy which is the only proper foundation for long term succesful companies (except monopolists). The experience shows clearly, that it is very, very hard to find a customer - while it is very easy to loose one at the same time.
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I agree it is very hard to get a customer and very easy to lose one. But if Dell loses a customer on the basis of software upgrade, where is this customer going to go??? HP?? Is it any better? If all the companies are doing the same, there is not much point in jumping ship from Dell to HP, is there??
One other thing that you should note is that you are already a Dell customer, whether you will be a repeat customer or not, is a different question. When Dell puts more resources into providing new hardware and new software, what Dell will be getting are brand-new customers, perhaps some of them are coming over from HP or Palm, which is even better for Dell and some of them are repeat customers of Dell.
After all the "customer oriented strategy" has been implemented, what is the bottom line??? It is the net profit and EPS that can be shown to the investors. And how do you increase net profit, by selling new hardware, more feature laden PPC with new software. You don't increase your net profit by providing upgrades to customers who have "old" hardware.
I got a cutting-edge laptop last year, and this year its specs are already outdated. I can get a much better, faster, lighter laptop for far less money than what I paid last year. It is a fact of life in electronics industry that whatever you buy today is outdated by tomorrow and will be far cheaper tomorrow.
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Originally Posted by merliin
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To put it short: let`s make it 24 months instead of 18 months mentioned in your post and 99% of customers will be happy.
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I don't think making it 24 months would make 99% of customers happy. It might make more customers happy. But there will always be a certain percentage of customers who would like the 'xx' months to be extended so that they fall within that umbrella. At some point, the company has decide for itself what it thinks is a reasonable time period.
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Originally Posted by merliin
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I purchased my Axim X30 High hardly a year ago (as a world wide novelty at that time) and hate to watch it become outdated so quickly. And if we`re talking about hypothetical WM6.0 OS upgrade - well, at the time it arrives I`ll surely be ready to make a hardware switch, as IMHO most of the current X30 users.
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You missed my point about the hypothetical WM6.0 OS. The point is not whether X30 users would be ready to make a hardware switch. What I am trying to say is that at that point of time X50v users would be crying and saying the same thing that you are saying now...that they bought their hardware hardly a year back, X50v was the greatest and the best out in the market then and they expect Dell to provide them with WM6.0 upgrade.
Would you be happy to buy a $500 piece-meal X50 with no VGA, no dual-slot even though you knew that Dell has been very religiously providing WM2003SE upgrades to its X3, X5 and X30 customers??? I don't think so. When you are buying something new, you expect the most bang for your money. Dell can provide that for you, only if they remove some resources from one sector (providing upgrades to "old" hardware) and put the same resources into some other sector (developing new hardware/software). Dell has to prioritise its resources, you can't blame them for it.