It appears that the rumour may have been squashed about the Dell buying Motorola’s handset department, that was recently circulating. Motorola have come out screaming they are “fully committed” to staying in the mobile handset market. The company is under pressure from investor Carl Icahn, who believes breaking it up could create more money for share holders (he said value, but we know what that means). It isn’t happening yet it seems, but don’t doubt it won’t happen.
For more info, click over to Reuters.
The rumour says that Dell is planing on buying Motorola. After last years $US388 million operating loss, Motorola has been visited by a whole lot of people. To heat the rumour up to a further extent (and to almost volcanic levels), Dell and Google are going to partner with android.
My opinion on the matter is this is a good thing. Motorola hasn’t really done anything exciting since the Razr came along, and even that was a overrated piece of rat poo (it was really really slow don’t you know?). If Dell and Google was to input some of their development skills and technology know-how into a new Motorola handset, we could get an iPhone and N95 (or 96) competitor.
The rumour originally came from Richard Windsor, from Nomura International (some financial services group), who has said that Motorola’s probably going to let go of its mobile arm, and stick to doing enterprise and government work. He also said that it wasn’t the hardware, but the software and the platform (the hardware wasn’t fantastic though).
It is still only speculation and no one really knows if Dell has made an offer. Will try and keep you updated if any more news comes out.
For more info, visit PMPToday.
If you have heard all this hype about the new Dell XPS One desktop machine, which is basically an iMac that’s black and runs Vista, then you might have heard of the One (PRODUCT) RED. It was designed as a limited item that would give $US80 to Global Fund from every purchase.
There is one issue though, and that is the price. The standard Dell XPS One costs $US1299, which is expensive as is, comes with Vista Home and Works. The Red comes in at $US1599 and comes with Vista Ultimate and Office 2007 Student. You pay $300 more, but only $80 goes to charity?
On top of that, it seems someone over at Engadget has worked out that you could buy both those Microsoft upgrades for as little as $US200. This means, you are paying for the software, the charity and they still making an extra $20 on you.
This whole RED campaign to raise money for charity is fantastic, but to raise money for profits is pure bad. Dell and Microsoft, this is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen, and I hope that enough people about it before they blow their money on your cruel plans.
For more info, click over to Engadget.
I was Digging as I usually do when I’m extremely bored, and I came across a front pager about why an assortment of technology companies dislike Asustek. Normally I wouldn’t waste my time pointing out articles that only focuses on drawing in traffic, but this time I have to. The article is a very ridiculous call from a person who is supposed to be informative, not misleading them.
The article can be found on Datamation, and is titled The Most Hated Company In The PC Industry. To sum it up the writer discusses how Asustek and Intel are now chums, owing to the success of the EEEPC. He also states that the new technology is negatively effecting companies like Microsoft, Apple, Palm and Dell.
Firstly i would like to say the EeePC will have a minimal effect on Microsoft. The EeePC supports Windows XP and has even been seen running Vista. Xandos is a very powerful OS, and is known to be user friendly and intuitivel, but it has been around for years and hasn’t affected Microsoft’s OS market share in the slightest. Also, if you didn’t already know, Microsoft and Xandos have a collaboration, meaning it would be to Microsofts advantage if Xandos was to take market share from other Linux distro’s.
In the article the writer compares the price of an Apple iPod Touch (16GB model) to the 8GB EeePC, and concludes that the EeePC is slightly cheaper ($US69). Considering the devices are completely different and designed for such different functions, comparing them is just crazy. To even debate the comparison is a waste of the readers time.
It is true that Dell and other PC manufactures, who have a series of flash drive based notebooks, could be affected by the EeePC. That is, if their notebooks had not been designed for a completely different market. Ultra Mobile Personal Computers are usually designed to be used without a desk or while standing. Wrap your hands around the EeePC and you will quickly discover it is merely a tiny laptop. Examples of true UMPC’s are the Samsung Q1, Sony UX Series and Gigabyte U60, which all feature a QWERTY keyboard, and are engineered to be used on the move.
To further elaborate on Apple’s position, consideration must be given to their pre-established advantages over Asus. Apple have this thing called MacOSX which doesn’t natively run on anything but an Apple computer. Apple also get very good deals on NAND memory due to the fact they use over a quarter of the NAND memory produced worldwide. Apple also have this little program called iTunes, and does that run on Linux natively? No unfortunately it doesn’t .
