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Monday May 4, 2009
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On Friday, some PCMag.com staffers received an email advertising Dell's "25th anniversary sale", with sales promoting several hundred dollars off of select systems.
We confirmed with the company that the Dell anniversary took place on May 3, and a Dell spokeswoman said that the company was indeed celebrating it. How, however, we're not really sure.
Technically, May marks the 25th anniversary of PC's Limited, the computer company Michael Dell launched from a dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin in 1984. In 1988, the company became known as the Dell Computer Corporation, which would really push the 25th anniversary of "Dell Computer" into 2013. But Dell has used the "PC's Limited" logic before in its promotions.
What's odd is that Dell doesn't seem to have made any overt mention,
let alone celebration, of the milestone anywhere but that email. The
bargains are still valid for example, the email advertises a Dell Inspiron 15 for $499, or $250 off, and a Studio XPS 13 is being offered at $1,149, or $344 off.
The Dell Web site doesn't seem to mention the fact that Dell celebrated its 25th anniversary, and the Dell blogs page doesn't list any anniversary posts. There isn't a press release on the subject, either.
Dell is notoriously cost-conscious; several years ago, I've been told,
employees had to enter a personal ID number before they could place a
long-distance call. It's possible that, given the recession, that Dell
simply didn't want to spend any more marketing dollars than it had to.
It's also possible that Dell may ramp up its anniversary activities a
bit later in the month, as well. A "23 notebooks in 23 days" promotion
in 2007 for the company's 23rd anniversary (accompanied by 23 percent
discounts on selected products) ran from May 17 until June 8.
But still: isn't a quarter-century milestone by a large, consumer/commercial-facing Fortune 500 company grounds for just a wee bit of promotion? It's not like Dell has to commit to parades or even a TV show.
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