Gadgetopia

Please just call me Dell: Like Gateway, they're positioning themselves to branch out. "Dell is changing its letterhead. ... Dell shareholders on Friday voted to accept a motion by its board of directors to change the company's name to Dell Inc. from Dell Computer. The change is effective immediately."

Found today during the configuration process when buying a Dell computer.

Introducing the Dell De-Crapifier...: If you've been hanging out on his blog for a while, you'd have heard me talk often about "decrapping a Dell" (like, in this post, for instance). This guy went a step further and wrote a script to do it. And he stole my name -- ...

Dell, a Mass Marketer, Seeks the Luster-Prone Customer: With Apple's perceived high prices coming down recently it's interesting to see Dell go in the other direction. Apparently a segment of our population does view more expensive as being better. Or so Dell hopes. Dell is making a distinction between the ...

Michael Dell's House: We've talked about Bill Gates house before, but here are some pictures of Michael Dell's. Here's an overhead show.

Last year, on this date, we posted that Dell was going to start selling Ubuntu-powered machines. We said: Is this the moment desktop Linux proponents have been waiting for all these years? This story came up in the On This Day section in the sidebar this morning, and I got ...

Dell to put Google on all new PCs: I think Google is going to become the new Microsoft. [...] that the arrangement [means] that the Google's search toolbar would appear on the screens of all new Dell systems and that Dell users would be directed to a Web page branded ...

Microsoft says XP is definitely dead in June, Dell says it ll keep installing it: Dell has found a loophole in Vista licensing which it plans to exploit in order to keep selling XP machines. Dell s going to report a Vista sale to Microsoft, but deliver an XP box with Vista ...

Users force Dell to resurrect XP: This is interesting. If you remember, a few months ago, I had to work pretty had to find a Dell with XP. Responding to customer demand Dell has restarted selling new PCs with Windows XP installed on them. The decision reverses a policy begun ...

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Computer, has gone on record saying that he'd sell Dell hardware loaded with OS X, if he could. If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers, Fortune writer David Kirkpatrick has asked several ...

Dell laptop explodes at Japanese conference: The pictures here are great. For the record, Dell has "captured" the laptop in question and is examining it. "Top men are looking into it." "Who?" "Top [pause] men." Cut to nails being hammered into a crate, and an old man wheeling it deep ...

[H]ard|OCP - Dell Dimension XPS 400 Evaluation: This is a review of Dell's "gaming PC" line -- the XPS. The review turns into an huge rant about how much crap is installed on a Dell out of the box. These pop-ups were so annoying, and seemed very much like a ...

Dell the conqueror "The real reason for Dell's success is that the company follows a fundamental axiom: Don't do anything stupid. It sounds like an easy motto to adopt, but few of us, in business or in private life, actually heed it. Ever tried to uncork a wine bottle with ...

Soon: LCD TVs From Dell?: Again with the Gateway strategy tie-in. "Dell is expected to break into the consumer electronics market this year with the release of a line of LCD television sets, according to an analyst in Taipei. ... The move into the market for LCD TVs marks a ...

Dell n Series Desktops: I didn't know about these. The n Series features select popular models from the Dimension , OptiPlex and Dell Precision desktop lines sold without a Microsoft operating system. Offered for IT professionals who want control over operating system development and installation, n Series desktops are available ...

It's Official: Dell Beams Up Alienware: Alienware cases will be square charcoal boxes by the end of the month. Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support. Gonzalez said that to expand ...

I'm not sure if this is new or not, but I've never seen it before. I was buying a machine from Dell today, and they're now giving the option to get "standard" reinstallation media for an extra $10. This is really good, because I despise the "Recovery CDs" that come ...

Dell Home Systems Dimension 3000: Dell has a snazzy new Flash-based system to "look" at their machines. You can zoom in on the front and back of the case, the internals, and do a 360 rotation. When you zoom in, click and drag the image to look around. It actually ...

Amid complaints, Dell closes overseas call centers: The ongoing saga of overseas outsourcing continues. After an onslaught of complaints, direct sales computer king Dell has stopped routing corporate customers to a technical support call center in Bangalore, India. [...] Weisblatt would not discuss the nature of the dissatisfaction, but some ...

Once again with the iPod, Apple Computer led the way, proved there to be a viable market for something not done before, and now the others are coming out with their own versions. Dell just released its Dell DJ in 15 and 20GB versions, right along with a rip-off of ...

