It's difficult to define exactly how technically proficient Michael Dell is in hardware.
At least in Lin Lixin's view, the growth value of the hardware component was only A, which was not enough to be considered the level of a super genius.
But his talent in business is definitely the most outstanding among his generation of young people.
Incredibly powerful!
In some respects, Dell and Jobs are remarkably similar.
Even their strong desire for control over the company is identical.
In just four years, he transformed his business from a small workshop in a university dormitory into a publicly listed company.
After Dell became one of the world's largest PC manufacturers, Michael Dell took the Dell private again in 2013, bringing it back under his control.
Generally speaking, privatization is not necessarily a good thing for a large, publicly listed company.
But Dell has never been one to follow the rules.
After he regained control of Dell, Dell was able to successfully transform and quickly recover from its shrinking market share.
It's no exaggeration to say that Michael Dell is to Dell what Jobs is to Apple.
It wasn't the company that made him who he was; rather, he made Dell a giant.
Texas, Round Rock.
PC's Limited, which later became Dell.
"Hello, Mr. Lin."
Compared to Jobs, Dell's personality seemed much younger, and he still had the vigor and whimsy of youth.
If you count the days, he just celebrated his 21st birthday a few days ago.
His office wasn't as modern as I'd imagined; it was more like a medium-sized assembly plant.
A pile of PC motherboards and monitors were stacked on the workbench, but it didn't look messy.
The cartons ready for shipment are neatly arranged, and more than half of them are the "TurboPC" model he developed.
Hundreds of workers were busy with their own tasks, assembling new PCs, repairing damaged parts, and of course, there were sales staff who were responsible for contacting customers by phone.
These salespeople are the core of PC's Limited and the key to their ability to compete with other major PC manufacturers.
"Yes, sir, rest assured, a 20MB hard drive is more than enough to handle all your work."
The salesperson propped the receiver against his shoulder to free his hands and quickly jotted down the customer's needs on the order form. "Memory? We can upgrade the memory to 512KB..."
While this model requires a significant amount of manpower, it also allows them to bypass intermediaries and One on One with customers.
Lin Lixin glanced at the sales department a few more times with great interest.
"Mr. Dell's company style is quite different from what I imagined."
Having recently visited a typical Silicon Valley elite startup like Jobs', he was a little disoriented returning to such a down-to-earth environment.
"No, no, Mr. Lin, this is precisely our advantage."
Dell casually took the document handed to him by the employee, glanced at it, signed it, and led Lin Lixin and the other two into a small, private office. "Mr. Lin," Dell said, "Our PCs Limited can provide customers with PCs of the same configuration at nearly 30% cheaper. Do you understand what that means?"
"No risk of finished goods inventory, production to order, and—interest-free cash flow."
Jim's SGI company was already in this business, and they immediately realized the enormous commercial potential involved.
There is a certain time lag between receiving payment from the customer and purchasing the required components.
In a sense, this is an interest-free loan that the customer lent to Dell.
"Effectively! We're using our customers' money to do business and shifting the risk out of our company."
"Moreover, Mr. Dell's model can bring new technologies to market in the shortest possible time."
Lin Lixin's focus was more on their first graphics card, the Nova Radeon.
If Dell wanted to, they could even directly target customers with professional gaming PCs that have integrated graphics cards.
In a sense, this is the most primitive and efficient big data user profiling.
Lin Lixin nodded slightly. Dell's business acumen was absolutely unparalleled, a quality that even Jobs couldn't match.
Even geniuses find it difficult to excel in everything.
"Mr. Dell, I plan to form an alliance to bring together—"
"I know, Mr. Lin, you want a foothold in the lower-tier PC market, right? No need to say more, I'll join."
Dell didn't even wait for Lin Lixin to finish speaking before a smile appeared on his lips, as if he had been waiting for Lin Lixin to speak.
"Uh—" Lin Lixin was taken aback by his initiative, "So easy to talk to?"
Dell didn't answer directly. Instead, he started listing on his fingers, as if reciting a familiar story. "SGI, NeXT, PC's Limited, MicroNova, and... GAMENOVA. We'll show IBM what the new era really is."
This team covers all needs, from software to hardware, and from the ultra-high-end market to the lower-tier market.
"Your information network is really impressive—yes, I hope we can implement this—"
"A dedicated graphics card from MicroNova, right?"
Dell nodded, then reached into the drawer and pulled out a circuit board.
To be precise, this is an 8-bit ISA graphics card, a CGA graphics card released by IBM in 1981.
"----That's right, but besides that, I also hope to promote the popularization and standardization of something else."
Lin Lixin took the Logitech C7 mouse out of his bag.
"Huh, I understand, but—whether it's a mouse or a graphics card, the first step in selling it is to create demand."
Dell also has orders for matching mice, but the quantity is not large.
After all, both Windows 1.0 and the graphical operating system of Macintosh were still somewhat immature.
In addition, the unnecessary overhead on system performance has resulted in their low adoption rate.
This makes the existence of the mouse somewhat awkward.
"Mr. Dell, this is exactly what GAMENOVA specializes in."
Lin Lixin and Dell shook hands, both smiling broadly.
Demand? What demand is more direct than playing games?
GAMENOVA headquarters, California.
Will was engrossed in studying the advanced N Language documentation intended for professionals.
This is a language packaged as an object-oriented language, somewhat like Objective-C, which is based on the C Language.
C, only more extreme.
"No wonder developing on NovaBo is so enjoyable; it's truly a work of art. I can't wait to completely refactor SimCity using N Language."
"Don't rush, Will." Lin Lixin sat down next to him, carefully studying the source code of SimCity. "I've prepared two small projects for you to practice on first."
Lin Lixin turned around and took out a document.
Will looked at the printed title and involuntarily read it aloud, " Minesweeper and... Spider Solitaire?"