Latest on Dell: News, Features, Opinions and More  US falls behind in social-media race, expert says
The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace -- a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of Internet users, a computer security expert said Wednesday. Alienware X51: The little PC that could
Among built-to-order gaming PCs, Alienware is about as close as one gets to a household name, and the brand is largely synonymous with huge black boxes covered in garish blinking lights. The new Alienware X51 is a marked departure from that routine, cutting both costs and girth to deliver a machine that's palatable to the masses but doesn't lose any of that gamer cred. Systems management, cloud services likely in Dell's software acquisition plans
Dell's formation of a new software group, which was announced Thursday, could be the forerunner to a string of acquisitions by the vendor, with some observers predicting a focus on systems management and cloud services provisioning. Dell forms software group, names former CA CEO as head
Dell on Thursday said it is forming a Software Group, which will bring together disparate products under one roof as the company tries to sharpen its end-to-end enterprise offerings. Galaxy Note and S Pen: Can a tweener smartphone-tablet succeed?
The 5.3-in. Samsung Galaxy Note is called a smartphone, but its touchscreen and integrated S Pen stylus for drawing and taking notes elevates it into a somewhat harder to define category. 2012: The year storage becomes a celebrity
This promises to be a break-out year for storage technology with the use of more NAND flash in devices and smarter storage that can be tailored to applications. iPad sales beat HP, Lenovo, Dell PC numbers
Apple sold more iPad tablets last quarter than any single PC maker sold personal computers. NetApp's Tom Georgens: How we got big, stayed nimble, and view storage today
In an exclusive interview, NetApp CEO Tom Georgens talks about virtualization, the private cloud, and how his company defines big data Apple drubs all rivals in U.S. system shipment gains
Apple was the only top-five computer maker to post shipment gains in the U.S. during the final quarter of 2011, a pair of research firms said this week. Dell launches dedupe appliance, VMware integration
Dell today announced its first deduplication appliance, along with an upgrade to its Compellent Storage Center management software that includes tighter integration with VMware. Dell announces XPS 13, its first ultrabook
Dell on Tuesday announced its first ultrabook, the XPS 13, making some noise amid a smaller presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas compared to previous years. Dell: PCs not under threat from tablets or smartphones
The PC is not likely to be challenged by the tablet or the smartphone, and many users of the Internet on these devices will turn to the PC for a better experience, Michael Dell said in Bangalore on Monday. Intel bets big on ultrabooks
Intel will get a strong indication at next week's Consumer Electronics Show whether its decision to bet heavily on ultrabooks is a good one -- or not. Ultrabooks, expected to be hot at CES, could be boon for enterprise IT
With ultrabooks poised to be the hottest devices to come out of this year's Consumer Electronics Show, analysts say the new hardware should be a boon for enterprise IT shops. 2012 tech predictions: From IDG's editors worldwide
Consumerization of IT is the consensus choice of the new year's major technology force, one that will manifest itself in several forms 10 IT news stories to expect in 2012
Well, we erred in our 2011 predictions in not repeating a 2010 forecast that Carol Bartz would be ousted as Yahoo CEO -- it was bound to happen, we just called that one too early. Then again, we also predicted last year that Oracle would buy Salesforce.com and have decided not to repeat ourselves this year, so we'll see if we were just ahead on that one, too. Meanwhile, these are our predictions for the next 12 months: 2011: When cloud computing shook the data center
In a year of surging private cloud activity and major build-outs in public cloud capacity, the cloud's promised simplification remains elusive Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' to power new PC line
The vast majority of Linux users may get the operating system by downloading and installing it themselves, but there's no denying that there are distinct advantages to buying hardware with Linux preloaded instead. 12 IT Outsourcing Predictions for 2012
In 2011, the IT outsourcing industry was marked by smaller deals, leery customers, profit-squeezed IT service providers and a lot of cloud computing talk. Much of that could continue next year, but as our 12 predictions for 2012 indicate, you can expect some new IT outsourcing developments--maybe even a few firsts. Data center, cloud fabrics all the rage in 2012
There was a considerable amount of activity in the data center/cloud switching fabric arena in 2011. That is expected to continue in 2012, along with real world implementations of the next-generation IT technologies. Dell and China's Baidu launch new smartphone
