dell

Last week, I wrote about a Dell summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, where the moderator of the event, Mads Christensen, "entertained" the crowd of IT professionals with a barrage of sexist jokes, and exhorted them to go home and tell their wives to "shut up, bitch."

This week, Dell posted an apology on its Google+ page, saying the company would be "more careful selecting speakers at Dell events."

The apology comes weeks after the actual event, unfortunately, after my column and tech blogger Christiane Vejlo's English-language post made it onto Reddit this past weekend. (… Read more

Update: May 15, 2012 In the wake of this article, Christiane Vejlo's English-language account was posted on Reddit, and Dell has apologized on its Google+ page for hiring Mads Christensen to speak at its Copenhagen summit. "Dell sincerely apologizes for these comments," they wrote, saying also, "[g]oing forward, we will be more careful selecting speakers at Dell events."

Update: 11:31 a.m. PT

A lot of women in tech, including me, don't like to spend a lot of time talking about being a woman in tech. In fact, on a panel of … Read more

We could see a $799 MacBook Air as early as the third quarter, according to the folks at DigiTimes.

Citing the usual "sources from the upstream supply chain," the site says that a more aggressively priced MacBook Air could crimp rival ultrabooks, especially if Intel is unable to bring their average selling price down to its goal of $699. A $799 offering from Apple may also keep competing machines from becoming more standardized.

Intel has been on a quest to push ultrabooks as the latest and greatest technology. Last year the chipmaker created a $300 fund to aid … Read more

Every weekday afternoon, CNET Update delivers the top tech stories of the day. The show keeps a close eye on emerging trends, hot devices and new apps. And it's all in less than three minutes.

In today's show, Microsoft's got the hots for Nook, LG has its head in the cloud, and we're battling pigs in space! (space! space! space!):

Microsoft is investing $300 million in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary that will handle digital and college business. With this investment, expect the Nook to become a stronger player against the Kindle and iPad.

A … Read more

The third generation of Core i-series CPUs has been benchmarked, written about, and discussed for months now, but PC makers could only sell them starting April 29.

Even then, only the very high-end models, the quad-core Core i7 chips, are currently available. The more mainstream dual-core Core i3 and Core i5 processors found in most laptops won't get updated until sometime in May or June (and then probably won't be physically available for some time after that).

A handful of hearty manufacturers have already put the high-end new Core i7 chips up on their sites, allowing you to … Read more

The XPS 13 ultrabook is selling well above expectations, a Dell executive told CNET this week, offering some hope for the new class of skinny laptops.

"We can't build enough of them at the moment," said Sam Burd, vice president of Dell's Consumer and SMB (small and medium business) product group, speaking about the higher-end laptop announced back in January.

"A little bit less than 3X the expected demand," he said. Burd declined to be more specific, saying Dell "never" discloses numbers.

Still, an upbeat statement about sales -- however nonspecific -- … Read more

If the ultrabook devolves into a hodgepodge of pseudo-thin, conventional designs, the chances of success are not good.

This may -- or may not -- be on the verge of happening with designs like the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 and even the Hewlett-Packard Envy 14 Spectre.

Though it's been said before, it's worth repeating: a kind-of-thin, kind-of-light laptop ain't an ultrabook.

I've handled the Acer M3, which is being marketed as an ultrabook. Sorry, no way that's an ultrabook. And the HP Spectre? That's a wonderful design in many respects (Gorilla glass screen … Read more

Ivy Bridge will highlight Intel's emphasis on power-efficiency and graphics performance, but one key ingredient will be missing -- Windows 8.

Intel's Ivy Bridge chip is expected to be announced Monday, opening the floodgates for new desktops and laptops built around the chipmaker's first 22-nanometer processor. Generally, the smaller the chip geometries, the faster and/or more power efficient the silicon is. Intel's current Sandy Bridge processors use "fatter" 32-nanometer technology.

How small is 22 nanometers? More than six million 22-nanometer transistors could fit in the period at the end of this sentence, according … Read more

Dell is rolling out a series of updates to the Alienware M14x, m17x, m18x laptops, including the latest GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. This timing is odd, to say the least, as Intel's third-generation Core i-series CPUs (also known as Ivy Bridge) aren't included.

Instead, these new Alienware models have the current second-gen chips (aka Sandy Bridge). As the high-end quad-core versions of Ivy Bridge are expected to be available from PC makers starting around April 29, the message is clear -- anyone who orders one of these new Alienware laptops before that is a sucker. … Read more