the 1990s and seemed poised to become the stock of the decade. Dell's principal products included desktop PCs, notebook computers, workstations, and servers. The company also marketed a number of products made by other manufacturers, including CD-ROM drives, modems, monitors, networking hardware, memory cards, storage devices, speakers, and printers. The company's products and services were sold in more than 140 countries. Sales of desktop PCs accounted for about 65 percent of Dell's total revenues; sales of notebook computers, servers, and workstations accounted for about 33 percent of revenue. In early 1998, the company had 16,000 employees.
             At age 13, Michael Dell was running a mail-order stamp-trading business, complete with a national catalog, and grossing $2,000 per month. At 16, he was selling subscriptions to the Houston Post, and at 17 he bought his first BMW with money he had earned. He enrolled at the University of Texas in 1983 as a premed student (his parents wanted him to become a doctor) but soon became immersed in computers and started selling PC components out of his college dormitory room. He bought random-access memory (RAM) chips and disk drives for IBM PCs at cost from IBM dealers, who often had excess supplies on hand because they were required to order large monthly quotas from IBM. Dell resold the components through newspaper ads (and later through ads in national computer magazines) at 10-15 percent below the regular retail price. By April 1984 sales were
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