Cisco impresses with UCS
If you're tempted to think of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) as just another blade server — don't. In fact, if you just want a bunch of blades for your computer room, don't call Cisco — Dell, HP, and IBM all offer simpler and more cost-effective options. Dell pulls back from netbook market
Dell has confirmed that it has ceased production of its Inspiron Mini netbook computer, in effect ending its pursuit of the receding netbook market, at least for consumer sales. Online retailers turn to social networks for holiday profits
Retailers are going out of their way this year to integrate holiday season sales efforts with social networking sites to boost bottom line profits. Insider (registration required) Hitachi-LG Data Storage execs plead guilty to price fixing
Three executives at Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) have agreed to plead guilty and serve prison time in the U.S. for their participation in a series of conspiracies to rig bids and fix the prices of optical disk drives sold to large computer makers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday. VDI shoot-out: Citrix XenDesktop 5.5
Citrix XenDesktop shines with unmatched flexibility and all the desktop virtualization bells and whistles. Insider (registration required) Impact of hard drive shortage to linger through 2013
Flooding in Thailand will affect hard disk drive supplies into 2013, but the most significant impact is being felt now and will continue well into 2012 by companies such as PC maker Lenovo, which is telling its customers there are no more 7200-rpm replacement drives. Image gallery: 'Cool stuff' 2011 holiday tech gift guide
From tablets and smartphones to HDTVs and a few surprises, we've rounded up the best tech gear to give and get this year. Cool stuff: Your 2011 holiday tech gift guide
From tablets and smartphones to laptops, HDTVs and a few surprises, we've rounded up the best tech gear to give and get this year. Dell, Salesforce.com deepen partnership around SMB cloud app delivery
Dell is rounding out its cloud CRM (customer relationship management) service with the addition of Salesforce.com's Service Cloud customer-service software, the companies announced Wednesday. Dell Streak is dead: Lessons for other tablets
Dell has announced that the "Streak 7 is no longer available." The death of Dell's Android tablet line doesn't come as much of a surprise, but it points to some lessons that other tablets might learn from to be stronger competitors. Lenovo surges, challenging HP in PC market
With Lenovo surging in the PC maker market, Hewlett-Packard (HP) is facing a serious challenge to its long-standing first-place position. RISC, Itanium lose out to x86 in Q3 server market, Gartner says
The worldwide server market grew by unit shipments and revenue in the third quarter this year, but the downward spiral of RISC and Itanium servers continued on the gains of x86 servers, Gartner said on Monday. Dell PowerEdge servers get AMD's new 16-core chips
Dell on Tuesday said it has upgraded its PowerEdge servers with the just-released 16-core Opteron processors from Advanced Micro Devices. Small PC makers hiking PC prices on hard-drive shortage
The early brunt of a hard-drive shortage resulting from widespread flooding in Thailand is falling on small PC makers, who are raising computer prices to stem losses. Skip data tiering, go directly to all-SSD storage, Forrester says
A new class of all-SSD arrays that use compression and deduplication are challenging tiered storage infrastructures with better performance at about the same cost, according to Forrester Research. Ultrabooks still trying to find their niche
Despite backing from the top PC makers, high prices and a disorganized software and hardware ecosystem could slow adoption of ultrabooks over the next few years, analysts said this week. Dell revenue drops slightly in Q3, but earnings rise
Dell on Tuesday reported a small dip in revenue for the third quarter, owing to weaker consumer demand for PCs, but recorded an increase in earnings. Server makers adopt AMD's new 16-core chips
Server vendors on Monday came out in support of Advanced Micro Devices' latest Opteron 6200 server chips, which advance chip technology to new highs with 16 processor cores. First look: Dell Opteron server cranks up the cores with AMD 'Interlagos'
New 16-core AMD Opteron 6200-series CPUs in the Dell R715 bring huge bang for the buck to wide virtualization workloads, but not until your OS supports it HP, Dell pass Nokia in new Greenpeace green IT guide
While some consumer electronics manufacturers have cleaned up their act, making more energy-efficient gadgets with fewer toxic materials, others are continuing to make fine promises but no changes, according to Greenpeace. In response, the environmental pressure group is changing the way it scores companies in its Guide to Greener Electronics, placing more emphasis on their actions than their words, and measuring new aspects of their operations. The Cloud, Day 2: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Cloud
