Vista Products Company

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Vista Products Company

by pareekbharat86 » Sat Dec 07, 2013 8:13 pm
Shareholders and investment analysts have criticized the Vista Products Company for having slow and outdated computer systems in its factories when these systems are compared to Vista's competitor's systems. However, a Vista representative has claimed that such criticism is unfair. The representative noted that Vista spent more money last year per factory upgrading its computer systems than any of its competitors did.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously discredits the reasoning in the company representative's argument?

a. Overall spending per factory on computer systems is lower in Vista Product's industry than in other industries.
b. Vista Products is not as profitable as some of its competitors
c. Companies with fast, modern computer systems would have no need to spend large amounts of money to upgrade these systems.
d. No investment analyst has visited every single Vista Products factory.
e. When assessing the overall quality of a company's operations, production line speed is more critical than the quality of the company's computer systems.

OA is C.

I find this one flawed. The stimulus says that the company spent more money last year than any of its competitors did. C says that if you already have an upgraded system then you would probably not need to spend so much. My question is, what if Vista overhauled its system last year by making the one-time big investment, and therefore now has a system as good as its competitors? The quality of the present system is being questioned whereas the money was spent in the past.

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Bharat.
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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sun Dec 08, 2013 1:50 pm
I can see your point. However, when answering a Weaken the Argument question, your goal isn't to find a premise that DESTROYS the argument. Your goal is to find a premise that BEST WEAKENS the argument. So, if answer choice C isn't the best answer, what is the best answer?

In this argument, the company's representative suggests that, by spending more money on its computer systems last year, Vista must have better computer systems. In other words, it's unlikely that the competitors could have better computer systems since those competitors didn't spend as much as Vista did.

Answer choice C says that companies with great systems don't need to spend tons of money to upgrade.

This weakens the representative's argument.

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by Abhishek009 » Mon Dec 09, 2013 8:03 am
pareekbharat86 wrote:Shareholders and investment analysts have criticized the Vista Products Company for having slow and outdated computer systems in its factories when these systems are compared to Vista's competitor's systems. However, a Vista representative has claimed that such criticism is unfair. The representative noted that Vista spent more money last year per factory upgrading its computer systems than any of its competitors did.
P 1 : Vista Products , slow and outdated compared to it's competitors , hence criticised.

P 2 : Representative of Vista Claims such criticism unfair.


C : Vista Spent more money on upgrading computer systems than any of its competitors

Can you observe a gap in the reasoning , indeed there is a gap , when criticised for poor performance of the products the representative of Vista mentions investment in Up gradation which is unparalleled to it's competitors.

But what is the use of such up gradation to the end users ? They simply want better products...


Which of the following, if true, most seriously discredits the reasoning in the company representative's argument?

here our goal is to weaken the logic presented by the Representative.

a. Overall spending per factory on computer systems is lower in Vista Product's industry than in other industries.

Neither relevant , nor sufficient to weaken the conclusion...

b. Vista Products is not as profitable as some of its competitors

Irrelevant to the present context.

c. Companies with fast, modern computer systems would have no need to spend large amounts of money to upgrade these systems.

True , end users are more interested in fast computers , if a company can deliver products meeting customer expectations then there is no need for investment of large amount of money for up gradation.

This forces us into thinking that what the author reasons is nothing but nonsense...

d. No investment analyst has visited every single Vista Products factory.

Out of scope , what does it have to do with poor performance of Computer system ?

e. When assessing the overall quality of a company's operations, production line speed is more critical than the quality of the company's computer systems.

Goes into unnecessary consideration Speed Vs Quality of Computer system , hence rejected...


Hence will happily and undoubtedly go with (C)
Abhishek