Dell to reduce use of mail-in rebates
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Responding to customer complaints, Dell Inc. said Thursday it plans to gradually reduce its use of mail-in rebates and its often confusing array of other promotional offers.
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(InfoWorld) - Computer maker Dell's solution to the datacenter energy crisis is to market more energy-efficient versions of its PowerEdge line of servers. Dell is scheduled to introduce on Monday the PowerEdge Energy Smart model 1950 and 2950 servers, which the company claims deliver a 25 percent improvement in performance per watt compared to the standard 1950 and 2950. The announcement follows Dell's September launch of Energy Smart OptiPlex business desktop computers. The Energy Smart server features include a processor that draws only 40 watts of power versus the 65 watts or 80 watts drawn in standard servers. Energy Smart servers will also offer only 2.5-inch disk drives, smaller than the typical 3.5-inch drives. Those design changes may diminish performance in a way some customers would find unacceptable, said Jay Parker, director of PowerEdge Servers in the Dell Product Group. But for others, the goal is energy efficiency. "We would expect somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range of our customers to be interested in this product and to ultimately migrate to this. But there is a whole other set of customers who need more configurability or [for whom] power efficiency is not a priority," Parker said. The Energy Smart servers also feature redesigned power supplies and cooling fans, as well as software that regulates the processors and memory to power the server up and down as computing demand changes. Vendors of servers, desktops, and other enterprise hardware are on anÂ energy-saving kickÂ these days, addressing the need to cut datacenter power consumption. The lifetime operating cost of powering servers and cooling them with air conditioning is becoming more of a concern to datacenter managers than the price of the server itself. Hewlett-Packard unveiledÂ on Nov. 28 what it calls "Dynamic Smart Cooling" for datacenters. Heat sensors on server racks send signals to a control panel that adjusts the air-conditioning output. HP's technology doesn't address the energy problem as directly as Dell does by making the server energy-efficient, Parker said. "You have to optimize the server, because ultimately that has a huge ripple effect on the other infrastructure pieces in the datacenter. In our mind [HP's technology] seems to ignoreÂ the first obvious step, which is to address the server itself," he said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 1950 starts at $2,449, $100 more than the standard 1950, Parker said. Pricing for the Energy Smart 2950 starts at $2,619.
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Dell has signed a deal to distribute free laptops with the purchase of a broadband Internet access subscription.
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MacCentral - Dell Inc. took the wraps off its holiday lineup on Thursday, showing new printers, plasma televisions and music players that will soon be available through its Web site.
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Dell has taken an aggressive pricing strategy in its competition with Apple in the music player space. Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox reported in his blog today that Dell has dropped pricing on the 15
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Dell Inc. and America Online Inc. announced a partnership Monday to provide 5,000 low-income students with free refurbished personal computers and a year's worth of Internet access.
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No I don't want to register any E-Monkey Assistants DAMN IT! Dell's tradition of shoveling bloatware into newborn PCs may be coming to a close. All it took was a few years of outrage.â¦
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Dell Inc. has stopped selling many computers with processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on its Web site, although it will continue selling some through retailers.
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Dell has scaled back the range of consumer PCs with processors from Advanced Micro Devices that it sells on its Web site, focussing almost exclusively on systems with Intel processors.
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Small businesses with fewer than 10 pieces of computer equipment to recycle are eligible for a new Dell service.
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ROUND ROCK, Texas -- Computer maker Dell Inc. said Monday it will delay filing its fiscal second-quarter report and suspended its share repurchase program because of previously-disclosed accounting probes.
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By Paul B. Johnson, High Point Enterprise, N.C.  Jun. 2--TRIAD -- Critics of the record Dell Inc. incentives package aren't quite ready to say "we told you so" after the computer giant announced major job cutbacks this week, but they're close to making that case.
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Dell Inc. has signed a deal with a U.K. mobile phone retailer to distribute free laptops with the purchase of a broadband Internet access subscription, continuing the company&#39;s push into the retail market.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell will lay off 10 percent of its 78,800 workers, in a continuing effort to improve profits as the company also completes an investigation of accounting fraud, it said Thursday. Dell will make the layoffs over the next 12 months, including workers throughout its geographic regions, customer segments, and job functions, the company said in a statement. The move is part of a corporate cost review spanningÂ product developmentÂ and procurement,Â service, and support delivery. While layoffs are difficult, "we know these actions are critical to our ability to deliver unprecedented value to our customers now and in the future," company CEO Michael Dell said in a written statement. The company also announced it made $759 million in profit for the first quarter of its 2008 fiscal year, down slightly from the $762 million it earned for the same quarter last year. Dell reported revenue of $14.6 billion and earnings of 34 centsÂ per share, both well above Wall Street expectations of $13.95 billion in revenue and 26 cents earnings per share, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial. Despite itsÂ success in beating the financial forecast, Dell also said it had spent $46 million in the last quarter on expenses for the investigation into accounting and financial reporting. Dell began an internal study of its books because of questions raised in 2006 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Dell blamed that situation for its decision to file only preliminary results Thursday, marking the fourth consecutive statement that the company has not filed an audited, official earnings account. Those missing statements have also forced Dell to fight to keep its stock listed on the Nasdaq exchange, which requires all public companies to file audited Form 10-K papers in order to be publicly traded. Dell has already won several extensions of a deadline to supply those numbers, and on May 4 it asked for even more time to meet the conditions.