The first step in spending 30 days relying on cloud-based tools and services is to explore my options and choose the ones I want to use to work and live online. Email and writing are the most crucial functions of my PC for me, so I am going to start by finding suitable online options for email and writing. Actually, I planned to start there, but I ran into a little hiccup--my PC won't cooperate. Why Today's CIO Must Foster IT Agility
Dell CIO Robin Johnson explains how a company's lack of agility, the inability of its IT infrastructure to quickly incorporate a new business process that would give it a competitive edge, can be costly. Johnson explains why the price of this lack of agility, what he refers to as the agility tax, is too high to pay. Cisco vs. HP vs. IBM vs. Dell
Cisco used to be a networking company, pure and simple. It built its dominance and influence on capturing a dominant market position in routers and switches, both in the enterprise and in service provider networks. Facebook-led foundation pushes for open data center tech
Facebook and several of its high-tech partners are rethinking how companies can handle big data with low-cost computing centers. Dell unveils Latitude ST business tablet
Dell will sell a new Latitude tablet for businesses with Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, while it prepares to bring the OS's successor, Windows 8, to tablets. Dell Boomi cloud service adds business rules engine
In addition to using Dell's Boomi integration service to move data from one cloud to another, users of the service can now also create simple business rules to reroute data to different locations, the company announced Tuesday. EMC to put hardware in servers, VMs in storage
At EMC's recent user forum, president and chief operating officer Pat Gelsinger expounded on EMC's plans to enter the application server hardware market and begin porting VMware virtual machines onto storage arrays. Gelsinger also said EMC didn't want its 10-year partnership with Dell to end. Nudging IT forward
There is basic agreement on the nirvana vision for the next-generation data center, but the tricky part is getting there from here. Michael Dell sees HP confusion as a big opportunity
As Hewlett-Packard waffles on whether it will continue to produce computers, the CEO of rival Dell Inc. said HP's customers are losing confidence and looking to other vendors Dell ends 10-year reseller relationship with EMC
Dell announced it has ended a decadelong reseller relationship with EMC this month through which it sold more than a billion dollars worth of midrange and entry-level storage products. Web 2.0 Summit to focus on value, pitfalls of online data
This year's Web 2.0 Summit will focus on the critical role that online data plays in the Internet economy and on how its use and misuse can make the difference between success and failure in markets like online gaming, Web advertising, search, social media and mobile. Intel CEO faults recent evolution of PCs
Intel CEO Paul Otellini came to the defense of PCs at an industry conference Friday, but he also outlined his belief that the so-called ultrabook will do more to meet consumer and business needs. Dell traverses China challenges to expand services unit
Dell is expanding its China services business one step at a time as it tries to overcome quirks associated with running a business in that market, a company executive said on Friday. At Dell World, Ballmer steers clear of tablets, phones and Apple
With many still reflecting on the contributions of Steve Jobs, being at Dell World this week almost feels like living in an alternative universe. Dell as a services company? Maybe, say customers
Dell's decision to hold its first-ever enterprise conference this week may have helped some of its customers see it as more than just a hardware company. Dell puts recent acquisitions to work
Dell is implementing networking, storage, software and hardware technologies it has gained from recent acquisitions in products that can help it move beyond servers to deliver more end-to-end solutions. Michael Dell sends memo, of sorts, to HP
Laced throughout Dell's first enterprise user conference, either directly or indirectly, will be talk about HP and its very public consideration of either spinning off or selling its personal systems group. Lenovo passes Dell in 'disappointing' PC market
Lenovo passed Dell to become the second-largest worldwide PC vendor behind Hewlett-Packard in the third 2011 quarter, pushing back rival Dell. Lenovo surpasses Dell, becomes No. 2 PC vendor
Lenovo surpassed Dell to become the world's second largest PC vendor at the end of the third quarter, according to research firms IDC and Gartner. University medical center virtualizes, cuts storage needs by 65%
