It’s a mixed up crazy world. Just as we digest news that Nokia wants to release a laptop, Michael Dell says his company could give away netbooks with built-in 3G, pocketing a slice of the data plan.Rumours had Dell on the verge of announcing a smartphone.
Laptops with built-in 3G chips are nothing new. HP, Toshiba and Lenovo have been selling them in New Zealand for a while on selected models.
But up until now, built-in cellular broadband has been restricted to a small number of high-end notebooks, providing wealthier laptop owners with a more convenient internet connectivity option than jamming in a dongle, piggy-backing on a 3G phone.
Dell wants to extend built-in cellular smarts to the mass market, fast-growing netbook category. Models in the class, which includes Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 (pictured), sell for between $NZ700 and $NZ900, and are little larger than a videocassette (kids, ask your parents).
Speaking after Dell’s disappointing results on Friday, chief executive Michael Dell said 3G services were a growth opportunity, and that his eponymous company was in talks with several carriers. He told the conference call: “We have been particularly focused on 3G and agreements with carriers embedding 3G and using our own sales engines as well to sell 3G netbooks.”
With PC sales slowing, and computers of all kinds selling for less than ever before, Mr Dell wants to start making some money from Dell’s sizeable installed base (the company is the world’s second largest PC seller after HP).
An expanding services division is one way. Grabbing a slice of recurring 3G revenue is another.
Under Mr Dell’s plan, a Dell netbook would be sold for next to nothing or even given away, providing the customer signed a long-term contract with a partner telco like Vodafone or Telecom. It’s a model that’s familiar enough in the cellphone world.
If a user signs onto, say, an $80 a month, three-year data plan, then $2400 could be coming through the door; more for those months when the owner goes a little video crazy.
But whose door? Dell will have to cut some sharp revenue-sharing deals with telcos.
The problem is, however, that netbooks are heavily commoditised. Dell will not have the bargaining power of, say, Apple, backed by the iPhone’s unique brand cachet.
Linux is OK
Mr Dell also defended Linux against a recent Microsoft comments that the OS is less stable on netbooks.
Dell sells around one third of its Inspiron 9 netbooks with Linux, and around two-thirds with Windows. Mr Dell said return rates were similar for both.
Profit halved
Certainly, Dell could do with striking out in a new direction.
Although it stayed in the black for its quarter ended January 30, Dell’s net profit dropped 48% to $US351 million from the year-ago period, while revenue was down 16% to $US13.4 billion.
The lower net profit included one-time charges totalling $US277 million related to a revamp of manufacturing systems, and stock compensation charges.
Buoyed by an alliance with EMC, Dell’s storage business was the star, with sales growing 7% to $692 million.
Desktop PC sales fell 27% year-on-year to tally $US3.5 billion for the quarter; notebook sales fell 17% to $US4 billion, and servier business was down 16% to $US1.3 billion. All regions shared the pain.
Article source: http://www.nbr.co.nz
By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Technology Writer 
SAN FRANCISCO/TOKYO - Sony Corp said five PC makers including Hewlett-Packard Co and Toshiba Corp will recall 100,000 computer battery packs made by the Japanese electronics maker due to a fire hazard. Sony said the recall is expected to have limited impact on its earnings, and its shares outperformed a falling Tokyo stock market on Friday.
The recall is a fraction of a much bigger recall of 9.6 million Sony PC batteries in 2006, which cost the company around 35.5 billion yen ($360 million).
The U.S. government issued on Thursday a recall of 35,000 Sony batteries and the Tokyo-based company said it would recall a further 65,000 batteries worldwide.
PC makers have reported 40 cases of overheating, including four cases where users suffered minor burns, and 21 cases of minor damage from fires and overheating, a Sony spokeswoman said.
The recall affects around 74,000 notebook PCs sold by HP and 14,400 from Toshiba.
The faulty batteries are also used in laptop PCs from Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, Sony said.
Sony blamed the faulty batteries on factory changes dating back up to four years, which it believes may have affected the quality of some battery cells.
Other incidents of overheating may have involved a problem with raw materials, the company said.
Sony recalled last month 438,000 of its Vaio laptops due to concerns about overheating batteries.
Article source: http://www.canada.com
In an unlikely union of technologies, PC retailer Eurocom has said it will ship laptops powered by Intel's Core i7 processor, which the chip maker has dubbed the "fastest processor on this planet." The Eurocom D900F Phantom i7 will include Intel's Nehalem-based quad-core Core i7 chips, which are typically put in servers and high-end gaming desktops. The laptops will ship on May 1, according to the Canadian PC retailer's Web site.
The laptop's Core i7 920, 940 and 965 processors will run at speeds from 2.66GHz to 3.2GHz and include 8MB of L2 cache. Intel launched the Core i7 chips in November and since then the chip has been praised for its speedy performance.
Calling it the "world's first notebook with i7 processor," Eurocom is targeting the laptop workstation as a desktop workstation replacement. It will include the X58 chipset and an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) to boost graphics performance.
It will have a 17-inch screen and support up to 1.5TB of storage, 8GB of DDR3 memory and 1GB of graphics memory. It will also include wireless 802.11a/b/g/n technology and a webcam. It will ship with either the Windows Vista or Linux OS.
The laptop will weigh a whopping 11.9 pounds (5.4 kilograms), and it will come with a 12-cell battery. Pricing was not immediately available, though users can expect to dig deep into their wallets considering the use of new technologies in the laptop.
If Eurocom indeed ships the laptop, it could be the fastest Intel-based x86 laptop on the planet. Core i7 chips are built on the Nehalem microarchitecture, which includes the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology. QPI integrates a memory controller and provides a faster pipe for the CPU to communicate with system components like a graphics card and other chips.
Each core will be able to execute two software threads simultaneously, so a laptop with four processor cores could simultaneously run eight threads for quicker application performance.
Nehalem chips are a significant upgrade over Intel's Core 2 chips, which are currently used in desktops and laptops. The new chips cut bottlenecks of Intel's earlier Core microarchitecture to improve system speed and performance-per-watt.
Though Core i7 isn't targeted at laptops, Intel intends to scale down the Nehalem architecture for other chips that will go in mainstream desktops and laptops. Intel will also integrate graphics capabilities in the CPU down the line, which should bring more power-efficiency to laptops. However, gamers might need a separate graphics card for better graphics performance.
Intel has said it will release laptop-specific Nehalem chips in the second half of this year.
Many companies including Lenovo and Dell offer laptop workstations. Last month Lenovo launched the ThinkPad W700DS mobile workstation that has two LCD screens.
Article source: www.nytimes.com