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Dell completed an internal accounting investigation Tuesday and&#160;restated its financial results&#160;from fiscal 2003 to the first quarter of 2007, bringing it into compliance with listing requirements specified by the Nasdaq stock exchange.For the restatement period, Dell cut its cumulative net income by $92 million from a previously reported net income of $12 billion, said Dell spokesman Bob Pearson. The cumulative change to earnings per share was $0.03 from the previously reported $4.78, he said.Dell also reduced revenue by $359 million from the previously reported $196.2 billion for the restatement period, Pearson said.While it was carrying out its own probe of accounting problems during the quarter and under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC),&#160;Dell faced delisting&#160;on the Nasdaq multiple times for failing to file earnings reports to the SEC on time. The&#160;SEC is still investigating Dell&#160;for certain periods prior to fiscal year 2006. Dell will continue to cooperate and work with the SEC on the investigation, Pearson said.Among a string of filings Tuesday, Dell said in a 10-Q/A filing for the quarter ended May 5, 2006, that it recognized the wrong amount of revenue from certain transactions or recognized revenue in the wrong period. In some cases, Dell prematurely recognized revenue before it settled the terms of sale with a customer, Dell said in the filing.Dell is trying to restructure amid the accounting scandal, personnel changes, and slow growth in the U.S. PC market. In January,&#160;Michael Dell returned as CEO&#160;after Kevin Rollins resigned in an effort to revive the company. In May, Dell announced it would cut 10 percent of its workforce. It is also battling Hewlett-Packard, which is closing in on Dell&#39;s position as the leading U.S. PC vendor, according to a recent IDC study.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell has signed a deal with a U.K. mobile phone retailer to distribute free laptops with the purchase of a broadband Internet access subscription, continuing the company'sÂ push into the retail market. Starting in September, consumers who buy a two-year contract for America Online's broadband service through the Carphone Warehouse GroupÂ will get a coupon for a free base-model Inspiron notebook from Dell. AOL broadband costs Â£19.99 ($41) per month. A similar free laptop offering was unveiled this week by mobile provider Orange UK, a move designed to get consumers who may have never owned a computer or bought broadband service using the Internet in order to grow subscriber numbers, said Jonathan Coham, an analyst at Ovum. Those customers tend to be older and are more loyal. But it won't come cheap for those operators. "These are very low-margin customers for the time being," Coham said. "Both Orange and Carphone Warehouse are going to make a slim amount of money on top of what they are getting from the broadband subscriber." The Dell laptop comes with Microsoft's Vista Home Basic OS, 1 GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, an Intel Celeron processor and Wi-Fi. The laptop can be upgraded for a fee. Customers also get a wireless router, but have to pay a Â£14.99 laptop delivery fee. By contrast, Orange's free laptop offers fewer features than Dell's. It's made by Ei Systems, and comes with Windows XP Home, 256 MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive but doesn't have Wi-Fi. Users can upgrade to a better laptop for a fee. Orange's broadband service, however, is cheaper, at Â£14.99 per month for a 24-month contract, excluding an initial discount for the first three months. A Dell spokeswoman said the deal with Carphone Warehouse is an extension of the company's retail strategy, and there will be more retail deals around the world coming soon. Dell, which traditionally sold computers online, by phone or through catalogs, sees the retail market as a way to stop its declining market share, Coham said. Dell could potentially try to entice the novice computer users who take the free laptop into buying technical support packages. "I think if Dell is smart they will see this as an opportunity to upsell these basic PC customers with additional accessories, software and support," Coham said. Dell beganÂ selling computers at Wal-Mart, the American retailer, in June. The company is also now selling three PCs with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux OS installed, a move driven by customer demand, Dell has said. Â
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Dell is slashing prices on corporate IT solutions by up to 22%, but only for US customers. The cuts come on the back of impressive trading figures and lower component costs for Dell, and cover enterprise servers, desktops and laptops.