dell

Laptops we love under $1,000

One pleasant surprise from the past couple of months has been the number of good-to-great laptops we've reviewed that can be had for $1,000 or less. That price range is usually Compromise City, with cheap-looking systems that may have decent CPUs, but skimp on a lot of other stuff. And, of course, no one wants to be seen in the coffee shop with a hunk of molded plastic while every other table sports a metal MacBook.

Whether you're gearing up for the fall semester or you're just ready for a pre-Windows 8 upgrade, the systems below all strike a good balance between price, design, and features.… Read more

Linux comes to ultrabooks: Dell to preload OS on XPS 13

Dell will sell its sleekest ultrabook with a version of Ubuntu Linux this fall.

The Dell XPS 13 ultrabook will be offered with Ubuntu 12.04LTS preloaded in select geographies, the company said in a statement.

The initiative is an extension of Project Sputnik, a pilot project aimed at creating an Ubuntu-based developer laptop.

Dell is taking the project "from pilot to product this fall" and allowing developers "to create 'microclouds' on their laptops...and then deploy that environment seamlessly to the cloud." … Read more

Dell CEO: Really, we're not a PC company anymore

Dell, which still generates a slight majority of its revenue from PCs, isn't really in the PC business anymore.

So says founder and CEO Michael Dell, who spent a majority of his time at a conference hosted by Fortune today speaking about corporate servers, storage, networking, security, and IT services -- anything, basically, but the PC business.

"In the last five years, we really made a concerted shift to end-to-end IT services," Dell said.

He calls it the "new Dell," a shift away from the PC business as the technology industry embraces the notion of … Read more

Lenovo poised to surpass HP as top PC maker, say analysts

The PC market may see a new leader by the end of the year, says at least one analyst quoted by Reuters.

Currently in second place, Lenovo is set to overtake Hewlett-Packard as the top seller, making it the first Chinese vendor to grab the No. 1 spot in a key technology sector.

"It's just a matter of time before Lenovo becomes No. 1 and it won't be surprising at all if it happens later this year," Frederick Wong, executive director at Avant Capital Management (Hong Kong), told Reuters.

Lenovo stole the No. 2 spot from Dell … Read more

Sharp to pay near $200M to Dell, others to settle TFT case

Sharp will pay a total of $198.5 million to Dell and two other companies a part of an out-of-court settlement reached over the Japanese tech company's thin-film-transistor, or TFT business.

It's not clear from initial reports which companies are invovled or even what the suit pertained to. AT&T and Nokia both sued Toshiba a few years back and are likely the two unnamed companies paid in the settlement.

However, the news likely relates to last week's news that Toshiba, Samsung, LG, and Sharp colluded to fix prices of LCD panels.

Sharp said after "… Read more

Dell ponies up $2.4B to buy Quest Software

In a push to become a software player, Dell won a bidding war for Quest Software as it aims to bolster its data center software. The final price tag: $28 a share, or $2.4 billion.

Dell had been rumored as a buyer for Quest software for months. Quest received a $23 a share bid from Insight Venture Management and Vector Capital in March and then a "strategic buyer" pushed the price up to $27.50. Dell ultimately sealed the deal for $28 a share.

Quest's software manages databases and backs up data. Dell has been focused … Read more

Microsoft and Apple: The roof tile analogy

Roof tile? That's over on aisle 9.

Stretch the analogy a bit. Windows tablets? They're on aisle 9, next to the laptop bags.

I could stretch the analogy even more, where the buyer gets lost amid a sea of generic Spanish roof tiles like Tom Anderson (the early version of Hank Hill) at Home Labyrinth.

Nobody has to ask that question about the iPad. It's front and center at the Apple store.

So, Redmond needs the Microsoft Store -- or similar boutique storefronts where its product can stand out.

On Friday, the Kansas City Star reported that people actually lined up … Read more

Windows 8, Surface to squeeze PC unit sales in Q3, analyst says

PC unit sales could fall as much as 5 percent to 10 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, according to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek's latest research note, published late last night.

Misek sees a troublesome time ahead for PC builders following a single-digit drop in PC shipments in the second quarter, particularly with Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

The report comes after he estimates what was a low drop in second-quarter PC shipments.

It also follows only a month after the two PC makers saw their target prices cut with analysts suggesting: "Windows 8 will prove to … Read more

Again, Apple gets all the attention

So, why does the world obsess about the newest MacBook Pro and not competing laptops from Hewlett-Packard or Dell?

Let's just say that Apple has an innate sense about good design.

And you can bet Microsoft has uttered this sentiment behind closed doors more than a few times -- thus, the Microsoft-designed Surface tablet announcement this week.

But let's focus on the Retina MacBook Pro for now. That's a design that any PC maker could have feasibly done.

Big 15-inch class laptops fall right into the wheel house of the PC guys. Dell did the XPS 15z. … Read more

The return of the hardware era, or, learning from Apple

The hardware business has gotten a bad rap.

IBM saw the writing on the wall and sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2004.

CNET wrote at the time:

The deal will let IBM continue its shift from selling so-called commodity products to selling services, software and high-end computers. Although the company helped make PCs a global phenomenon, IBM makes little profit from PCs and often loses money.

Not long after, Dell followed suit.

Peter Pham explains it nicely from a financial point of view:

Dell is actively remaking itself into a server and IT services company moving away from … Read more