House of Dell | The Unofficial Dell Weblog, with News, Reviews, and Information.

(Source: Dell)

Dell’s ninth generation servers, e.g. Dell PowerEdge 1950 and 2950, were officially announced around a month back. But at that time, only Demsey (a.k.a. Xeon 5000)-powered servers were available, with a “come again later” notice pasted for those looking for the highly anticipated top-of-the-line Xeon 5100 servers.

One month has passed, and Dell has kept its promise. Woodcrest-equipped servers are now available for purchase. Among the models equipped with Intel’s new server processor are the PowerEdge 1950, 2950, 2900 and 1955 servers. Dell Precision 690 and 490 workstations can also be equipped with Xeon 5100 processors when customized.

Of course, until full reviews come in (that is, if they do), it’s hard to say whether or not Intel will succeed at regaining market share lost to AMD in the wake of Dell’s acceptance of AMD chips in both its servers and desktops.

More information and reviews on the Dell PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 here and here, respectively.

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(Source: NotebookReview.com)

I missed this review of the Dell XPS M1710 by CNET a while back, so given that it’s been a rather slow week, I thought it would be okay to bring it in. We’ve seen two reviews of the same machine already, so I’ll skip the basics.

For its strong points, the reviewers identified its excellent gaming performance, stylish illuminated case, and large array of ports and connections, while its high price and relatively low-brightness display were deemed its minus points.

So, the bottom line? Well, the XPS M1710 gets an 8.2 out of 10 overall rating, the Editors’ Choice Award for April, plus an undeniably favourable verdict: “If you’re a hard-core gamer looking to play the newest games at the highest settings, this is the best system that (a lot of) money can buy.” Of course, this was in April, so it might not hold now.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell XPS M1710.

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(Source: Dell)

While Dell has consistently produced strong networking products, especially its PowerConnect series of switches, it has failed to match more “established” brands in the business – namely Cisco.

An article over at Network World analyzes Dell’s strategy – especially the positive aspects of it – with respect to this failure to score in the LAN switch market, as well as provides a couple of possible reasons for Dell’s inability to sufficiently penetrate a multi-billion dollar industry.

An excerpt:

My educated guess is that the low-end users didn’t care what they plugged into and didn’t need the advanced features or the wire-speed throughput that Dell offered.

At the higher end, network architects probably wanted a product suite that included WAN routers, firewall and VPN devices, and so forth, not to mention the most important element – higher-end, chassis-based switches.

Read the whole article at Network World.

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(Source: The Inquirer)

Let me first tell you that I initially thought that this was a joke when I read it over at The Inquirer a few days back. An exploding laptop? What’s the chance of that happening? 1 in a 100,000?

But no… it really happened. A Dell notebook actually did explode at a conference in Japan. Luckily, no one was hurt, but I bet Dell’s image has been – especially in Japan.

According to a The Inquirer reader, this was most likely a problem with the built-in cuttouts for the laptop’s battery, and the “multiple explosions” witnessed were likely to be individual batteries within the battery pack igniting. I sure hope this wasn’t a 9-cell.

Anyway, this sort of thing usually gets preempted by battery recalls, so Dell engineers and QCs must have missed this batch. Let’s just hope our batteries weren’t part of this “explosive” batch.

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(Source: NotebookReview.com)

PC World has compiled a couple of Top 5 notebooks lists in its August magazine issue – one for desktop replacement notebooks and another for all-purpose notebooks.

In both lists, Dell notebooks rank third – with the XPS M1710 representing Dell for the desktop replacement segment, and the Inspiron E1505 for the all-purpose notebook segment. Despite the rankings, however, both notebooks were actually extremely close to their higher-ranked counterparts, with only 1 or 2 points separating them from the top notebook in the lists.

Not surprisingly, battery life was quite a weakness for both of Dell’s offerings, with the Dell XPS M1710 trailing by around 30 minutes compared to the No. 1-placed HP Pavilion dv8000z, and the E1505 trailing by over two hours compared to the Pavilion dv5000z.

In my opinion, these lists serve as an indicator of sorts that Dell has to up its competitiveness just a little more – especially in light of the fact that its most dangerous rival, Hewlett-Packard, is at the top of both lists.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell XPS M1710 and Inspiron E1505 notebooks.

