When Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) reported Q3 numbers last week, the market was underwhelmed by the computer maker's results. Dell, in the midst of staging a comeback under founder and CEO Michael Dell, missed earnings by a penny. Although this was the first solid quarter of honest-to-goodness results after a string of quarterly "preliminary" results due to an accounting scandal, the market didn't let up. Missing estimates by even a penny can be disastrous in the short term.

Well, larger competitor Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) continues to add to that misery, as research firm iSuppli recently stated that the Palo Alto, Calif., company increased its market share over rival Dell in the third quarter of the calendar year. Adding insult to injury, Taiwanese computer maker Acer stole the number two spot in laptop sales away from Dell in the Q3 period as well, after completing its acquisition of the Gateway brand in the same quarter.

According to iSuppli, Hewlett-Packard took home 19.2% of all computer shipments in the third quarter, widening its lead against Dell's 14.6% share. In 2006's Q3 period, the difference was 16.5% for HP compared to 16.3% for Dell. My, what one year can do. Dell, ever one to control internal costs, let that one area get out of hand in its Q3 period and that dented its profit even as revenues grew. With laptop PCs continuing to grow way faster in unit shipments than desktop PCs, and with a resurgent Acer not giving an inch, it's going to be one large, uphill battle for Dell from here on.

Well it's harvest season here in New England, and the Macintoshes are ripe. But in Silicon Valley, it looks like Apple (NYSE: AAPL)'s Macintosh brand is the fruit filling in the PC market pie. According to TheStreet.com, Apple's Macintosh is gaining market share.

How much? In the third quarter, Apple's Mac computers accounted for 6.3% of all PCs sold, up from 5.7% a year earlier, according to IDC. This growth means that Apple pulled further ahead of its competitors as it increased its lead as the third-ranked player in the market, a position it took over earlier in the year.

This gain in market share should help Apple when it reports on Monday, as the Macintosh has been accounting for a greater share of Apple's own profit pie. In the first nine months of the company's fiscal year, the Mac accounted for 41% of the company's total revenue, up from 36% during the same time last year.

It's a tasty time to own Apple shares. The question for investors is whether Apple -- trading at a Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) ratio of 2.6 (on a P/E of 49 and earnings growth forecast of 19% to $4.48 in 2008) -- is ripe for harvest or hot to hold. What do you think?

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Apple.

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Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has rolled out what it is calling a "budget supercomputer" in a London event. The computer maker wants its newer and cheaper supercomputer offering to be used in research dealing with custom cures for cancer as well as searching for universe origins in all the radio wave data that spills into the earth these days using large collection dishes.

Is this a move into a new area of computing or a publicity stunt? Neither, but it is Dell's attempt at some good press, something that has been lacking for the company in recent years. With commodity computer parts available to just about anyone who wants them, Dell will once again be assembling commodity machines (supercomputers) to sell to large clients that need a lot of processing power to sift through all the data available to them. Dell's entrance (if it can be called that) is not really all that unexpected, as both competitors Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) and Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) have been in the supercomputer field for a very long time. Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) made the practice of stringing together many standard PCs to make a supercomputer popular years ago as well.

Dell's new 'Legion' system will have the processing power of 3,000 desktop PCs and will target those who need cheap computing power available from commodity components without spending a fortune on proprietary systems and parts in the process. As Dell basically defined the role of commodity computer supplier in the last decade and a half, it should be primed to fill this role while giving in to the need of "adding value" to what could be seen as a boring commodity market. If Dell can bring more and more cheap supercomputing to the field and compete against International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) (which leads all others when it comes to built supercomputers), then it may just have something.