Barcelona should be available next week and when compared with Intel's Clovertown, Barcelona is 30% faster than Clovertown at floating point instructions. However, at integer instructions, Clovertown is approximately 30% faster than Barcelona. Dell also says they will continue to use AMD processors in their line up to give their customers a variety of choices to choose from.

Dell today introduced its most powerful mobile workstation, the Dell Precision M6300, designed to free engineers, artists, developers and other professionals to run business-critical applications wherever they go with true desktop-level performance. The Dell Precision M6300 sports Intel Core 2 Duo and Extreme Edition processors up to the X7900 (2.8GHz) combined with NVIDIA Quadro FX1600M OpenGL discrete graphics, up to 4GB of dual-channel system memory, and high performance hard drives including solid state and encrypted. The Dell Precision M6300 has large, high resolution, wide-aspect 17-inch anti-glare display. 802.11a/g/n wireless connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, DVI port, as well as firewire are also presented in this model.

DELL plans to release new SP2008WFP 20-inch LCD panel with integrated 2MP webcam this September. The SP2008WFP will offer 1680x1050 resolution, 2ms response time, 300cd/m2 brightness level, and 2000:1 contrast ratio. The screen also sports DVI with HDCP, four USB 2.0 ports, and a 2MP still / VGA video webcam (fixed focus) with array microphone. The exact release date is 12 September, 2007.

According to market watcher NPD, Apple was the third largest laptop vendor during June, with only Toshiba and HP selling more machines. This puts Apple ahead of other major names such as Dell, Gateway and Lenovo, as buyers continue to choose Apple's updated MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks over the more conventional brands. Figures show that Apple accounted for 17.6% of the laptop market, up from 14.3% in May, which also means that more than one in six laptops sold in the USA are made by Apple. However, these are only based on retailer sales, so the direct-to-buyer figures may tell a completely different story. This news comes soon after Apple managed to take the third-spot in overall computer sales, tied with Gateway on 5.6% (behind Dell and HP).

Just when we thought the enormous recall of all Sony laptop batteries in several laptops, including those made by Dell, was over, someone's laptop spontaneously combusts. The laptop-turned-firecracker was one of the Inspiron 9200s, which were among the first to be recalled. However, it is not clear whether or not the customer actually went through and replaced the battery. If this is not a case of consumer ignorance...this could mean that Dell will have to deal with another massive laptop battery recall.

Engadget has posted details about Dell's next gen XPS 420 system. The XPS 420 will be bigger, badder and better equipped:

• Core 2 Duo, Extreme, or Quad (up to 8MB) processor options
• Intel X38 Express chipset, DDR2 800 (up to 8GB)
• MiniView LCD 3 x 2-inch QVGA display (runs SideShow on the front, picture after the break)
• Dell Xcelerator - dedicated media coprocessor for transcoding video streams to MPEG-4 formats. Can cut encode time on a 2 hour HD movie in half and use far fewer CPU cycles.
• SATA II (with RAID 0 or 1 support)
• PCI Express x16, Gigabit Ethernet
• 2x front USB, 6x rear, 2x internal; one front and rear 1394; one eSATA, frontal audio ports

For quite some time now, Dell has been offering Ubuntu on it's desktops and laptops in America. However, that was it. Dell only sold Linux computers in America. Thankfully, Dell plans to change all that. The Inspiron 6400n laptop and Inspiron 530n desktop will be the first Linux-equipped Dells to ship in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and China. Dell customers that want Linux pre-installed on their computers will have a choice between Novell's SUSE Linux and Ubuntu. European customers will soon be able to order Linux versions of the 6400n laptop for £329, and the 530n desktop for £399.

Dell, manufacturer of high performance XPS laptop computers is preparing the M1730 model, which will follow up after their M1710. The "fully loaded" laptop will sport a Core 2 Extreme X7800 CPU running at 2.60 GHz. Graphics-wise, the base models will use an NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS with 256MB of memory, there should also be a 512MB GeForce 8700M GT available soon.

Other rumored specs include a maximum of 4GB of RAM and a 512MB or 1GB Intel Turbo Memory option, Bluetooth 2.0, Blu-ray as well as a numeric keypad.

The laptop will be launched on the 27th of this month.

Dell plans to expand its Ubuntu PC and notebook offerings due to continued demand Dell has seen for the Ubuntu products, said Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu creator. Shuttleworth also founded Canonical, the company responsible for offering support for Ubuntu Linux users.

