Like our previous four Powerometer surveys, we asked 250 Network World readers to rank the power of 25 vendor CEOs on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 representing most powerful. Research firm Research Concepts conducted the survey for us.

In deference to these precarious times in which people such as Rich McGinn (former Lucent Technologies CEO) are here today and gone tomorrow, Chambers has reached the summit with a lowball score: 76.7, compared to the 80.4, 79.5, 84.1 and 81.4 Power Ratings Gates earned the past four years, respectively. Our readers see no executive, even Chambers, as a J. Edgar Hoover.

Losers were rampant. Our survey closed Oct. 3, just days after 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou announced his retirement and a few weeks before Lucent ousted McGinn. Respondents prophesied by dropping McGinn's ranking from 8 to 11, landing him a spot on this year's list of biggest power losers. Benhamou fell similarly, from 13 to 16, but with virtually the same Power Rating, a 53.3 in 2000 compared to a 53.9 in the 1999 survey.

This does not bode well for Novell CEO Eric Schmidt, who tumbled far less gracefully. Schmidt took a 10-point fall, to No. 20, in the 2000 rankings. He held the No. 10 spot in 1999 and 1998, down two notches from where he debuted on the list in 1997. Two words tell the story: declining revenue.

The loser list is also littered with carrier executives. BellSouth's Duane Ackerman slipped seven spots, AT&T's C. Michael Armstrong five and WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers three. Readers dropped Armstrong's and Ebbers' rankings before they initiated their respective corporate overhauls, announced after our polls closed.

While newcomer Dell fared extremely well, two others didn't. Respondents see Hasso Plattner, CEO of mighty enterprise resource planning vendor SAP, as watered down in the network industry, despite his increased exposure with business-to-business e-commerce partnerships. Plattner's 47.9 Power Rating left him in the 21 spot. Alcatel CEO Serge Tchuruk, who bought his way onto our survey when Alcatel acquired Newbridge Networks, ranked last with a Power Rating of 38.7.

The GTE-Bell Atlantic merger bumped Charles Lee off the list, from his last-place spot in 1999, even though he holds the co-CEO title at the merged company. Word is that Verizon is really the baby of job-sharing partner Ivan Seidenberg, who budges up just a notch from 1999 to No. 17.