Dell's fraud settlement explodes PC market myths

Even us jaded hacks, who think we've seen everything in the business, can find our chins hitting the trackpad. So it is with the Dell legal settlement last week. It may have a familiar ring to it, as it concerns a kind of business arrangement almost 20 years old - but don't let that fool you. It's the scale of the amounts involved that is truly jaw-dropping. The SEC settlement casts the entire PC market in an entirely new light.

On Thursday, Dell agreed to pay a settlement for fraudulent accounting from 2001 to 2006. The company admitted no wrongdoing, as is the custom in such settlements.