The PC industry has been in a whirlwind this year. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) emerged from a long accounting scandal to find it not making a huge amount of progress on PC industry leader Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), and Acer gobbled up Gateway to make it the world's third-largest PC company behind leader HP and follower Dell (and slightly ahead of Chinese company Lenovo).

Now that Taiwan-based Acer has completed its acquisition of the Gateway brand for a little over $700 million (a bargain, all things considered), Gateway's CEO, Ed Coleman, has announced he will be leaving the company. After a year of disastrous results, most industry watchers saw this one coming, I believe. Coleman says he'll leave at the end of January, to be replaced by Acer's president for Pan American sales, Rudi Schmidleithner, who will be in charge of the official integration of both companies.

Can Acer take the Gateway brand and return it to prominence in the PC market by the sheer force of market share alone? After all, HP is definitely not sitting still and Dell's recent moves into more consumer-friendly PC products and its huge push into retail (Wal-Mart, Staples and Best Buy) will give the Gateway brand its harshest pressure in a long time. Acer can't afford to mess this one up, as the timing is not on its side at all. But, if it can try to be a strong third in the consumer market (as Acer has little business-market finesse), the company has a chance to actually, you know, make a consistent profit and grow sales. The largest challenge it has is being eaten by the two big dogs in the park.

After months of speculation and one bad headline after another (SEC probes, exploding laptop batteries, wilting market share), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) did what most people expected and replaced Kevin Rollins as CEO with company founder Michael Dell. The move continued a long tradition of "encore CEOs" who get called back when companies they founded or led to greatness fall on hard times.

Experts say it is rare for a company to go back to its executive roots. The movie signals both a sense of desperation and a need for a proven hand at the helm.

The question now is whether Michael Dell will be the next Steve Jobs or the next Ted Waitt. Jobs famously saved Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL), which lost its way in the 1990s and saw its already-small market share in PCs shrink dangerously. Jobs revitalized the company, pushing for a new operating system (OS X), new designs (the iMac) and new products (the iPod).

But on the other hand, there was Ted Waitt, who started Gateway(NYSE:GTW) and became an icon (as much for his ponytail and cow-spotted box as for his computers). At the peak of Gateway's strength Waitt handed over the reins, but when the dot-com bubble burst Gateway started to suffer and Waitt stepped back into the corner office. All of his skills and long hair were not enough, though, to turn the company around. He left Gateway again (this time entirely) in 2005.

Other CEOs have done it, with mixed results, among them Charles Schwab at his eponymous firm (NASDAQ:SCHW)(which has gone well) and Ken Lay at Enron (which did not go as swimmingly).

It raises the question, though, of the long-term future for Dell (the company), and it may prove instructive for any business looking to make a leadership change.

At some point, you have to move on.

Michael Dell can not run Dell forever. Bill Gates could not run Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)forever, and knew it, ergo Steve Ballmer. Mom-and-pop businesses that thrive do so because son-and-daughter are ready to step in when the need be.

Some suggest that poor prep work by a corporate board (or Mom and Dad) is to blame for bad transitions. A business has to be preparing itself for new leadership all the time. The recipe seems to be something like this: come to terms with the need for new leadership, swallow your pride, find someone qualified, and then get out of the way and let them run your business for you.

Even if it does feel like cutting off a finger.