Notebooks

Like
Desktops, product is the most important parameter of CIO satisfaction in this
category. And vendors seem to have understood this very well as the level of CIO
satisfaction in this category is also the highest.

However, unlike the previous
year where pre sales and marketing was an important determinant, post sales
service has become a key buying parameter. It is not too difficult to reason
this out.

Given that notebooks are going the desktop way on the pricing front,
CIOs are now worried about vendors' service networks rather than issues like
domain knowledge of vendors or quality of pre sales and marketing interaction.

Again it is interesting to note that the average satisfaction scores have moved
up indicating that vendors have worked hard to raise the satisfaction bar.

Dell, which occupies the number one slot in the Desktop category, has jumped
two places to move to number two slot in the notebooks category. IBM seems to
have taken a beating on both the desktop and notebooks segment.

While IBM seems
to have done a good job in keeping CIOs happy-its satisfaction score has moved
up from to 78 to 83, other players have done a better job.

The new IBM-Levano
combine has a task cut out for itself to take the 'ThinkPad' to the top slot
in face of the ever-increasing competition. Acer continues to be at the bottom
of the satisfaction chart and is the only company that has not seen a good jump
in its satisfaction score compared to last year and is way below the industry
average.

What is surprising is that Acer has not moved up significantly on the
'Price' parameter despite introducing many products at the most competitive
rates. We think that Acer needs to convey the price-advantage to CIOs more
aggressively. Dell has pipped Acer on price to take the top slot.