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(Source: luftwaffe at Neowin.net)

Supplementing a prior review of the Dell 3007WFP by CNET is a review by UK computing magazine, PC Plus.

While both reviews are generally positive towards the 30″ LCD screen, both seem to have found different problems with the monitor. While CNET found ghosting problems, DVD playback problems and a lack of S-Video ports as minus points, PC Plus pinpointed the lack of rescaling capability and the need for a dual-link DVI graphics card instead.

In any case, PC Plus, as said earlier, concludes very positively towards the Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP, with an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 and a bottom line of, “this may well be the best monitor ever. If you can live with the lack of rescaling (possibly an issue for gamers and Xbox users) and aren’t budget-conscious, then go for it.”

Read more news and reviews on the Dell UltraSharp 3007WFP.

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(Source: PC World)

It was recently announced that Dell would introduce its XPS series for the first time in India with the recently launched Dell XPS M1210 notebook.

But given that the M1210 isn’t a gaming notebook, but rather a high-end ultraportable (12.1″ screen and 1.98kg), it isn’t really surprising to see Dell introducing it to the Indian market.

Now, if Dell were to introduce the XPS 700 there… That would be something.

More information and reviews on the Dell XPS M1210 here.

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(Source: bit-tech.net)

About.com’s tech. guide has just published another one of its traditional tech. specifications reviews, and this time, it’s on the newly released Dell XPS 700.

As expected, the XPS 700’s strong performance was a plus point for the reviewer, but the lack of liquid cooling and limited case designs pulled down the overall score. Well, there really wasn’t a score per se, but you get my point.

Anyway, the conclusion given was that, “Dell’s XPS line gets a boost with the new XPS 700 that offers a wide range of performance options for those on a budget or with as much money as they can spend. Don’t expect a lot of case designs to choose from though.”

Read more news and reviews on the Dell XPS 700 .

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This 12.1″ widescreen ultraportable was hinted at around a month back, but only today was it officially announced by Dell. Featuring a Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) Intel Core Solo U1300 (1.06GHz) processor, it will probably be slightly weaker performance-wise in comparison with Acer’s upcoming 12.1″ offering, the Ferrari 1000 (AMD Turion 64 X2). Of course, this will only be the case if Acer decides to ramp up the GHz on their model.

However, given the starting weight of 3.0 lbs for the Latitude D420 (when equipped with a 4-cell battery), it’ll compete well on weight since the F1000’s weight has been reported to start at around 3.7 lbs. Admittedly, you’re not going to be getting much style with the Dell – with its standard greyish silver finish awaiting you. But its battery life can be expanded to a whopping seven hours if you are willing to lug a 9-cell battery-equipped D420.

Early adopters will also be pleased with a couple of features Dell has thrown in with the D420. It’s 802.11n-ready, and features a Wi-Fi Catcher which can help you find wireless connections without booting up your notebook. Nothing spectacular, but it does add value to a rather simple notebook in a burgeoning ultraportable market.

It does seem though that Dell are prepared to battle its competitors on price instead of features, with a starting price of US$1,149 after an instant savings coupon. Of course, this price gets you only 512MB RAM, a 30GB 4200 RPM hard drive and a 24X external CD-ROM drive. Up your budget to US$1,642 and you’ll get the “standard” (that is, if you want to run Windows Vista) 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD (also 4,200RPM) and an external DVD-RW optical drive.

Overall, we’re not too thrilled with this new model, though it does round up Dell’s business-level Latitude notebook series. We’d say buy it only if you’re looking for a simple and effective ultraportable on the cheap.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell Latitude D420.

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The first review on the XPS M170 we found was by BIOS. Today, we have one from Hard OCP – a traditional source of truly in-depth reviews.

For those who have forgotten what the Dell XPS M170 provides, let’s go through a recap of some general specs. On average, the M170 will come with a 2GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX Go graphics card and a black-red-silver finish. So, you’ll definitely be getting a strong, though relatively dated, entertainment notebook.

And what do these specs translate to? Well, an 8.9 out of 10 overall rating from Hard OCP should answer that question. But that probably won’t mean anything to most consumers given that the XPS M170 can no longer be purchased from Dell. That’s right, it’s not available any longer. But don’t worry, there are still many more XPS-line notebooks and mobile PCs to get your grubby hands on.

More information and reviews on the Dell Inspiron XPS M170 here.

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