Posted 11/20/09 at 04:43:18 PM by Bart Salisbury

For those who have expressed the need to streak a glossy, high resolution, 17-inch display with your greasy fingers, Dell has just made your dream come true. Today, Dell announced a multitouch display version of its Studio 17 laptop.

According to Anne C at the Direct2Dell community blog, the Studio 17 will come equipped with a suite of touch software applications. You’ll be able to finger your way through photo editing, music playlists, manage video playback, and paint. Naturally, you’ll need forearms like Popeye the Sailor to reach across the keyboard for any length of time, but that’s a small price to pay for way-cool technology.

The Studio 17 has a number of processor options for you: starring from the Pentium Dual Core T4300, running at 2.1Ghz, all the way up to the Core i7-720QM quad core, running at 1.6Ghz. You also can pile in up to 4Gb of DDR memory, a 640Gb SATA 5400 RPM hard drive, an ATI Mobility RAdeon HD 4650 with 1Gb of video memory, and a 17.3-inch high definition (900p) LED display. There’s also an option for a blu-ray player, if you are so inclined.

Multitouch, unfortunately, will be paired with the Core i7 processor only. Anne C says the multitouch system will be available in a few weeks. And the starting price will be $899.

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Posted 11/20/09 at 07:24:09 AM by Paul Lilly

Dell didn't deliver in the third quarter the way analysts were expecting, instead missing the mark even on modest expectations, Businessweek reports.

According to the OEM's earnings report, sales dropped 15 percent to $12.9 billion. Net income took a bigger hit and fell by 54 percent to $337 million, or 23 cents per share, well below Wall Street's prediction that Dell would earn 28 cents per share on sales of $13.1 billion.

The poor performance affected just about every aspect of Dell's businesses, but sales to large businesses were hit particularly hard. That's bad news when close to 80 percent of Dell's sales are businesses and government customers.

Even the launch of Windows 7 didn't do much to bolster sales, at least not yet. According to company CFO Brian Gladden, customers had put off purchasing a PC in the weeks leading up to Windows 7, and Dell's quarter ended just eight days after launch.

"We built a bit of a backlog as a result, and we'll ship through that in the fourth quarter," Gladden said.

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Posted 11/13/09 at 11:30:07 AM by Paul Lilly

If the Mac Mini and a bag of Skittles were to share a night of unbridled love, we're pretty the love child of such an affair would look identical to the Zino HD, Dell's new line of colorful low-power home theater PCs.

Dell kicks off the HTPC line with several base configurations, each one built around an AMD processor. The least expensive  Zino HD starts at just $230 and includes an AMD Athlon 2560e processor (1.6GHz, 512KB L2 cache), 2GB of DDR2-800 memory, 250GB hard drive spinning at 7200RPM, integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics, 2.1 audio, an 8X DVD burner, and Windows Vista Home Basic. The OS is a bit of a surprise, considering each of the three other configurations come with Windows 7 Home Premium in 64-bit trim.

The highest priced model checks in at $650 and kicks the processor up to an AMD Athlon 2850e (1.8GHz, 512KB L2 cache), doubles up on memory (4GB), adds twice as much storage (500GB), tosses in an ATI Radeon HD 4330 videocard with a 512MB frame buffer, and includes a 20-inch Dell ST2010 widescreen monitor.

All of the models come with 4 USB ports (2 each on the front and back) and 2 eSATA ports.

The Zino HD is available now through Dell.com.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 08:08:32 AM by Paul Lilly

Dell on Tuesday announced the completion of its tender offer for Perot Systems. Under terms of the deal, Dell will accept Perot's stock at $30 per share, and in return own more than 90 percent of the company.

Completion of the acquisition forms a new business unit called Dell Services, which will provide IT services and business solutions to customers. Integrating Perot Systems also extends Dell's reach into hosting, consulting, applications and business-process outsourcing, and expands Dell's exiting managed and modular services.

"Dell Services will be a powerful organization with the extensive capabilities and global reach to address the needs of organizations of all types. The Dell and Perot Systems integration teams have been extremely productive in their planning, and we are ready to work on behalf of all our customers," Peter Altabel, the former CEO of Perot who will become president of Dell Services, said in a statement.

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Posted 10/29/09 at 08:25:41 PM by Ryan Whitwam

PC vender Acer is on quite the roll as of late. They’ve finally become number two in worldwide notebook sales, beating out Dell. Now they expect to be able to ship 40 million notebooks in 2010, and take the number one spot from market leader HP.

Earlier this year Acer was predicting only 33 to 37 million units shipped, but better than expected performance in the second half of the year caused them to raise expectations. One of Acer’s major problems is the ongoing shortage of hardware, including optical drives, LCD panels, hard drives, and graphics chips. Acer Chairman, JT Wang, indicated that even with possible shortages the company would likely reach its goal.

Acer has become a major player in the last few years. Their notebook shipments have more than doubled, mostly due to the success of netbooks marketed heavily to consumers. They plan to continue on this path into next year.

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Posted 10/27/09 at 05:13:02 PM by Jason Barry

Dell unveiled a new ruggedized convertible tablet called the Latitude XT2 XFR today. It measures in at 1.5 inches thick making it the thinnest rugged convertible laptop on the market.

It is a “work in the field” type laptop weighing 5.4 pounds using a 4-cell battery. It features a 12.1-inch LED backlit display with multi-touch and gesture controls, Core 2 Duo processor (SU9600), and can support up to 5GB of RAM. The Dell engineers weren’t just hoping this thing could handle a coffee spill or a three centimeter drop, it has been designed to meet MIL-810G standards and is expected to be certified soon.

What does that mean? Well, for one, it can operate in temperatures ranging from minus 10 up 140 degrees Fahrenheit. It also features a thermal management system designed to keep things cool but also eliminate dust and water from entering the device.

The new laptop starts at $3,599 and will be sold in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

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Posted 10/22/09 at 10:38:48 AM by Pulkit Chandna

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Dell was developing an Android-powered mobile internet device (MID) or mini-tablet. A Vietnamese site, Tinhte.com, has leaked a video of what it claims is an engineering sample of the rumored mini-tablet.

The MID, which reportedly runs Android 2.0 and features a 5-inch touchscreen, likes to be addressed as the Dell Streak. All that is known at this moment is that the Streak features a 5MP camera with dual LED flash, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, a microSD slot, and a 1,300mAh battery.

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Posted 10/21/09 at 05:34:19 PM by Bart Salisbury

With friends like Dell: “When you consider that Vista was a bust,” said Dell's president for large enterprise Stephen Schuckenbrock, “Windows 7 is a capability upgrade on a scale that has really never been seen before."

Vista a bust? Yeah, well, I suppose so. But why wait until the day before it’s upgrade appears to say so? Some of those very Vista users are where they are because of a recommendation they received from Dell. Besides a knife in the back of its customers, it sort of undermines Dell’s future sales pitches, doesn’t it?

And Schuckenbrock’s comment seems faint praise for Windows 7. Windows 7: it looks great when you compare it to Vista--which sucked! On that basis so to does XP, or Linux, or OS 9.

Interesting comment from a company that sees Microsoft’s new operating system as a pick-me up for their stagnant computer sales.

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