Will Dell buy IBM's PC business?

Analysts are crawling over IBM's loss making PC outfit and are suggesting that Dell will take it over. But that could be a faulty analysis. Certainly the IBM PC people we're talking to are denying it, big time. Nevertheless, there are attractions for the Great Satan of Hardware. It has this humungous OEM agreement with IBM that it signed just a few weeks ago and Dell has this direct model that drives Compaq practically insane with envy. Further, Loot "Boots" Gerstner, IBM's CEO, has more or less washed his hands of the whole PC affair, despite the protestations of the PC division. During one of Britain's more famous sex scandals, the Profumo affair in the early sixties, one of the hookers involved, Mandy Rice-Davies, replied to a UK hack's point that the Minister was denying any involvement with the line. "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?" ®