Dell to Offer Ubuntu 7.04: Is this the moment desktop Linux proponents have been waiting for all these years? As part of an overall effort to update our Linux program, today we are announcing a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu on select consumer desktop and notebook products.

Google treading on Microsoft turf in Dell tests: In the article, both Dell and Google confirm this report. The report, citing unnamed sources, said Dell and Google are in talks to put Google software on as many as 100 million new Dell PCs following a bidding process in which Google ...

Apple Surpasses Dell's Market Value Nine years after Michael Dell said he'd shut down Apple and give the money to the shareholders, Apple has passed Dell in market value, at $72,132,428,843 compared to Dell's $71,970,702,760.

Google to sell Dells to corporate customers: Google and Dell are getting really cozy, which probably irritates Bill to no end. new PowerEdge servers bundled with Google's search software to the search outfit's corporate customers. The bundled machines are meant to help companies search for and manage internal documents and ...

Look at the arrow on this page -- it indicates that there's a horizontal scroll, and there are more products available by scrolling to the right. I never thought I'd see this again, and certainly not dell.com. And it's a bad design. Not just because Jakob Nielsen says so, but ...

Last week, I wrote about how hard drive space was getting ridiculously cheap. Today, I get a Dell catalog in the mail. Their deal on a Dimension 2400: 2.4 Ghz Celeron WinXP Home 256MB RAM 80GB hard drive CD-RW 17" monitor Color inkjet printer All this for $299. There's no ...

For fun, I pimped out one of the new "luxury" Dell XPS machines to see how high I could get it. First I had to set some ground rules: No peripherals (tower, mouse, keyboard only), or else it's too easy. No monitor either -- those LCDs get expensive. No software ...

Slashdot is reporting that Dell has begun selling PCs without an OS pre-loaded. The machines are bare except for BIOS, and they ship with a FreeDOS CD. While seemingly small, this is a huge step away from Microsoft. Microsoft is so paranoid about retail machines not having Windows that they ...

Engadget and Anandtech note a wonderful example of the idea that products are worth what you tell people they're worth: [...] Dell's 2005fpw and Apple's 20-inch Cinema Display use the exact same LG.Philips LCD (literally, it's part# LM201W01). Of course, that 100%+ price differential can be a bit hard to ...

Dell Patents "Reboot and See If That Fixes It" Tech Support Process: Funny, but shouldn't Microsoft be patenting this one? "Dell announced that they had been granted a patent for the 'reboot and see if that fixes it' technical support process, which they pioneered. 'We're really taking our cue from ...

It's floating around the blog-world today that Dell is shipping Firefox pre-installed on all its machines in the U.K. If so, that's deceptively huge news. Blake Ross from the Firefox group has confirmed this. Now if they would only make it the default browser.... Bill Gates must be seriously hating ...

Hey dude, you're getting Linux on that Dell: Could it actually happen? They certainly sound serious. After collecting some 1,800 new product and service ideas from IT users and customers using an online "suggestion box," Dell Inc. has announced that it's taking the user suggestions seriously and will soon debut ...

I'm not one that usually wears logo tees, and I peel all the extra stickers off of the electronics I buy. I just don't much care for being an unwitting billboard for a company when I just paid money for their product. That's why I was happy to read that ...

Everybody laughed when the iMac came out without a floppy, but give them credit for looking ahead. From CNN: "[Dell]...announced it would stop making floppy disk drives standard equipment on its higher end desktop personal computers. ... Other Dell models may lose the floppy by end of the year, depending ...

Let's face a fact: computer manufacturers don't "make" anything. They assemble parts they purchased from somewhere else. This being the case, what makes a "good" computer? What's the differentiator between purchasing your computer from HP or Dell? Compaq or Gateway? I've come up with a short list, along with my ...

Why Won't Dell Promote Its Linux Desktops?: The first comment on this Slashdot post is rich.

Gates still the richest, but Google guys moving up: Once again, I am not on the list. But, once again, it's dominated by geeks. Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, was the nation's wealthiest person for the 11th straight year with a net worth of $51 billion [...] Perhaps more ...

I was looking at the back page of a Dell catalog today, and they had a "PowerEdge 600SC Server" for $499. I thought, "Wow, that's cheap for a server." Then I looked closer... The "server" had nothing "server-ly" about it. It was a Pentium 2.4GHz with a 40GB hard-drive and ...

Presenting the top 10 PCs of all time: Three Apples, the first Dell, the first Compaq, and even a PDA. Good article. Via Slashdot.

