Dell Unveils Inexpensive Projector
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New 2300MP digital model offers high brightness and resolution, at a low price.
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For several years people have been talking about the idea of miniaturizing a projector so that it&#39;s small enough to fit inside a cell phone or digital camera. Now it&#39;s finally been done, and 3M is demonstrating a prototype of such a device at this year&#39;s International Consumer Electronics Show.The mobile projector is about a centimeter thick and about 4 centimeters tall by 3 centimeters wide -- small enough to fit inside portable devices like cell phones, PDAs, or a digital still camera, said Todd Rutherford, product development specialist with 3M&#39;s optical systems division.It uses an LED as the light source and can project a VGA resolution (640 pixels by 480 pixels) image through a lens that&#39;s about a centimeter in diameter.3M is demonstrating the projector at CES built into a small handheld device that runs video from flash memory. The image projected onto walls or other light surfaces was good enough and easy enough to see over a distance of about half a meter, although it suffered over greater distances due to the bright lights of the show floor.The demo attracted a lot of attention and a constant stream of show attendees, many of whom had badges identifying them as employees of mobile phone makers or network operators.3M is already working with companies interested in embedding the projector in devices, and the first products should be out in early 2008, said Rutherford. He wouldn&#39;t identify the companies or the applications but said that they are mobile consumer electronics products.
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The Pico Projector, from Microvision, takes a cell phone image and projects it project an image onto a nearby surface the equivalent size of a 60-inch television screen.
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Dell Inc. began selling flat-panel televisions from rival electronics manufacturer Sony Corp. on Wednesday and said it would soon offer products from a variety of companies as it tweaks its consumer business strategy.
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(InfoWorld) - Hoping to gain customers among fast-growing small businesses, Dell launched a storage array optimized for simple operation and low price on Monday . Dell unveiled the MD3000i, a SANÂ array that uses the iSCSI protocol so customers can connect it to their existing Ethernet networks instead of more expensive Fibre Channel, Dell CEO Michael Dell said in a webcast. Dell will have to battleÂ IBM and Hewlett-Packard in the rush to provide low-cost storage products for the SMB sector. Both companies have launched low-end versions of their storage systems this year. But Dell said on the webcast that competing products fall short of SMB needs because they are too complex. In the past, storage vendors have focused too closely on making products for large enterprises, assuming their customers have the sophisticated technical support departments to manage them, Dell said. In contrast, the MD3000i is designed to be simple to manage and will allow even small businesses to consolidate their server resources through virtualization. The product will also help small businesses manage the burgeoning amount of data that flows over the Internet and within organizations, without breaking their limited budgets for buying new hardware or hiring IT managers, he said. That makes the array a good fit for beta testersÂ like Tellurian Networks, a medical records hosting company, and Pennsylvania State University, which manages a host of small departments. Executives from both organizations spoke at the press conference. Dell is selling the MD3000i worldwide at prices beginning under $10,000 for an array supporting up to 16 host servers, room for expansion, and backup and recovery software. The system uses either SAS or SATA hard disk drives to store up to 18TB of data on 45 drives.
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By MATT SLAGLE  DALLAS - Dell Inc. began selling flat-panel televisions from rival electronics manufacturer Sony Corp. on Wednesday and said it would soon offer products from a variety of companies as it tweaks its consumer business strategy.
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U.S. chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has introduced a low-cost Internet access device that could cost just a few hundred dollars, aimed at first-time technology users in the developing world.
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Dell began offering three systems with Ubuntu Linux installed on Thursday, in response to wide customer demand for such systems. Prices on the systems start at $599.
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PC Magazine - Dell offers Wireless WAN and Blu-ray drive options for its new desktop-replacement machines, the Inspiron 1520 and Inspiron 1720.
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Dell Inc. on Thursday continued its push beyond the PC into consumer electronics with the introduction of a mini-version of its digital music player that will compete with Apple Computer Inc.
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Dell has released the new Inspiron 9200 that replaces the Inspiron 9100 as Dell&#39;s desktop replacment style notebook. The 9200 features a 17&quot; UltraSharp Wide Screen with either an XGA or UXGA resolution display.
