Dell's Q1 beats estimates, but is it for my portfolio?

I used to be a big fan of Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) years back, but I've since been cool on the company due to the challenges it's faced as of late. Yet the company's first-quarter stats, released on Thursday after the closing bell, were interesting. Revenues increased 9% to a whopping $16 billion. Net income increased 12% to $0.38 per share. Briefing.com says that Dell beat on revenues and earnings per share, the latter by a nice $0.04.

Operating income actually dropped, however, 4% on a dollar basis. Still, in the after-hours session, investors sent the shares higher by nearly 10%. One thing I liked about the quarter was that operational cash flow was much healthier this time around. Last year, Dell needed to use $99 million to fund operations; this year, Dell booked $143 million in cash from operations. Awesome improvement. And here's something else shareholders should look positively on: management apparently wants to focus on having operational cash flow exceed net income. A laudable goal in my book.

So, this was a decent quarter. Am I buying? Well... not exactly. Personally, if I want to play personal computers, I'm probably more likely to look at either Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) or Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). I recently wrote about H-P's good quarterly numbers, and as far as Apple goes, that stock is definitely the one to go with in terms of strength and excitement (if you can time the entry points properly, of course). Yeah, I'm just not feeling Dell right now, considering the alternatives; maybe at a later date...

Read the full transcript of the conference call that followed the earnings announcement.)

Disclosure: I don't own shares in any company mentioned in this piece; positions can change at any time.