Dell's decline from being too cheap

A view from an insider that spent a decade there: http://www.metafilter.com/93279/Window-to-Dell-Decline#31590...

More fallout from the early to middle of the last decade bad electrolytic capacitor problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague).

But I'm not so sure "being too cheap" (not in the original headline) is a fair characterization of what happened.

Dell failed in this situation because A) They had insufficient surge capacity to deal with a widespread common mode failure (which may have been as much a problem with their volume as their minimal inventory system) and B) Decided to lie about the situation.

Amusing note: the law firm suing them was screwed by them.