I think the packard bell = ford fiesta analogy is woefully off the mark.

Consider it a Yugo, where the only way to increase its value is to fill the tank.

Even then, this may be dis-respectful to the Yugo.

Acer has to be the hi end brand because of their Ferrari machines... This makes Packard Bell into Fiat, with a little space for a consumer performance brand equivalent to Alfa Romeo... Perhaps Gateway could become this brand. Holy cow, a B&W Alfa pc???

No more Acer purchase from me, thank you. Now that it's all over the map, it can only mean bad things for reliability and usefulness of their products.

I'll wait a few years for the dust to settle before I go back to using Acer motherboards and such.

Meh, almost everyone who wants a computer now has one, and we don't need to upgrade as much as we used to.

A low-end dual core will be able to do everything now for years to come.

Would love to see those boardroom graphs for all these idiots who rely on them to keep going up every year.

This benefitting the customsers in what way?

Aren't their laws and commisions against companies that get so large they throttle the market the way they see fit?

As I recall it's named after a certain boardgame that's become besmirched recently for making mighty Leeds the second cheapest town on the board.

... computer sales are down. Can mobile phones be next, please?

By any chance, does their plan to drag up PC prices involve bundling 15 copies of Windows with every machine?

Clearly they're just trying to offset the cost of doing business in France:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2007/09/26/acer_laptop_microsoft_windows_french_ruling/

Used to work for Intel R+D doing PC design --- back in 2002 or so there were endless (mind-less) discussions / plans to to get the PC out of its price spiral. Boy that was a hoot

But bottom line is that Intel + MS got their wish in making Wintel the dominate platform ---- and that was by working from '93 till '99 in standardizing every part of the PC down to its last screw (thats why they all look the same). And by getting Asian manufacturers to compete on price down to the penny.

This allowed them to keep dropping prices while they were boosting performance and reliability (Win95 - Win98 - etc - XP) --- And in the process training PC buyers to expect AND demand low prices AND high performance.

Sometimes you get what you wish for .......

Meanwhile I'm typing this on a nice Apple computer running a real OS ..... how sweet it is