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Well-designed notebook lets you play movies and music sans Windows.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell is offering free replacements of the displays on nine popular notebook PC models, responding to customers who created a Web site to complain that some LCD screens developed a one pixel-wide vertical line. "Dell shipped faulty LCD screens in 2005 and is giving customers grief about replacing the screens. It's time to bring attention to the issue," says the site, Dellverticalline.com. "Managers at Dell need to be made aware of the issue so that they can stop treating their loyal customers like dirt and replace the screens in a timely fashion." Unless a faulty screen is replaced, it can develop a permanent vertical line one pixel wide, either stuck on a single color or reflecting the color displayed behind it, according to the Web site. Dell first responded to the issue in April, offering to replace certain 17-inch displays on Inspiron 9200, Inspiron 9300, and XPS Gen 2 notebooks sold between November 2004 and October 2006. On Tuesday, Dell expanded its replacement program to include six more models, including the Inspiron 6000 and 8600, Latitude D800 and D810, and Precision Mobile Workstation M60 and M70 notebooks sold between December 2004 and December 2006. Some of those models use a faulty component that can generate the line over time, according to a posting on Dell's corporate blog by Lionel Menchaca, Dell's digital media manager. Dell will now replace any LCD screen affected by this issue within three years of purchase or will refund customers who were forced to pay for their own replacements, Menchaca said. Dell did not respond to requests for comment about the size of the program or say whether the manufacturer of the faulty component would help pay for it. The recall happens at a time when Dell is struggling to comply with an accounting investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, maintain its listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange and reverse a market share slide that has allowed rival Hewlett-Packard to claim the title of world's largest PC vendor. In response, CEO Michael Dell launched the corporate blog in February, announced he wouldÂ lay off 10 percent of the company's workersÂ and has begun selling PCs inÂ retail shops likeWal-Mart. Retail store distribution is a sharp break with the company's history of selling computers only directly through its Web site and phone lines.
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(InfoWorld) - Underlining its expansion from online to retail sales, Dell launched desktop and notebook PCs Tuesday at Macy's department store in New York. The company announced nine new Inspiron desktops and notebooks and an XPS M1330 notebook, all available in a choice of eight shell colors. "The Dell of today is vastly different from the Dell of six months ago or even last week," said Alex Gruzen, senior vice president of Dellâs consumer product group. "We're here at Macy's in New York City. That alone is different for Dell, being in a department store or any kind of retail setting at all." Dell even set up a portable kiosk to take orders for the new PCs in a temporary space it will occupy at Macy's for the next two weeks, he said. The new Inspiron notebooks cost $749 for the model 1521 to $999 for the model 1720, with a choice of processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices. The Inspiron 1420 comes with an additional choice of Microsoft's Windows Vista or the Ubuntu Linux operating system, for $799. The Inspiron desktops start at $349 for models 530, 530s, 531, and 531s, all supporting up to 500GB of disk space to store digital media files, with the model 530 offering a choice between Windows and Linux. The XPS M1330 notebook costs $1,299 with a 13.3-inch widescreen display, weighs under 4 pounds, and comes with a one-year subscription to Dell's Online Backup service, where users can store 10GB of files on Dell servers for remote data access. In an effort to bolster its sliding market share and quarterly profits,Â Dell began selling certain PC models at Wal-MartÂ retail stores on June 10, marking the first time it had strayed from the direct sales model. Dell rose to prominence by cutting its costs through eliminating retail middlemen and selling its PCs through only its Web site, phone lines, and catalogs. That system began to fail in 2006, as competitors cut costs and Hewlett-Packard passed Dell to become the world's largest PC vendor. Now Dell is in the midst of a corporate reorganization announced May 31 that includesÂ laying off 10 percent of its 88,100 workers. Dell hopes its new retail presence will allow it to fix a strategic mistake. By trying to beat its competitors through low prices in recent years, Dell found itself spending all its publicity efforts promoting its least exciting products, Gruzen said. Selling PCs in retail stores gives Dell an opportunity to showcase its premium PC models and bring new luster to its corporate image at the same time. "This is really just a hint of what we're doing to get these exciting new products into customers' hands," Gruzen said. "We have a broader retail strategy, and over the coming months, we will announce more partnerships, both with Wal-Mart and with other retailers." Also on Tuesday, Dell unveiled a new marketing tagline -- "yours is here" -- that shares many values with HP's "the computer is personal again" campaign. Both companies are increasing the number of options they give customers to personalize PCs and bundling tools that make it easier to handle personal tasksÂ such asÂ digital photos and music as well as business jobs. Dell emphasized those increased choices with its color options for each PC, including pink, yellow, green, red, and blue, as well as standard white and black. An increasing number of PC vendors will soon begin to follow that pattern, trying to differentiate themselves with flashy style and design instead of solely through technical detailsÂ such asÂ processing power, according to a report released this week by Forrester Research. "The consumer PC industry is entering the Age of Style, a time in which radical form factor innovations, increased aesthetic diversity, and consumer choice and personalization will determine which models, and which PC vendors, win or lose," Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder said in the report.
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A new device that costs a couple hundred bucks can turn the home office into a high-definition media center. It's a start anyway, and far less expensive than coughing up for a television setup.
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Toshiba's new projector brings home theater to tiny living rooms. In Gear Factor.
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INFORMATION technology managers can now focus on competitive advantages and less on system maintenance with a highly manageable OptiPlex desktop computer introduced by Dell.