The biggest computer company in the world, once known for their ugly and boring “beige boxes,” has been hot in the last month, shipping new products and getting the media abuzz with products in the labs. Here’s what’s been coming out of Dell lately:

1. Just now Dell announced a new addition to their Inspiron notebook lineup – the Inspiron 13 (1318, to be exact).  This is a 13″ notebook that replaces the old 14-incher, aligning the company’s Inspiron line with the higher-end XPS trim.
   Starting at $699, this (very good-looking) notebook is configurable with up to a Core 2 Duo T8300 (2.4GHZ, 3MB L2), 320GB of spinning storage, and 4GB of RAM.  This is a significant change for Dell because the old 14″ Inspiron didn’t fit with the line-up at all and this 13″ will simplify the company’s notebook lineup for consumers, which now consists of Inspiron 13″, 15″, and 17″.
2. Earlier in the day, PowerPoint slides with Dell’s planned XPS Studio 13″ and 16″ notebooks were leaked.  It’s very interesting what Dell is doing with their XPS and Studio lines.  Here’s a brief history:
   • Dell XPS started out as the gaming/high-end division within Dell, making desktops and laptops for gamers and those needing alot of power.  The first XPS notebooks were thick and heavy, but were very powerful – and were true gaming machines.  The desktops were equipped with lights and lots of power – just what a gamer is drooling for.
   • With the acquisition of Alienware, Dell expanded the XPS notebook line down-market to compete in the premium (non-gaming) segment.  Here’s when the beautiful XPS 13″ and 15″ notebooks were born.  These are still being sold by Dell today and are intended to go after Apple’s MacBook line.
   • In the beginning of the summer, Dell announced the Studio notebook line.  This threw the enthusiast and geek communities into a bit of a stupor, as the Studio notebooks competed with their XPS cousins – having almost the same design, price, and specifications.  The only difference is that the Studio line includes 15″ and 17″ models whereas the XPS (non-gaming) line has been sold with 13″ and 15″ models.  (Yes, there is still a 17″ XPS M1730 gaming notebook of the early generation XPS line – the bulky, heavy, and hot-running desktop-replacement rig being sold today, but consensus is that it is being phased out for Alienware notebooks).
   • With the leaked slides today, the earlier confusion about XPS and Studio lines was cleared up a bit: the Studio brand will become the higher-end Dell notebooks, the step-up from Inspiron.  Within the Studio line, the XPS line will bear the name of those notebooks that have the most premium and most powerful specifications.  Thus, XPS will be a sub-brand of Studio, creating “Studio XPS 16″ – as in the leaked slides.
3. In July, Dell has been reported to be developing either a mobile phone or a media player.  As you might remember, the company has competed in the media player space before (Dell Digital JukeBox) and in the “everything but a phone” space (Dell Axim PIM).  The DJ was not a “bad” product, but lacked the “oomph” and “coolness factor” needed to compete with iPod.  The Axim’s handheld market went away and morphed with the cell phone.  Both product lines are no longer made by Dell.
4. Now, Dell has assembled a very ambitious group of people to work on the rumored media player to compete with iPod.  Some member of the group have even worked at Apple.  Whatever the product/service will be, it is getting the most media coverage a Dell consumer device has ever received, and this is the first big step tipping Dell into the “hot” area of the thermometer.  The company, with Michael Dell at the reigns again, seems to be taking some early steps in becoming an innovator.  Now those are big words of praise for a company like Dell, especially coming from me, and here’s why: Dell has never really made and manufactured anything that was not a computer shell or enclosure.  Think about: the firm, ever since the beginning, has been known to take existing hardware and software, slap on the Dell name on the boot software/firmware, and design an outer case for it with the company’s name.  Compare that to Apple, a company which not only makes such “outer cases”, but also makes its own software that integrates seamlessly with those shells hardware.  So for Dell to be designing something from the ground up is a major step forward.

