Hasta La Gadget!

Picking a gaming laptop is a difficult task these days: machines can be found in all shapes and sizes, from pricey thin-and-lights to oversized behemoths. That wide selection is a good thing, allowing buyers to pick and choose the best machine from dozens of manufacturers, possibly even finding a deal on a lower-cost ODM system. Still, there needs to be some sort of benchmark buyers can look to, and for many, Alienware serves that purpose. The brand, now owned by Dell, is known for offering powerful, high-quality machines at the market’s going rate; that is, not too cheap, not too expensive, but reasonably priced with just a hint of prestige. Considering Alienware’s 2013 hardware refresh, it seemed about time we took a closer look at Dell’s updated family of gaming portables. We picked out two: the Alienware 14 ($1,199+) and the larger Alienware 17 ($1,499+). Let’s see how they stack up.

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops, Dell

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There has been a lot of speculation about Dell’s future, ever since the company’s founder Michael Dell put forward a proposal to take the company private. It hasn’t been easy for Michael Dell, who saw his multi-billion offer being countered by well known investor Carl Icahn. Icahn finally backed out and judging by the preliminary vote tally from the special meeting of shareholders that took place today, the buyout proposal has been approved. Michael Dell will acquire the company in partnership with Silver Lake Partners, a global technology investment firm.

Dell shareholders will receive $13.75 in cash for each share of Dell common stock that they own. A special cash dividend of $0.13 per share will also be paid alongwith the regular quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share for the fiscal third quarter. The total transaction has been valued at approximately $24.9 billion. Chairman and CEO of Dell, Michael Dell, said that he is pleased with this outcome and is “energized to continue building Dell into the industry’s leading provider of scalable, end-to-end technology solutions.” The final vote hasn’t been released as yet, but according to various reports, 65 percent of the votes have casted in favour of the buyout. Dell itself has already sent out a press release regarding the result.

Dell Shareholders Vote In Favour Of $25 Billion Buyout, Will Go Private original content from Ubergizmo.

Dell has finally agreed to let founder Michael Dell take the company private through a partnership with investment firm Silver Lake Partners, in a deal valued $24.9 billion. The transaction, which is still pending regulatory approval, should see stockholders receiving $13.88 per share of common stock (including payment of a special cash dividend) and is expected to close in Q3 of Dell’s 2014 fiscal year. In a statement released to the press, Michael Dell said that the newly private company’s mission will be to “serve our customers with a single-minded purpose and drive the innovations that will help them achieve their goals.”

Update: On the company’s investor call, Michael Dell, who retains 75 percent ownership under this new structure, reaffirmed Dell’s commitment to innovation and customer service — goals he said can now be better achieved “without the scrutiny of operating as a public company.” He also outlined several key areas of focus for the newly private Dell, among which expanding its presence in emerging markets, investing in R&D and acquisitions for enterprise solutions, as well as the PC, tablet and virtual computing space are key pillars.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Dell

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Today Dell unveiled a new Venue tablet which has an 8 inch display and runs on Windows 8.1, but this isn’t the first “Venue” product that the company has created. The company made a couple of smartphones under this brand, unfortunately they didn’t turn out to be a big hit. Last year Dell announced that it was retiring the Venue brand, but after an year, they’ve brought it back, this time in the shape of a tablet. The Venue tablet was unveiled today at the Intel Developers Forum 2013, which is taking place in San Francisco, California.

Dell Venue has an 8 inch display which offers full HD 1080p resolution. The tablet is powered by Intel’s new Bay Trail processor, which the chip manufacturer also announced at this event. Intel promises performance and battery life improvement with the Bay Trail processors, so Dell’s new tablet is going to tout that, but we’ll only know how effective the new processors are once the device is pitted against its rivals. There’s a microUSB port used for charging and data transfer, while an HDMI is port is on hand as well for video mirroring. Not much has been revealed as yet about the tablet, Dell says that it will elaborate more about the Venue tablet on October 2nd.

Dell Brings Back The Venue Brand With New Windows 8.1 Tablet original content from Ubergizmo.

Dell dropped a surprise here at the Intel Developer Forum when Neil Hand, VP of tablets and performance PCs, announced that it’s reviving its Venue brand with a new line of Windows 8 tablets. The company last used the branding almost a year ago with the less-than-successful Venue and Venue Pro handsets — the Venue ran Android while the Venue Pro used Windows Phone 7. Hand was on stage during today’s IDF keynote showing off what appears to be an 8-inch slate running the latest Windows 8.1 firmware on Intel’s recently announced Atom Z3000 processor. Not much else was unveiled about the hardware, but Hand did drop a hint that it plans to host a Venue-specific event on October 2nd in New York City that will hopefully reveal more information.

Filed under: Tablets, Mobile

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