And a lot has happened on Michael Dell's watch. He founded the company and led it to $18 billion
in annual sales, from one employee to 24,000, from operations in one country to 33 countries. He
took Dell public and made it the single most successful stock in the history of the Nasdaq. A
$100 investment in Dell stock at the 1988 initial public offering is worth more than $56,000
today--three-quarters of that increase coming last year alone. So if we decide to make the
somewhat subjective declaration that Michael Dell is the number-one CEO in America, please humor
us.
在邁克爾.戴爾的在任期間發生過很多事情。他創建了公司，使它的年銷售額達到18億美元，從一個雇員
發展到24000個雇員，業務范圍從一個國家擴展到33個國家。他使戴爾上市，并且使之成為納斯達克歷史上最
成功的股票。在1988年最初上市時僅投資100美元的戴爾股票今天價值56000美元--僅在去年就增長了其中的四
分之三。因此如果我們決定帶點主觀地宣布邁克爾.戴爾是美國第一的CEO，這是在哄我們。
The Dell saga is well known. The son of a doctor and a stockbroker, he was raised in a
business-savvy home in Houston. After an extraordinary success selling subscriptions to the
Houston Chronicle (he was able to buy himself a new BMW while still in high school), young Dell
discovered and fell in love with computers. He bought an Apple II to celebrate his 15th
birthday, and took it apart. Soon he switched to IBM PCs. He took those apart, too, and came to
the conclusion that Big Blue was charging $3,000 for around $700 worth of disk drives,
motherboards, and RAM chips. He went into business. Dell souped up IBM's own computers for less
than IBM was charging to do the same thing. He took advantage of IBM distribution anomalies to
buy PC overstocks below cost from IBM dealers. He upgraded those computers and sold them in
direct competition with the very dealers they came from--first from a dorm room at the
University of Texas in Austin and then, by the end of his freshman and only year of college,
from an off-campus condominium.
戴爾的傳奇故事是很出名的。作為一個醫生和股票經紀人的兒子，他成長在休斯頓的一個精明的商業家庭
。在成功地把訂單賣給休斯頓新聞（Houston Chronicle）后（在高中的時候他就能夠給自己買一輛新的寶馬
汽車了），年輕的戴爾發現并愛上了計算機。他買了一臺蘋果II慶祝他的15歲生日，并把它拆開了。不久他換
成了IBM PC。他也把它們拆開了，并且得出結論：藍色巨人把價值約700美元的磁盤驅動器、主板和隨機存儲
器芯片賣到3000美元。他開始從事商業。戴爾改進了IBM自己的計算機，能夠以低于IBM的收費做相同的事。他
利用IBM銷售的不合理性以低于IBM經銷商的價格購買庫存過剩的PC。他升級了這些計算機，然后銷售它們，直
接和其進貨的正式銷售商競爭--這項事業開始是在奧斯汀的得克薩斯大學的宿舍里，然后等到他大學一年級結
束時，已搬到了校園外的公寓里。
There were no Dell stores or dealers. Right from the start, the PCs were sold direct to
customers who called Dell on the phone. Sales were $50,000 to $80,000 per month even before Dell
moved the operation out of the condo, incorporated (this was 1984; he did business for a time as
PC's Limited), and started making his own computers. The company was profitable in its very
first quarter, and has been profitable all but one quarter ever since.
戴爾并沒有商店或經銷商。從一開始起，PC都是直接銷售給打電話給戴爾的客戶。即使在戴爾把業務搬出
公寓、組建公司（那是在1984年，他成立了PC' Limited經營了一段時間）并開始制造他自己的計算機前，每
月的銷售額就到了50000到80000美元。在公司的前四分之一階段就盈利了，除前四分之一階段外，從此一直都
在盈利。
It's a great story, sure, but the personal-computer industry was built on companies that
started fast and were headed by college dropouts. The real miracle of Dell Computer is not that
the company started so well but that it has endured. With the exceptions of Compaq and IBM, most
of Dell's competitors from 1984 are no longer in business. The only stories even remotely
comparable to Dell's come from Bill Gates at Microsoft and Ted Waitt at Gateway. The miracle of
Michael Dell is not that he started an important PC company at age 19, but that he is still
running it today and happens to be the richest man in Texas.
這是一個偉大的奇跡，但事實上個人計算機產業是靠一些發展很快而且由大學退學學生領導的公司而建立
的。戴爾計算機的真實奇跡不在于它開始得非常好，而在于它能持久。除了康柏和IBM，從1984年起大多數戴
爾的競爭對手都退出了市場。還能和戴爾間接進行比較的故事來自微軟的比爾·蓋茨和Gateway的Ted Waitt。
邁克爾·戴爾的奇跡不在于他在19歲創建了一個重要的PC公司，而在于他在今天仍然在經營這個公司，而且成
為得克薩斯最富的人。
（未完待續）
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