For me, Dell has now reached the point of having to make a cross-roads decision: they are well-known for quality in the PC market and are taking the right steps to change their old image of making ugly hardware (as witnessed by the notebook development above).  The real question is where else can they go?  And it’s a question that Michael Dell thinks about very often, if not dreams about.  The new media player and cell phone initiatives are a sign that Dell – as a company – has finally awoken and decided to hire a team of innovators and engineers (and not those that make PC “shells”).  In any case – whatever Dell is doing – it’s getting much buzz in the tech world and that’s why I consider the company to be “hot”.

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I’ve been researching notebooks (since I’m in the market for one) and haven’t been discriminating between brands – PC or Mac, Dell or HP, etc.  (My gripes with certain manufacturers’ product lines will be up later.)  One of my feature requirements of a notebook is to have gigabit ethernet.  Why would I need that?

Well, I need it to back up my 100GB media collection (that’s currently stored on an external drive) to a NAS.  When I get my new notebook, I expect to place my entire media collection on it.  And it so happens that my NAS has gigabit ethernet and makes these backups – which are performed daily (by the night) – much more speedy, leaving time in the night to back up my local system.  In total, I’m looking at about 150GB to back up every night.  I also expect this number to grow about 20GB per year.  

How surprised was I when I found that none – let me repeat that none – of the major pc vendors (read: Dell, HP) have gigabit ethernet hardware in their consumer notebooks?  Very.  What’s even more surprising to me is that one of Microsoft’s first hardware Windows Home Servers (WHS) – the HP MediaSmart series – has gigabit!  Now for those who haven’t done their reading: gigabit transfer rates require that both ends of the transfer have Gigabit hardware.  

I would file this under the “one more negative point in having another company be in charge of the hardware your software runs on.”  It’s obvious that Microsoft intended for WHS hardware to have 10/100/1000 networking.  It might not seem crucial at first, but when one considers the WHS in a family environment with multiple computers – all doing backups at night in a limited 8-hour timeframe – speed becomes very important.  Thus, data that will be transferred won’t be in the gigabytes; it will be in the terabytes.  Think about it.  Example: 3 users, each with 300GB of media plus 50GB of other files.  That’s just over 1TB each night! 

But what baffles me even more is that HP – the maker of the MediaSmart line of WHS hasn’t added Gigabit to their consumer notebook line (yes, consumer, since the Windows Home Server has the word “HOME” in it).  Ironically, Apple is currently the only PC manufacturer to have Gigabit ethernet across their entire lineup.  Yep, you read that right: every Apple Mac has Gigabit – from the $600 Mac Mini to the $3000 Mac Pro!  (Read that with emphasis on the Mac Mini).

Just to compare how long it would take me to transfer all of my data using 10/100 and 10/100/1000.  Keep in mind that these calculations are just for my data.  In my household, I’m the one with the most data.  But for families with more than one child (who has a 60GB iPod full of music), and with parents who have amassed large media collections, a problem will be seen in backups due to the limited time frame.  I’ve included the theoretical speeds and cut them down in half since we all know that theory doesn’t always carry over to reality – especially when it comes to bandwidth.
 

It’s best if companies – especially close partners who depend on one another for product creation (read: Microsoft, HP, Dell) – have a closer relationship and plan accordingly.  I can’t believe that none of the bright people at either company realized or foresaw this issue.  Again, this is one of those cases that shows the benefits and efficiency of a vertically integrated company – like Apple.  Personally, Gigabit networking is a must-have feature for me and thus I will be waiting out for a new lappie from the PC vendors.  

I understand that it might not be in HPs best interest from a manufacturing perspective to include a gigabit networking chip.  But that’s what separates great companies who care about the consumer from those that have bottom-line pickers make the ultimate decisions.  How large of a price increase do you think it would cost HP to change its current networking chips to ones with gigabit speeds in terms of production changes and materials costs?  I’ll leave it at that.

Coming tomorrow: my Apple predictions for MacWorld 2008 and my current gripe with Apple’s notebook line-up.  Stay tuned and I’ll see you all next time.d