Dell says it's shipping tons of PCs with Intel "Sandy Bridge" processors with updated Cougar Point hardware, and has a new ultra-slim laptop soon to debut.
Dell is
shipping more systems with the new Intel "Sandy Bridge" processors
and updated "Cougar Point" chipset hardware "than just about anyone
else," according to a company spokesman, and that trend will only
continue.
In a March 7
blog post, Lionel Menchaca said that
over the next six weeks, the company will expand the systems it offers running
the Intel 2
nd Generation Core processors, and among these will be an
Inspiron laptop (as early as next week) and a new ultra-slim notebook that will
"answer a few questions plus bring performance and style together in a big
way."
Earlier this
year Dell
cancelled
its thin-and-light Dell Adamo, which looked to compete with the Apple
MacBook Air and-with the sleek design and its slick advertising campaign-change
perceptions about the company. In the end, however, sales were lackluster, and
the Adamo was both heavier and pricier than the Apple system.
The new
ultra-slim Dell notebook will be part of an XPS consumer laptop line,
PC World reported March 7, citing "a
source familiar with Dell's plans," and said the line will "draw
heavily" from the Adamo.
Apple last
refreshed
the MacBook Air in October 2010, showing off a 2.3-pound device that relies
on SSD (solid-state drive) storage technology instead of a hard drive, measures
0.68 inches at its thickest point, and runs Intel Core 2 Duo processors and
Nvidia GeForce graphics. Introducing it, Apple CEO Steve Jobs joked that it
looks like the result of what would happen "if a MacBook and an iPad
hooked up."
Were Dell to
release a new MacBook Air competitor, it would have the benefit of the new
Intel chips, which offer considerable speed and battery-life benefits. Apple
has already put the chips to work in its newest MacBook Pro laptops, introduced
Feb. 24, which are twice as fast the earlier models.
Apple tends to
update its devices once a year, however, which would give Dell just a matter of
months before its ultra-slim XPS was facing new competition in updated MacBook
Airs.
Menchaca said
in the blog post that Dell also plans to begin accepting new orders for several
of its high-end desktops, including the XPS 8300, Vostro 460 and Alienware
Aurora R3 systems, early this month. On Feb. 22, Dell also began shipping its
XPS 15 and 17 laptops, both of which also feature Intel's latest processors but
were not affected by the flaws found in the Cougar Point chipset.
On Jan. 31,
Intel officials announced that they were recalling the chipset, though they had
located the flaw and were already beginning to manufacture replacements.
Depending on the configuration of a device, the flaw wasn't always an issue; Apple's
laptops, for example, were unaffected.
In a research
report following the Intel announcement,
DigiTimes
wrote that Apple could nonetheless afford to be slow about upgrading its
notebooks, given their high average selling pricing. However, "for
Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Dell, which heavily depend on their economic
scale," said the report, "the new [Intel] platform will help raise
their ASPs and, therefore, these makers will try to launch notebooks with new
platforms as early as possible."
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