If you are going to con people, you should concentrate on conning the ignorant. The recall of 4 million batteries isn’t going to help from a public relations standpoint. Parents right now are buying personal computers, and notebooks for their kids to go back to school. This includes college sales. The battery problem could not have come at a worst time in terms of endearing the young consumer to Dell.

It probably made sense for Dell to announce that they were going to start buying processors from Intel competitor, Advanced Micro Devices for their low end Dimension series of desktops. You put it all together and it’s going to take several quarters at the very least for management to turn this aircraft carrier size company around, and get it back on track. In the interim, this stock remains expensive.

You can not expect biased Wall Street to tell you the truth about Dell. The investment banking commissions on this company are huge. What’s it worth. This is simple. The peers are outperforming Dell and the peers are selling at 15 times earnings. Dell only deserves a premium to the peers because of its past illustrious history. If you give Dell a 17 PE multiple, and you believe the $1.12 number for fiscal 08, we have a stock trading under $20 and maybe lower, awaiting good news. If you give Dell a peer type price earnings ratio, it’s 15 times a $1.12 and that gives you a $17 stock, either way, it’s not pretty. Keep in mind that institutions don’t like to explain stupid investments to the people that give them the money to manage. If Dell is still in the doldrums at year-end, the institutions will bail big, rather than explain it. Dell will become the ultimate year-end tax loss selling candidate, and we don’t see the turnaround in sight yet.

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