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

(Source: PCMag)

…according to NotebookReview.com’s monthly list, at least. Compared to last month, the 15.4″ Dell Inspiron e1505 has risen one spot to No. 2, beating the 13.3″ Sony Vaio SZ. It’s now second only to the 15.4″ Toshiba Satellite A105.

Dell also has a second entry on the list, with the XPS M1210 at No. 10 (previously at No. 5).

For those interested, at No. 4 is the Lenovo ThinkPad T60, while at No. 5 is the Apple MacBook.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook.

Read the entire entry »

University of Michigan’s American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) results were released last week, and they point to a 5.4% increase in Dell’s consumer satisfaction scores since last year. This is against an increase of only 2.5% for Apple (though Apple’s scores are still 5 points higher than Dell’s).

This is certainly the way to go for Dell, and is definitely a good follow-up to Dell’s B+ score in the recent Laptop Magazine tech. support investigation.

[News via Direct2Dell]

Read the entire entry »

Dell recently announced a heavy ~50% fall in net profit, which though significant, is only “slightly” greater than the 30% it forecasted internally and within the average forecasts of most analysts. This fall is attributed to greater competitive pressures and “more aggresive pricing in a slowing market”.

More worryingly (at least to the stock market) is news of an informal SEC investigation on how Dell’s handles its accounting. Further details on the investigation have not been revealed.

These two pieces of news come in the wake of a large-scale battery recall involving 4.1 million Sony-manufactured notebook batteries – though somewhat compensated by news that Dell could possibly begin pumping out AMD-based notebooks by Q4.

[News via Reuters]

Read the entire entry »

(Source: PC Advisor)

1.86 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 15″ LCD screen, 60GB HDD and 512MB DDR RAM. Which notebook? Well, the title of this post tells it all, but without it, I doubt anyone would be able to point me a model. The Dell Latitude D520 is just another 15″ laptop, with nothing particularly outstanding feature or design-wise.

But if that was all, PC Advisor probably wouldn’t have awarded it a 9 out of 10 rating for Value for Money in their recent review of the machine. Yep, as usual, it’s the price tag that brings the D520 to the fore. But admittedly, at £763 or US$1439 (including VAT) [before the traditional discounts BTW], it doesn’t really look it.

Anyway, their verdict? Well, “Provided you don’t want it to double up as an entertainment tool, the Latitude has everything that a good business laptop should have: a good turn of speed, long battery life and high build quality. The price tag should please, too.”

Read more news and reviews on the Dell Latitude D520 notebook.

Read the entire entry »

CNET Australia recently got a chance to sit down with Dell founder, Michael Dell, for an interview, and here’s the resulting transcript.

Among the issues posed to the founder of the World No. 1 PC vendor were his early experiences with PCs, his decision to start Dell Corp., and the future potential of both Dell and the PC market in general.

Give it a look.

Read the entire entry »

(Source: LAPTOP Magazine)

Dell may not have the very best technical support service among the top branded PC vendors, but it still scored a mean B+ in LAPTOP Magazine’s recent investigation.

This was higher than what Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Toshiba scored, though lower than what Lenovo, Fujitsu and Apple garnered. Phone waiting times were still pretty long, with 22 minutes being the longest time LM investigators were kept on hold (compared to under 1 minute for Lenovo and 8 minutes for Apple).

In total, nine vendors were investigated – with only Gateway having the exact same tech. support rating as Dell.

Read the entire entry »

(Source: Terralab)

One of the last few Dell MP3 players gets reviewed again – this time by PC World Canada.

It seems to have impressed its reviewers, with a score of 76/100 being awarded to it, though that really shouldn’t be surprising considering its solid feature set and price (~US$120).

The verdict: “If you’re looking for a cheap, lightweight player to take to the gym, this is a good option, so long as you don’t want to adjust settings or find specific songs while on the treadmill. That combination of activities sounds like a recipe for a broken leg.” Agreed… really.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell DJ Ditty MP3 player.

Read the entire entry »

(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

Unless you want your notebook to make the news (like the one pictured here), we suggest you take a look at the Dell Battery Return Program website. There, you’ll find a list of criteria for notebook batteries that qualify for Dell’s recently announced battery recall.

Around 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries are part of this recall, and under “rare conditions” these notebook batteries could overheat and explode uhmm… “…cause a risk of fire.”

‘Nuff said, right?

Note: Dell staff are keen to remind customers to use the number “0″ (zero) instead of the letter “O” when checking your battery.

Read the entire entry »

(Source: MCS.COM)

Do you know how much it’d cost if you refurbished your Dell Dimension to get this sort of specs?

Intel Pentium D 3.2ghz CPU
3072 MByte RAM
500gb SATA
DVD-Rom Drive
DVD-RW Drive
256mb NVidia GeForce 6800 Video Card
Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Xtreme Sound Card

Well, apparently it’d cost “only” £5,980,000. Don’t believe me? Check it out for yourself.

[News via The Inquirer]

Read the entire entry »

Not too long back, news that Dell would start pumping out AMD-powered notebooks by the fourth quarter (Q4) was broken to us. Now, we have news that those notebooks are likely to come with ATI Mobility Radeon graphics chips.

Of course, this isn’t particularly surprising given the recent announcement that AMD would acquire ATI for US$5.4 billion, but it does spell trouble for Dell’s two main partners, Intel and nVidia.

FYI, many notebook vendors already have AMD and ATI-powered notebooks (such as Acer with its stylish Ferrari 5000), but not only will this be a first for Dell, the World No. 1 notebook vendor, but also the first after the AMD-ATI acquisition announcement.

[News via Digitimes]

Read the entire entry »