With the news this week that IBM is divesting itself of its mediocre-performing PC unit, a new Gartner report says that we can expect three of the top 10 PC makers to exit the global market for PCs by 2007. Now, given IBM's exodus, that prediction is already one-third complete, but that doesn't mean the dunces at Gartner don't deserve a little credit. After all, Dell, the "Crazy Eddie" of the PC world, has been slashing prices so hard that even consumers are getting a little leery. After all, how well could a $350 PC actually perform? Well, it turns out that low-ball PCs work just fine, thank you very much, unless of course you're one of the unlucky companies that actually has to compete with Dell, since the margins are so tight. The winner in all this? The consumers, of course. Alhough, I suppose we need to look ahead to a Wal-Mart-like future in which Dell is the only PC maker.
