I'll try not to make this one of those smug, "told-you-so," kinds of columns seen in various industry publications since the dot-com boom turned to dot-com gloom. After all, things haven't been so rosy around the manufacturing sector lately either, what with sagging industrial output and widespread factory layoffs.
But here's the good news. New evidence suggests that manufacturers were never the technology laggards they were once made out to be by some financial analysts. Less than two years ago, stock prices were soaring for Internet retailers--and for any company with dot-com in its name, for that matter--even though most weren't even close to profitability. Traditional manufacturing stocks, meanwhile, were in the dumper.