What's been announced to date is not the full extent of what we will see over the next couple of weeks and months,

There are additional offerings in the pipeline,

Shuttleworth said during an interview. Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden did not make an official statement about future products, but did say that Dell is happy with the response the company has received for Linux. Even though most of the products sold were likely to previous fans of Linux and open source technology, some first time customers also made purchases. Dell currently offers five products which run the Ubuntu operating system.

A few days ago we saw Orange strike a deal in which they offered free laptops with their contracts. Now Dell has signed a deal with a U.K. mobile phone retailer to distribute free laptops with the purchase of a broadband Internet access subscription. Starting in September consumers who buy a two-year contract for America Online's broadband service through the Carphone Warehouse Group will get a coupon for a free base-model Inspiron notebook from Dell. AOL broadband costs £19.99 ($41) per month. This free laptop which is by far better than the one Orange is giving away for free uses Microsoft's Vista Home Basic OS and has 1 GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, an Intel Celeron processor and Wi-Fi. The laptop can be upgraded for a fee. Customers also get a wireless router but have to pay a £14.99 laptop delivery fee. Jonathan Coham, an analyst at Ovum had the following to say.

Dell announced today it has entered into an agreement to acquire privately-held SilverBack Technologies, Inc., a service delivery platform provider for remote monitoring and management of information technology infrastructure such as servers, storage, networks, desktops and notebooks. Dell plans to leverage SilverBack Technologies, Inc. into its operations as part of its ongoing strategy of IT simplification. Terms were not disclosed and the purchase will not be final until all closing conditions are met. SilverBack Technologies, Inc. is based in Billerica, Mass.

Dell introduced eight colours for its two versions of 15 inch and two versions of 17 inch notebooks. The colours include black, blue, yellow, brown, red, green, pink and finally apple white.
The colours are available for Inspiron 1520 and 1521, 15.4 inch models and 17 inch Inspiron 1720 and 1721.
The 1520 comes with Vista and Core 2 Duo and starts at €879 while the 1521 comes also with Vista but uses Turion 64 X2 while the slowest which will also have Vista but a 1.6 GHz and 1 GB memory costs 729 €.

Dell is getting sued by a trucking company. This is because, according to Con-Way Transportation Services, Dell is refusing to pay for the transportation of $42,497.26 worth of goods. Con-Way Transportation Services is suing in a Texas court, and is looking for payment of transportation (plus 1.5%/month interest), as well as compensation for the legal costs, such as lawyers.

Dell, as part of it's plan to lay off 10% of it's total staff, is asking 100 people in the Irish plant located in Limerick, Ireland, to turn in their badges. In particular, Dell is trying to get people in IT, human resources, marketing, and management to quit. Dell "will reconsider the situation should it fail to make the targeted number of cuts" within two months. Dell's Cherrywood plant near Dublin, Ireland, is not affected.

Back in April, Dell started the "Plant A Tree For Me" fund, which is basically a gigantic charity based around planting trees to offset the carbon dioxide surplus in our world. Now, Dell is taking further steps to actively protect and help the environment. Two of Dell's latest notebooks, the D430 and Precision M4300, have been certified with the stringent Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star 4.0. Ten of Dell's desktop models have already been certified compliant with Energy Star 4.0, which Dell claims makes it "the greenest technology company". Dell also launched cooler-running servers that are more efficient and require less energy to run. Dell is also working hard to make SSD storage available in as many of it's computers as possible.

If competitors decide that they want to steal the crown of "the greenest technology company" from Dell, we may finally see companies striving to make computers more powerful while reducing their impact on the environment.

Dell has updated its 24-inch 2407WFP widescreen monitor with the introduction of the 2407WFP-HC LCD model. The new 2407WFP-HC features Dell's TrueColor technology, 1920x1200 (WUXGA) resolution, 6ms response time, 1000:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 image brightness, 178°/178° viewing angle and a new W-CCFL (wide cold-cathode florescent lighting) backlight. Although, the specs and features appear to remain unchanged the updated 2407WFP-HC LCD panel now covers 92% of the NTSC color gamut, just like the 3007WFP-HC big brother. Orders of the new Dell 2407WFP-HC start tommorow in Japan with a MSRP of ¥108,000 or around USD $875.

Computer manufacturer Dell is set to axe at least 7,000 jobs due to falling sales and rising costs as part of a move that will see the firm cut its global workforce by 10%. With tough competition from companies such as Hewlett Packard over recent months, Dell has lost the top spot for pre-built computer sales and now accounts for only 15.2% of the total market, with HP ahead on 19.1%. "While reductions in headcount are always difficult for a company, we know these actions are critical to our ability to deliver unprecedented value to our customers," Mr Dell said. Dell currently employs 78,700 staff worldwide, although the scale of cutbacks in different regions will depend upon current trading and legal considerations. Dell also announced that first quarter profits had actually risen from $762m to $947m, with sales rising 1% over the last three months to $14.6bn.

