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(Source: Sydney Morning Herald)

This is painful alright – to customers, Dell, Apple and even Sony. Virgin Atlantic recently announced that all Dell and Apple laptop batteries would be barred from usage in-flight. This means that unless the seat you’re in has “In Seat Power Supplies” (ISPS), you’ll have to dump your notebook batteries in your checked-in luggage.

One wonders whether other airlines will follow suit. After all, we’re talking about a multi-million unit battery recall (you might remember that Dell alone recalled 4.1 million batteries) – which will for sure take quite a while to complete.

FYI, if you own a Dell laptop, check out the website dedicated to the recall to see whether your laptop batteries are affected.

[News via The Mac Observer]

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A ~50% fall in net profit, and a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation is usually more than enough to make a corporate executive quake in his/her shoes. But it seems the Powers That Be aren’t done with Dell’s management just yet.

According to a BusinessWeek feature, Dell recently reported that the federal probe of its finances had widened, and it would not only drop a proposed stock buyback plan but also delay filing quarterly documents with the SEC.

But that ain’t all, so I suggest giving the BW feature a run through if you have some time to spare. Of course, that’s if you haven’t been burnt out by the recent deluge of “Dell’s in trouble” reports.

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(Source: Dell)

Along with three new Dell Dimension desktops, the relatively small and slim Dell XPS 210 desktop was unveiled yesterday.

With a nice sliver finish, the 4-foot-tall XPS 210 supports up to an Intel Core 2 Duo processor – though Pentium D processor options are still available for those on a tighter budget. Given its small form factor, it can be installed in either horizontally or vertically.

It ships with Windows Media Center by default, and has a starting price of US$1,190 – which does look a bit high until you consider the fact that this price includes 1-year of priority XPS service support.

[News via Dell]

Read more news and reviews on the Dell XPS 210 desktop.

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(Source: Dell)

As part of a four desktop rollout, three new Dell Dimensions were unveiled, i.e. the Dimension E520, E521 and C521 (pictured).

The E521 and C521 are both AMD-based PCs, with support of up to the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor, while the E520 is an Intel-based one, with support of the newly-released Core 2 Duo processor.

While all come with Windows Media Center by default, they are all touted as Vista-capable. Nothing special really, but then, price is really all that matters, and Dell has certainly ensured a pretty high degree of competitiveness on that aspect via their starting prices of US$719, US$329 and US$359 for the E520, E521 and C521, respectively.

[News via Dell]

Read more news and reviews on the Dell Dimension C521 desktop.

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(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.

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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]

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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]

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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.

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(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.

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(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.

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