As of yesterday afternoon, if you want to buy a Dell computer with Windows XP Pro, you have exactly one choice of model: the Optiplex. Everything else is Vista Business only.

Joe was browsing Dell for a system the other day, and came across this refurbished unit. However, one look at the system identifier prompted him to keep looking. That can't be a coincidence.

Announcing FogBugz On Demand: Fog Creek moves into the world of hosted software. I’m happy to announce that FogBugz On Demand is now available. This is a professionally-hosted version of FogBugz 5.0, previously only available as a download. In the end, $21 per user per month is not a phenomenal ...

The Horizontal Way - an horizontal showcase for horizontal scrolling websites.: A site devoted to horizontal scrolling sites. The Horizontal Way is the showcase for those particular sites that display its content in horizontal either vertical direction. The original Road and Track Web site was all horizontal. More recently, Dell ...

PCWorld.com - Best of 2004: Some eye-openers here: Opera as Best Browser? Outlook as Best Email Client? Groove as Best Collaboration Tool? Panther as Best OS seems legit. I like the Dell Dimension 4600 as Best General Purpose PC because I just bought one. Microsoft Money unseating Quicken as Best ...

When presented with the task of securing his new Mac Mini in a public place Matt put it where nobody would look for it. In a box nobody would steal. I didn't have a way to lockdown my new Mac Mini, but I did have an old Dell case I ...

XML Paper Specification: Overview: XPS is Microsoft's planned competitor to PDF. I wonder if Dell is miffed about the name? The XML Paper Specification describes the XPS Document format. A document in XPS Document format (XPS Document) is a paginated representation of electronic paper described in an XML-based format. The ...

NYT: IBM putting its PC business on the block: Looks like that Gartner report was right on the money. IBM, now the No. 3 PC maker behind Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., is likely to include all of its desktop and laptop computers in the sale, which could earn it ...

Indiana nixes offshore deal to protect jobs: This is refreshing. Citing the need to protect local businesses, the state of Indiana terminated a software contract it had awarded to an Indian company--a move indicative of growing opposition to offshore outsourcing. [...] Outsourcing to offshore companies, particularly to Indian companies, has ...

Some guy has taken the Temple of Mac thing way too seriously. Check out the flickr images of his basement. Unreal. One commenter said, "Somehow it just wouldn't have the same aesthetic if it were a collection of Dell's or HP's." Too true. Too true. If nothing else, at least ...

Gateway shares climb on eMachines purchase : I think Dell will follow suit here, in an effort to get in retail shelves. The deal would allow Gateway (GTW: up $0.49 to $4.58, Research, Estimates), which sells PCs in cartons with cow-like markings through its own stores and the Internet, to ...

Multiple Monitors.Org : I'm dying to know the business model behind this site and organization. We are dedicated to providing resources, information and reviews for current and new users of multiple monitor multi-screen computing, including: multi-monitor product information, directories, news, applications, trends and technology. The site design is horrific, but ...

Old giants fight to reclaim glory days: A great article about once-great companies like Motorola, RCA, Kodak, and Sun (!), that have to change or die. "All those companies once were mighty names in tech. All have to fundamentally change to stay relevant. Whether they do matters to millions of ...

PC sales may be coming out of doldrums: PC sales are up between 14% and 20% this year, depending on who you ask. The numbers are encouraging to a sector that has been languishing for the past three years, battered by the dot-bomb, a flagging economy and a mountainous inventory ...

Thinking Different, Saving Money: Apple finally beat someone on price. Of course, you need to buy 1,100 dual processor G5 with a healthy education discount, but the more you buy, the more you save. "Lockhart estimates the hardware cost $5.2 million, a reasonable price, he said, for a supercomputer that ...

Wired 11.07: McNealy's Last Stand: A fascinating, albeit long, article about the fate of Sun. "...the story reduces down to this: McNealy spent the second half of the 1990s monomaniacally obsessed with everything having to do with Microsoft, from its monopoly-like practices to the general unreliability of the Windows operating ...

Companies lining up for state's huge laptop order: And they're all going to be wireless-capable, too. "Michigan is getting ready to place a technology order that just may be the biggest single purchase of computers ever ‐ 130,000 laptops, enough to give one to every sixth-grade student in the state. ...

ThinkSecret has what they claim are photos of the machine being shipped by Apple for Apple Developer Connection members; the Apple Development Platform ADP2,1. The machine's case is similar to the G5, but the cooling fans inside are arranged differently, and in place of the standard G5 processor it has ...