Dell today expanded its internationally recognized line of desktop gaming systems with the XPSTM 720 H2C Edition, a performance junkie's dream built around a variety of premium technologies designed for overclocking.

The XPS 720 H2C Edition pushes the limits of extreme performance with Enhanced Performance Profiles (EPP) memory technology. The system ships with 800MHz Corsair DOMINATORTM EPP memory modules (factory overclocked1 to 1066MHz) combined with Intel multi-core processors (factory overclocked up to bin+3). Additionally, BIOS switches allow users to manipulate the speed of the front-side bus and chipset through the Windows operating system and third-party applications such as nVIDIA nTune.

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced that Dell Inc. is the first major systems provider to join the business collaboration that was formed by Microsoft and Novell in response to customer demand for greater interoperability and intellectual property (IP) assurance. As part of the agreement, Dell will purchase SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and establish a services and marketing program to migrate existing Linux users who are not Dell Linux customers to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Alienware and Dell, are now taking enthusiasts to the next level by offering the mega-powerful NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics cards on high-performance Alienware Area 51, Alienware Aurora and Dell XPS gaming desktops. The SLI-Ready GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics processor delivers outstanding graphics quality for even the most challenging and complex gaming and multimedia applications. Systems configured with multi-core processors and the GeForce 8800 Ultra GPUs will be primed to take on this year's highly anticipated DirectX 10 gaming titles as well as next-generation OpenGL titles. Dell XPS gaming system details and pricing are available at www.dell.com/gaming. Alienware system details and pricing are available at www.alienware.com/desktops.

It's been no secret that Dell has been planning to offer Linux as an option of some of its PCs to please customers, but until now there's been no strong indication of which distribution it is likely to choose. Red Hat and SUSE were strong contenders because Dell already certifies some of its models to work with those distributions, but now it seems the PC manufacturer has opted to go with Ubuntu Linux. 'Feisty Fawn' (the newest version of Ubuntu) should be available to Dell customers from the end of May on both desktop and notebook models, although Dell has not specified which systems will and won't offer Linux as an extra. Buyers will also be able to chose to purchase optional support if they wish, although Dell has not revealed whether Linux itself will be free or require a charge (it is possible the basic models will be shipped with Ubuntu by default and customers may have to pay to upgrade to Windows).

In a figurative triple play, the Delaware Multimedia Patent Trust (MPT) is suing three technology giants for large sums of money. They are claiming that they own patents to Lucent technologies, and the right to sue for past infringements. The MPT is suing over patents regarding an "adaptive non-linear quantizer", "optimized scanning of transform coefficients in video coding", and "video coding with optimized low complexity variable length codes". The MPT wants a lot of money to cover damages, costs, and expenses.

Dell is the next big manufacturer to enter the solid-state disk arena today by offering 1.8" SanDisk UATA 5000 drives on its Latitude D420 ultra-mobile and Latitude D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. SanDisk's 1.8" SSD drive was first announced in early January and features patented TrueFFS flash management technology. Also of importance is the drive's MTBF of 2 million hours. The drive offers sustained read speeds of 62MB/sec and had an average access speed of 0.12 milliseconds. The drive also boosts overall system performance by 23 percent and reduced boot times by 34 percent on the D420 and D620. The SanDisk UATA 5000 is currently available as a $450 option on the D420 and a $300 option on the D620 ATG. The drive is also available direct from Dell at a price of $549.

For a long time, Dell has enjoyed the "most pre-built PC sales" crown. Now, it seems like HP, with the right combo of advertising and good products, has called snatchies on that crown. While a lot of factors went into the specifics of this little title change, I'll shorten it. Quite simply, HP now has 19.1% of the PC market, and Dell has 15.2%. We'll see if this trend continues, or if Dell has some sort of ace-in-the-hole to combat this recent lapse in sales.

The Dell XPS M2010 laptop is definitely not going to sound like a laptop. Sporting a rather large 500GB RAID 0 array, a 20.1" widescreen monitor, high-definition sound/video stuff, and a gazillion (very professional term for a lot) other un-announced features, the M2010 is going to be one of the most feature-laden DTR (DeskTop Replacement) laptops to ever hit the market. But now, word on the street is that the M2010 is going to have another pioneer feature: a slot-loading Blu-ray drive. This would make the M2010 the first laptop to come with a slot-loading Blu-ray drive, assuming there are no surprise releases to beat Dell to the market.