Dell computer financing

Both Hewlett Packard and Dell computers recently tweaked their lease programs with special offers, HP targeting $25,000 transactions and above while Dell is rooting around at the $500 level trying to drum up interest in the SMB marketplace.

And Dell has also extended its legendary enterprise service operation to SMBs with a Dell hosted helpdesk offering called PC Workspace Services.

HP's new financing program is unashamedly year end oriented, offering low lease rates and even deferring all payments until January 2005 with no additional cost.

The offering is made through HP Financial Services, the financing arm of HR and the pay nothing up front option is call the 'Jumpstart Success' because it supposedly gets you a jump on competitors, and it can be applied to all HP products and professional services--including PCs, servers, storage devices and network and systems management software.

It is a US and Canadian initiative and it seems purely designed for customers with a budget problem for this year who want to get started, with the natural outcome being HP makes its numbers more easily for the year.

The deal is very reminiscent of IBM second half deals conducted in the past and may have been stimulated by the fact that money is cheap right now in the US. Repayment plans can spread from 24 to 60 months and the deal is available until the end of the quarter. What's the betting another similar program is put together for the final quarter?

The new SMB Dell deal for support will include asset tracking, a support web portal and on site visits from field technicians, and round the clock helpdesk functions. It looks remarkably similar to the offerings that Dell has with the help of EDS, which has been going for just over three years.

Two months ago Dell and EDS jointly landed a deal to supply and support 41,700 Dell desktops at Barclays, one of the UK's biggest banks, so it is still offering that service alongside EDS and chances are this new SMB offering is with the same partner.

The Dell PC Workspace Services support service program starts at around $20 a month per seat and a special leasing deal has been put together to fund the service.

For PC Workspace Services, customers can pay a fixed fee for support during each billing period and can add optional services as needed to the base invoice.

Dell Financial Services will offer its QuickLease or QuickLoan using a paperless documentation process on orders for the service as low as $500 and where those orders are placed before September 30, a 0% financing option will be available. The message is get your support in place, pay for it on an interest free loan and boost our quarter.

Earlier this month in the US, Dell introduced the same type of lease options from Dell Financial Services (a joint venture with and CIT Group) to pay for PCs for SMBs.

It also introduced Dell Business Credit, a revolving line of credit, which allows qualified customers to buy on credit where they are qualified.

"Dell Business Credit joins QuickLease and QuickLoan in the suite of payment options Dell small business customers can now access through a single line of credit with DFS," Dell said, "No one else in our industry offers access to leases, loans and a revolving account with one easy application."

But Dell says that the interest rate of a Dell Business Credit account is competitive with similar revolving accounts offered by retail consumer electronics stores, which are notoriously high.