Palm had to cancel their Foleo, not because of the Asus EeePC (though it could have been part reason), but because the Foleo had no way of reaching the hype that Palm had created. Match that with their ageing Treo series of smart phones, and financial difficulties and you get a cancelled product. Palm should hate themselves if anyone, because for a long time they were the best at what they did.
To me it seems that none of the companies in the article will be threatened by the EeePC. If anything Asus should be thanked for discovering another niche market. No doubt by the middle of the year you will hear about EeePC competitors that are all similarly priced and spec’ed.
The companies who could hold a grudge against Asus are Nokia and OLPC. Nokia have their N810, which is probably the closest thing to an EeePC (when you consider features and price). The OLPC should also be envious as the EeePC does more for the same price or less (though the OLPC is more technically advanced).
Intel and Asus have had a relationship for a long time, but Asus also has relationships with many of Intel’s competitors. Also, Intel have nothing to lose, because all their competitors (with the exception of OLPC and Nokia) use Intel insides to do a very similar thing.
Mike Elgan, if you’re reading this, I would like you to know your other articles are fantastic and you are usually right on the mark with your conclusions. Had you done a little more research behind the scenes I am sure you would have come to the same conclusion I have.
For the original article, click over to the Datamation Website.
The 22-inch design concept has already shown off at trade shows and what not, but no release date was ever set for it. Not any longer with it being ready to ship in the next couple of days.
The 22-inch Dell Crystal LCD display features a resolution of 1680×1050 (WSXGA+), four speakers (apparently a first for Dell), 2ms response time, webcam, 98 percent colour gamut, 2000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, DVI and HDCP-compliant HDMI connectivity (in one cable). It looks sexy and it can do everything you will ever need, always nice to know.
Where is the catch? It’s the $US1199 price tag. What did you expect for a floating 4mm thick tempered glass screen overlay and polished metal stand? I think I will stick to my $US300 Viewsonic for a little bit longer.
For more info, click over to the Gizmodo Blog.
We had a little view of the M1730 before its recent release and now we have gotten wind of another new notebook for the ever growing XPS range of Dell’s. This will be a little smaller and a hell of a lot lighter then the 1730, with a 15-4-inch screen and slot loading DVD/Blu-Ray Drive.
Unfortunately this model won’t support dual video processors, but it will come with a choice of 2 decent nVidia’s as long as you don’t expect to play to many new games on them. The choices will be either a GeForce 8400M or 8600M GS with up to 256MB of video ram.
Otherwise it is standard affair with a 15.4-inch screen with either a CCFL up to 1680 x 1050 or LED up to 1440 x 900, Intel Core 2 Duo 1.5 - 2.6 GHz (T5250 to T7800), options for 802.11a/b/g/n, WWAN, Bluetooth, finger print reader, built-in webcam and a HDMI port (I will report this until it is standard). It will apparently weigh 4 pounds, but will wait for final word before seeing that as feasible in such a feature rich notebook. No price yet, but should be announced on November 7th.
For more info, travel over to the Engadget Blog.
Remember the heavy weight notebook we talked about a few days ago? The expensive but powerful Dell XPS M1730? Well you can now order it from the Dell website for a sweet starting price of $US2999.
For more info, click over to Dell silly.
Do you live in an apartment that is the size of jimmy the crickets matchbox home but feel that console gaming is repetitive and growing old? Well you need to get yourself an ultra mean desktop replacement notebook, like, lets say, the new Dell XPS M1730. It’s simply a beast with a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor (800MHz FSB and 4MB cache), 2GB 667MHz DDR2 memory (4GB for an additional $US375), 2 x 200GB 7200RPM disks, DVD burner (upgradeable for Blu-ray playback for an additional $US550), dual 512MB nVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT with nVIDIA SLI, AGEIA™ PhysX™ Physics Accelerator, 802.11a/g/n WiFi and a neat 17-inch WUXGA. All this for the tiny price of $US4,192. Wait a second that isn’t tiny at all! You could buy yourself a bigger apparent with that cash people! Other then the possible weight of around 3000Kg’s and the battery life of negative 2 hrs, it will at least be able to run Crysis at 1024×768 with everything on extreme (I hope). Not yet released but considering you can already buy it on the Dell Website, it shouldn’t be long now.
For more info, teleport over to the Engadget Website.