With data doubling about every year, the University of Kansas Physicians group turned to virtualization to cut costs and boost performance. The OpenStack juggernaut
The OpenStack collaborative industry effort to build an open source cloud platform is to be applauded for the remarkable gains it has achieved in a short amount of time. Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA in July last year, the organization is now backed by 120 companies, including the likes of HP, Dell, Intel and Cisco, and has already issued four major code releases, the last of which, Diablo, just came out last month and has already been downloaded 50,000 times. Hands on: Dell Latitude E6320 business-rugged laptop
The Dell Latitude E6320 isn't the prettiest ultraportable laptop, but it definitely gets the job done. It's a solid performer, and it has a lot of little features that business professionals will definitely appreciate. Mac clone maker may take fight with Apple to Supreme Court
A U.S. appellate court this week rejected an appeal by Mac clone maker Psystar in a long-running case related to copyright infringement of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. Dell launches new ultrathin laptop first in China
Dell launched a new ultrathin laptop in China on Friday called the XPS 14z, which is slated to arrive in other markets later this year to take advantage of the coming holiday shopping seasons. How We Tested vSphere 5
We did a fresh install and mostly upgrades to existing VMware vSphere 4.1 (patched) resources in our lab, which contains several Dell Servers and a DLink GB switch. It's connected in turn to our NOC at nFrame in Carmel Indiana, 78 miles away via Comcast Business Broadband. In the NOC are several servers including three primary test servers, an HP 585 (4 AMD CPUs with 4 cores each), HP 580 (four Intel CPUs with 4 cores each), and Dell 1950 (two Intel CPUs, four cores each). The servers are connected via two VLANs on an Extreme 10GB switch. Also connected is a Dell Compellent 15TB SAN. In turn, we used a Dell 1950 (8 cores) to host and control our infrastructure. Mango update coming to four AT&T phones starting Sept. 27, report says
AT&T is planning to update four Windows Phone 7 smartphones to the Mango release starting as early as Tuesday, according to internal AT&T emails received by a Web site. Apple drubs rivals in satisfaction survey eighth year running
For the eighth year running, Apple again beat rival computer makers that sell Windows PCs in an annual customer satisfaction survey, a researcher said today. Dell Latitude 2120: Slightly rugged, wildly overpriced
Dell touts the Latitude 2120 as the ideal netbook for business. That engenders the question: is an old-school, underperforming, under-screened netbook can really be an ideal solution for business computing? Dell plans to double Force 10 Networks team
Dell plans to double the number of staff selling, marketing and developing the products of Force10 Networks, the networking company it acquired in August, an executive said. Want a job? These 10 tech firms are hiring
A lot of technology companies are in the midst of hiring sprees -- in some cases looking for hundreds of new workers. Execs explain what skills they need, and where they are looking for top talent. Lenovo expects to beat Dell in PC sales by year's end
Lenovo's chairman believes the company will overtake Dell to become the world's second-largest PC vendor by the end of this year. Dell partners with China's Baidu to launch smartphone
Dell has partnered with China's largest search engine Baidu to launch a smartphone, in a move that could help both companies tap the country's growing mobile phone market. Dell Vostro V131: Clean, capable, affordable
Dell's Vostro V131 is sedately handsome and a good performer, but has little else to distinguish it -- unless, that is, you count eye-catching prices for various configurations, two USB 3.0 ports, and a generally excellent set of features. Storage shipments keep surging, IDC says
Enterprises and service providers spent more money on storage in the second quarter, emboldened by growing IT budgets, research company IDC will report on Friday. University tests ERP on new Dell cloud
University of Kentucky CIO Vince Kellen is considering moving some of the university's SAP work to a cloud environment, which would make him a relatively early adopter of ERP in the cloud. VMworld brings flurry of third-party product launches
While VMware had no shortage of new and updated products to debut at its VMworld conference, being held this week in Las Vegas, many VMware partners and competitors introduced their own offerings at the show as well. Dell offers hosted apps for SMBs
Just one day after Dell announced its first infrastructure-as-a-service offering, the company is jumping deeper into the cloud. Dell will offer a family of hosted software applications for small and midsized businesses, through partnerships with Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Intuit and others, the computer maker announced Tuesday. Happy fifth birthday, cloud computing
