It all started when Michael Dell, a 19-year-old rising college freshman, brought in a Mac computer and took it apart just to figure out how it worked. Michael Dell dropped out of school, invested $1,000 of his own money, and founded PC's Limited in 1984. PC's Limited began by purchasing old computers, making improvements, and retailing them for profit. Once consumers learned more about PCs, they would want newer versions of current PCs. Michael Dell made the decision to produce his own PC. The timing was perfect, there wasn't much competition in upgrading computer systems. Applying the new know-how, PC's Limited's first PC was called the Turbo PC. The Turbo PC catapulted Dell into second place behind Compaq. By 1990 Dell produced more PCs than Dell studied the costs of using these types of distribution methods as part of its ABC system and determined that direct sales were much more profitable. Today Dell uses only direct sales. Launched in the 1990s, Dell's e-commerce business has become an advertisement for how a company can benefit from online sales. The original company made a million dollars from online sales in 1997. Having direct contact with its customers is Dell's competitive advantage. Dell.com gives potential buyers choice and control by allowing customers to choose computer speed and hard drive size based on how much they are willing to pay. Dell knows exactly what customers are ordering and can get immediate feedback on how they're doing. As mentioned above, Dell's strategy was to eliminate middlemen by selling PCs over the Internet, the so-called direct model. Dell became very efficient at build-to-order manufacturing and continued to target specific demographics. Dell was successful until 1992. Its problems, Dell quickly discovered, stemmed in part from its efforts to sell its products through Staples, Sam's Clubs, and kiosks. While some experts questioned Dell's future, the company acted with authority, exiting the retail channel and deciding to re-enter the laptop market only when the quality of that product matched or exceeded the quality of the Dell desktop. By 1997, Dell's Latitude laptop had won PC Computing Magazine's Torture Test twice in three years in addition to winning Business Week's Industrial Design Excellence Award (Rengan &