Extreme handwriting recognition on the Dell Latitude XT2

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

This is my first and possibly only handwritten blog entry…

that’s because ‘an in a cramped airplane._ seat and the ride is d little bumpy. that, and everyone who can see what lam dough watching me avidly’ The XT2 uses windows7 pen extensions and as a long ten fan of the concept of pen computing I touchscreens and the business of handwriting instead of keyboarding.

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First Look: Dell PowerEdge R510 rackmount server

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Announced last Friday, a Dell PowerEdge R510 mid to low-end rackmount server has landed with a light-ish thud in my corporate testbed facility. I might be joking about the corporate testbed, but I’m not joking about the lightness: having just seen the bruises fade away after shifting my stock of HP LP2000Rs (by donating them to the London Cycle Campaign), it was a major relief to be able to carry and unpack the R510 without cups of tea for the battered-shins posse, cursing, and fresh dents in the back of the estate car.

Comparing the R510 with the old machines is hard, because the simple physical similarity wrongfoots you when you actually absorb the statistics. I gave away 5 LP2000R’s – the virtual machine images of them all would fit, and run, inside the R510 without complaint, and use rather less than half of the current required by just one LP2000R.

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Meet the Adamo XPS… from Apple?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Regular readers of our reviews section will know we drooled all over Dell’s Adamo a few weeks back. Its metal slab design, superb build quality and all-round bloody loveliness won over most of the PC Pro crew and even elicited reluctantly positive grunts from several of MacUser’s troops too.

So what’s this Dell is now teasing? (Click to enlarge)

Puzzlingly, it’s a new 9.99mm-thin Adamo XPS laptop that looks remarkably like a MacBook Air. (more…)

Dell goes up to Eleven

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

A briefing this week from Dell, which has started down the path pioneered by IBM, in retreating further away from hardware sales and tentatively towards various methods of consulting for businesses.

The company wanted you to hear about its pre-virtualisation check, done entirely remotely. It wanted to pass on the news about its new smaller business servers – T400 and T710 – which are decently configured for VMware and Hyper-V, and made a point of mentioning its next-generation remote management card, which will update drivers and patches for you as they are announced.

I’m writing this at some speed, just after the end of its embargo period, though to be perfectly honest I couldn’t see any Big Secrets being let out of the bag. When I asked the questions that PC Pro is getting a bit of a reputation for, about how Dell’s remote access services would be legally defined to protect the client’s data and help to disclose exactly where the team of consultants furtling round your servers, are based… then I got a few simple, honest ‘don’t knows’.

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First look: Dell Adamo 13

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

I caught a glimpse of the Dell Adamo concept design at a pre-Christmas briefing last year, where Dell was so nervous about security they banned our phones (little realising that my faithful HTC Touch’s camera is barely worthy of the name).

So it was with some pleasure that I could finally get my hands on a production model at Dell’s Versailles-based event today. And I have to say, it’s a very impressive piece of kit. (more…)

Time for Microsoft to name its Windows 7 price

Monday, May 18th, 2009

A few months before the launch of Vista, a very senior person at Acer spilled the beans to me in a one-on-one press briefing held in Taipei, that Acer was going public with its criticism of the Vista pricing model, and that it felt it had no choice but to swallow the cost for putting Vista Home Premium onto its products rather than Vista Home Basic. Apparantly, Home Basic was the same cost as XP Home, and Vista Home Premium was some $20 more. (more…)

Dell’s sex change goes horribly wrong

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Dell’s ham-fisted attempt to reach out to women appears to have gone, well, tits up.

A couple of days ago the company launched a site called (if you’re eating your dinner, you may want to look away from the screen now) Della. This mine of patronising twaddle included a section called “Tech Tips” in which Dell delivered advice on what the fair womenfolk might choose to use their netbook for, including pearls of wisdom such as:

3. Eat better: Find recipes online, store and organize them, and watch cooking videos.
4. Get organized: ‘Remember the Milk’ is a free, tweakable online task manager that’s easy to use.

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First look: Dell Mini 10

Friday, April 17th, 2009

The Dell Mini 10 hasn’t had the smoothest of births thanks to grocery juggernaut Tesco, which accidentally revealed its existence before the machine could be officially launched. We haven’t yet been able to get our hands on Dell’s latest netbook until this morning, though, when one arrived in the Labs.

First impressions are good, with the Mini 10 oozing class: the screen sits flush with the wide bezel, the red lid looks inviting and classy rather than garish, and the lack of chrome around the rest of the case, aside from the small power button, leaves the Dell looking more mature than most netbooks.

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Microsoft buys Dell: the truth

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Okay, I will come clean – the piece about Microsoft buying Dell is an April Fool piece. Slightly in advance it’s true, but that’s because the column was automatically taken from the issue of PC Pro that’s out now (see left), and it’s that issue that will be out on sale on the 1st of April!

To be crystal clear – I have no knowledge of Microsoft intending to buy Dell, or Krispie Kreme doughnuts or NASA either. (more…)

If you’re going to do something stupid, do it well

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

So Dell has launched its own download store, describing it as “an online music and software superstore where consumers can easily download a wide variety of songs, and the most popular gaming and software titles”. And I suppose that’s fair enough.

Even though I give Dell a bit of a hard time about the fact it’s even attempting to rival the likes of Amazon and iTunes in this week’s podcast, my biggest problem isn’t with the fact it’s offering a download service; it’s that it’s doing it so badly. (more…)