Hasta La Gadget!

The competition for Dell is heating up again today, as CEO Michael Dell and investment outfit Silver Lake have increased their buyout offer for the company. The new agreement raises the per share price to $13.75, provides for a special dividend of 13 cents per share, as well as an 8 cents per share dividend in the third quarter. Basically, these revised terms add, at the most, $470 million to the previous proposal that valued the company at around $24.4 billion. In order to give shareholders a chance to mull it over, the date when deciding votes will be cast has been pushed to September 12th. Plenty of time for the next counter-offer to come through, then.

Filed under: Desktops, Microsoft, Dell

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Via: AllThingsD

We’ve mostly seen Corning’s toughened Gorilla Glass used on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to prevent scratching and the like. While a few laptops have Gorilla Glass installed, Corning is wanting to break into that market even further, and have introduced Gorilla Glass NBT specifically made for touchscreen laptops.

Corning boasts that their Gorilla Glass NBT provides “enhanced scratch resistance, reduced scratch visibility, and better retained strength once a scratch occurs to help protect notebook displays from breakage.” Essentially, it’s no different than what we’ve seen out of past iterations of Gorilla Glass, aside from the new focus on laptops.

Corning also says that Gorilla Glass NBT will deliver “eight to 10 times more” scratch resistance than traditional soda-lime glass. Most laptops still use traditional glass displays, which can shatter pretty easily if the laptop is dropped, and are also prone to scratches and annoying fingerprints, but Gorilla Glass NBT seems to be Corning’s answer to these problems.

The company didn’t mention how much the new glass would cost, only saying that it would be “1 to 2 percent of a notebook’s retail price,” but we can’t imagine laptop prices going up simply because of a change in the glass that manufacturers use.

Dell will the be first manufacturer to starting using Gorilla Glass NBT, with new laptops releasing sometime in the fall before the holiday shopping season arrives. Both Dell and HP have back Corning in the past and have used Gorilla Glass on their laptops. That should continue in the future with this new NBT formula.

SOURCE: Corning

Corning Gorilla Glass NBT arrives for touchscreen laptops is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s $35 Chromecast dongle may have made all the headlines this week, but the folks in Mountain View aren’t the only ones working on curious gadgets that plug into your TV’s HDMI ports.

Dell showed off its Android-powered Project Ophelia dongle all the way back in January, and it managed to turn a few heads… until its tentative launch window came and went without much fanfare. Now, though, it looks like early devices are finally on their way to testers ahead of a full launch in the coming months.

Not exactly familiar with Project Ophelia? Let’s flash back to CES 2013 when Dell showed it off for the first time — long story short, you plug Ophelia into your TV (any other display with an HDMI input) and Android 4.0 fires up so you can mess around on the web and download apps from the Google Play Store. Of course, that concept isn’t exactly new: Countless tiny Android devices that plug straight into your television have popped up on crowdfunding sites and Chinese bulk ordering sites for what feels like ages now.

Ophelia’s big differentiator, though, is its support for Dell’s Wyse cloud computing tech, which allows users to (among other things) remotely access files stored on PCs or servers and connect to Citrix or VMware-powered virtual machines. The company’s eagerness to show off Ophelia’s enterprise chops could go a long way in justifying the device’s roughly $100 price tag, but what’s even more interesting is the very fact that a huge PC manufacturer is moving to embrace such a strange little segment of the market.

Considering the state of the PC market, though, it’s not hard to see why a company like Dell would put together something as peculiar as Ophelia. PC players have been feeling the squeeze that comes with declining demand over the past months since people are starting to give up more traditional computers for mobile devices. Dell definitely isn’t immune to this sea change, either — its most recent earnings report revealed that its end-user computing division (which accounts for PC sales to consumers) dipped 9 percent from last year. Dell’s Ophelia may just legitimize what is now a largely underwhelming class of gadgetry, thanks to its potential prowess as both a consumer and enterprise device, but it may take more than an aggressive price point and some nifty new features to make Ophelia into something worth owning. For Dell’s sake, here’s hoping Project Ophelia doesn’t meet the same fate as its Shakespearean counterpart did.

Last week, a Dell spokesperson confirmed to SlashGear that the company was working on the Dell Precision M3800, with plans to unveil it later in the year. Images and specs for the powerhouse laptop appeared online, but now Dell has an official page up giving us a somewhat detailed look at the machine, including specs and a couple videos.

The Dell spokesperson told us last week, ““Dell is introducing the thinnest and lightest workstation ever later this year. The Dell Precision M3800 is the first mobile workstation that is less than 3/4 of an inch, at 18mm, weighs only 4.5lbs and offers certified performance and dependability for creative professionals. We are not releasing or confirming any additional details today but stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.”

Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long to get some official details. According to the “Coming Soon” page on Dell’s website, the Precision M3800 weighs in at 4.5 pounds, and measures in at a svelte 18mm in thickness, as the spokesperson state. As the leak had said, the display will be a QHD+ resolution of 3,200 x 1,800, a jump over the MacBook Pro 15′s 2,880 x 1,800 resolution. There will also be multi-touch support.

Inside, there’s a fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor, and graphics come by way of NVIDIA Quadro. The Dell website doesn’t get too far into the details, but according to the leak that surfaced last week, this will be a K1100M GPU offering from the maker, and there will be up to 2GB of dedicated memory available.

That’s the extent of the information that Dell is providing on the laptop at this time, but word has it the machine features four USB 3.0 slots, an HDMI port, and an SD card reader. There’s no Ethernet, which is unfortunate for some users, instead being replaced with a dongle for those who need it. The battery options are also pegged at 61Wh or 91Wh.

Price is said to be between $1699 and $1999 USD.

SOURCE: Dell

Dell Precision M3800 workstation surfaces in official “Coming Soon” page is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Those who spend a lot of time on the computer usually find two or more monitors to be better than one, but there are some instances where a larger, high-resolution display works better than a set of dual monitors (or in addition to them). Such is a case where Dell‘s new ultra-high-definition UltraSharp 32 display comes in. The monitor is aimed at professionals who work with media.

Dell introduced the monitor yesterday without much fanfare, laying out the UltraSharp 32′s specifications in a short to-the-point press release. As the name indicates, the UltraSharp 32 measures in at a massive 32-inches, and has an ultra-high-definition resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, putting it firmly in the Ultra HD category.

The UltraSharp 32 features 1.07 billion colors, which is in excess of 64 times the number you find on the average monitor. The colors can be controlled by the user via the Dell UltraSharp Color Calibration Solution software, which is said to include LUT hardware access. For this reason, it is targeting consumers that require precise colors, such as artists.

In addition to the colors and calibration software, the UltraSharp 32 also utilizes IGZO display technology and is optimized specifically for Dell Precision computer workstations. The monitor is slated to be available some time in the fourth quarter of this year, but no specific release date nor price has been revealed.

SOURCE: Engadget

Dell UltraSharp 32 monitor introduced with UHD resolution is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.