Dell's unveiling of a cloud infrastructure today comes five years to the month after Amazon announced its Elastic Compute Cloud beta, which may well have been the first service to call itself a cloud. Dell to launch public cloud service this year
Dell will launch its first cloud infrastructure service later this year through a partnership with VMware, continuing its push to move beyond PCs and into higher-margin software and services. Dell set to launch public cloud service
Dell will launch its first cloud infrastructure service later this year through a partnership with VMware, continuing its push to move beyond PCs and into higher-margin software and services. Dell unveils next-gen EqualLogic arrays
Dell today announced new versions of its midrange EqualLogic SAN arras, the PS4100 and PS6100, which are now qualified with VMware's vSphere v5.0 and offer the use of 2.5-in drives and solid state drives. HP shift on PCs could boost rivals
With HP likely spinning off its PC manufacturing business, other major vendors will almost certainly be looking for a bigger piece of the hardware pie. Wall Street Beat: Megamergers, earnings roil tech
Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, acquisitions and earnings news from the world's top PC makers (Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo), the biggest Internet business (Google), and a major handset maker (Motorola Mobility) marked major realignments in tech this week. HP bails out on the PC
When the world's largest PC maker admits it might sell off its massive PC manufacturing business, it means "they see the writing on the wall," as one analyst put it. Dell expects Windows 8, Android to boost tablet market
Dell expects both Windows 8 and Android to be credible options for tablet customers next year, and indicated it plans to offer products built around the two operating systems, a company executive said on Wednesday. Dell desktop, storage revenue drops in Q2
Dell had strong profit growth in the second fiscal quarter of 2012, although the company's revenue was hurt by a drop in sales of storage and desktop products, Dell said on Tuesday. Dell packs 4G LTE in New Vostro V131 laptop
Dell has announced the ultrathin Vostro V131 laptop, which will come with an optional LTE card for 4G mobile broadband connectivity. Dell packs 4G LTE in new Vostro V131 laptop
Dell has announced the ultrathin Vostro V131 laptop, which will come an optional LTE card for 4G mobile broadband connectivity. SSD drives promise to enhance storage performance, but a new host-interface-standard holds the key
Flash-memory-based solid-state disks (SSDs) provide faster random access and data transfer rates than electromechanical drives and today can often serve as rotating-disk replacements, but the host interface to SSDs remains a performance bottleneck. PCI Express (PCIe)-based SSDs together with an emerging standard called NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) promises to solve the interface bottleneck. Apple tech support satisfaction plummets
Apple customers are increasingly dissatisfied with the company's technical support, which could affect the firm's bottom line down the road, a researcher said today. Dell unveils bundled Hadoop servers
Dell will start selling servers preloaded with the Apache Hadoop open-source data processing platform. Michael Dell: We're a 'solutions' company
In an exclusive interview, CEO Michael Dell talks about his company's new direction and its plans to serve a diverse midmarket Dell launches 10-inch Android tablet in China
Dell launched its newest 10-inch Android tablet exclusively in China on Friday. Twitter gets down to business with promoted tweets
Twitter is placing its promoted tweets right in front of users' eyeballs in an attempt to boost its advertising business. ARM could breathe new life into laptops
A stagnant laptop market could be reinvigorated with the arrival of ARM processors, which will enable lighter machines with all-day battery life, industry observers said. Dell warranties servers for 'fresh-air cooling'
Dell said Thursday it will warranty servers to run at 113 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) for parts of the year, so that customers can make wider use of "fresh-air cooling" in their data centers. Dell debuts cloud-ready bundled system
Using OpenStack cloud software, Dell has created a package of hardware, software and services that organizations can use to deploy Infrastructure-as-a-Service operations. Dell fills data center technology stack with Force10
Dell's acquisition of Force10 Networks will fill a critical networking hole as the company buys its way into building an integrated technology stack for data centers, analysts said on Wednesday. Feds to push e-recycling, energy-efficient electronics
The U.S. government will buy energy efficient electronics and will promote e-recycling under a new strategy.
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A Dell marketing muckety-muck chucked muck at Apple's iPad 2