A Mac In An Enterprise: This is a good article detailing the travails of one guy trying to use a Mac in a PC-based IT shop. He manages to do okay in the end. "For the last two years, I have had to use a Dell laptop at work running ...

Survey Ranks Top Ten Biggest, Most Popular Databases: Let's try to do an import of one of these databases into Microsoft Access. Taking home the prize for largest database size for all OS environments and Unix, for the DSS portion was France Telecom boasting 29.2TB. France Telecom uses Oracle Corp. ...

Technology Review reports that some repeatable results are starting to be achieved in cold fusion research, a field of study that wound up being tossed out as a tin foil hat technology back in the 80's. The Department of Energy is even considering another look. Fifteen years after the first ...

Part I: Corporate Desktop Linux - The Hard Truth: This is an excellent article from the retired CTO of World Bank. He wanted to figure out how much you would save on licensing by switching to Linux. The results ain't pretty if you want to stick with the big manufacturers. ...

In an attempt to gauge perceived innovation in the marketplace, Cheskin and Fitch Worldwide conducted a survey of corporate CEO's, and just released their report. You can download a pdf version of the report from Fitch Worldwide (if you can find your way through the maze they call a home ...

How to fix Mom's computer: Here's a great article on how to de-malware a computer. Gina from scribbling.net went home over the holidays and had to "fix" her mother's computer. She was so awesomely kind to write down everything she did, complete with screencaps. Related to this, the people in ...

On the heels of their Mac mini reliability survey, Macintouch today published the results of the PowerMac G5 reliability survey. While the numbers aren't as good as for the mini, they are still good; of the 6817 respondents to their unscientific web poll, only 10.17 percent reported having problems. Anyone ...

Acer Aspire 9800 20in Notebook: Wow. You see the machine in front of me right now measures 490 x 380 x 60mm (WxDxH) and weighs in at a mammoth 7.8kg! The reason for the immense size and weight is that the Acer Aspire 9800 has a larger screen than any ...

I saw something yesterday about a new computer that Sony just released the VIAO VA TV-PC and my first thought was, "Great. Another cheap iMac G5 knockoff." Then I saw the price. $1,999.99 for the 17" model and $2,199.99 for the 20". Crimony! Compare that to the iMacs ...

Apple introduces dual-boot software Seems Apple wasn't too worried about folks hacking their new Intel Macs to boot windows. They've been working on a solution themselves and it appears to be much more polished than anything a guy who never sees the sun could ever hope to create. Apple today ...

I just watched "Swordfish" on TBS. Hugh Jackman is the world's greatest hacker, hired by John Travolta to steal $9.5 billion to finance a terror campaign against...terrorists. Or something. As hacker movies go, it's pretty hopeless. It contains the most unrealistic hack attempt on film: a 60-second crack of the ...

Geeky Microsoft wants a TV makeover: Apple has always been very strong with product placement, and now Microsoft wants the same thing. "Microsoft is promoting its Windows products on popular TV shows like Fox's '24' and HBO's 'The Wire,' airing this fall, as part of the software company's push to ...

I know this is late, and you've probably already heard, but today Apple cut loose the new Mac Pro the successor to the G5 Power Macintosh. Prices start at $2,199 for a dual-processor, dual-core 2GHz machine. An extra $1,100 will replace the 2GHz Xeons with 3GHz processors. The exterior ...

The Apple Store has a Special Deals section where they sell refurbished hardware, and there are some sweet deals going on (don't let the word "refurbished" scare you off; you get what is basically new hardware and the standard warranty without the new hardware price.) For instance, you can pick ...

A friend of mine sent me this joke today. Pretty funny. A cowboy was herding his herd in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL ...

One of the things that drives me nuts about Microsoft is the licensing. The other day, I found myself wishing for a book or a class on Microsoft licensing so I could understand it...then I realized how utterly absurd that was. Understanding licensing should not be a core competency of ...

I'm a little frustrated with Microsoft and a couple computer manufacturers tonight. You see, I'm owed an operating system, and these companies are conspiring to prevent me from collecting. I had an NT4 server. It was an old machine, and we replaced it earlier this year with a very fast ...

Let me play industry analyst for a second and explain why I think computer manufacturers are in deep kimshee: Hardware has vastly out-paced software. Besides gaming, there's no compelling reason to upgrade your computer. I'm still running on a 1GHz/384MB machine I had built for me two years ago. I ...