Limited Edition Dell Design Netbook by Deanne Cheuk

From Chip Chick -

Designer Deanne Cheuk, known for her graphic 'zine Neomu, has teamed up with Dell for a Best Buy exclusive, the Limited Edition Dell Design Netbook by Deanne Cheuk, which features a kaleidoscope design. There will only be 5250 units available, each one of them have been individually numbered. Price is $379.

Dell suffers catastrophic profit fall

From TG Daily -

Dell's latest quarterly results showed a 63% drop in profit, and a 23% fall in revenues. It turned in profits of $290 million on sales of $12.34 billion for the quarter, compared to $784 million on sales of $16.08 billion in the same period a year back.

It reported that there was no improvement in demand across the board, with sales of notebooks, desktops and servers all sliding. Notebook sales fell by 20 percent, year on year.

Bsquare Outs Dell Android Netbook

In a press release titled "Bsquare to Port Adobe Flash Lite on New Google Android Netbook for Dell Leverages Bsquare's Android Competency to Improve the Adobe(R) Flash(R) Lite Experience on Dell's Mini Inspiron 910", Bsquare reveals Dell's upcoming netbook models running on Android. It reads in part -

BELLEVUE, WA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/06/09 -- Bsquare Corporation (NASDAQ: BSQR), the leading software solutions provider to the global embedded device community, today announced it is porting Adobe's Flash Lite 3.17 technology onto Dell Netbooks running Google's Android platform...

Full press release here.

Dell fights back against Psion netBook trademark rampage

From Ars Technica -

As most of you are aware, the booming sales of compact, low-cost, and low-margin notebooks, more commonly referred to as "netbooks" have convinced the owner of that term ("netbooks") to go trigger happy back in January in threatening just about everyone in its usage. Psion, a company that stopped selling a Windows-CE-powered "Psion netBook" in 2003, threatened journalists, manufacturers, and even bloggers in order to get them to stop using the term by the end of March 2009. It even convinced Google to ban the term from AdSense ads.

But now a grassroots effort has sprung up to fight the company, and Dell is lending a hand with a USPTO petition to cancel Psion's trademark. In a petition for cancellation filed at the USPTO, Dell puts forth three logical reasons for nullifying Psion's "netbook" trademark: abandonment, fraud, and genericness.

You can read the complete article here, including pertinent PDF links.

Dell Mini 10 U.K. Release Date Confirmed!

Paul Synnott chatted with Dell U.K. agent Avinash K. Kumar and was able to confirm the Dell Mini 10 is due to be released in the UK on February 27th, 2009. Other details he was able to get - power brick will be smaller than that of the Mini 9 and price will be around the price of the Mini 12, slight cheaper though.

Dell Suspends Shipments of Mini 12

Not really netbook news but related - per Portable Monkey Dell has suspended shipments of its Mini 12. Costco has also removed the Dell Mini 12 from their website while the Mini 9 remains available.

This leaves the 12-inch market wide open to the Samsung NC20 and the Asus S121 - that is when they become available.

Dell's Mini Inspiron - Eee PC Killer?

Gizmodo bumped into Michael Dell at All Things D after his interview, and he was nice enough to show off his laptop - a small form factor sub-portable like the Asus Eee PC. Dell did not provide details but Gizmodo saw three USB ports, a card reader, VGA out, Ethernet, and that red candy shell.

Source article here.

Dell to leap into Eee PC territory?

From Electronista -

Compal, which makes laptops for Dell, says that it will produce between 200,000 and 300,000 "low-cost" notebooks a month for the latter starting sometime in 2008, with as many as one to two million readied by the end of the year. If true, Dell will be joining Acer, ECS, Gigabyte and several others as they crowd the Asus Eee PC for market share in the low-cost ultraportable segment.

Dell primarily uses Intel processors and is most likely to use Intel's Atom should it decide to join the competition.

You can read the source article here.

Compal Electronics Official: Dell To Launch Low-Cost Laptops

Per Engadget Dell Inc. plans to launch 8.9" wide-screen laptop for under $499 made by Compal Electronics Inc. as early as June. Compal will initially ship 200,000-300,000 notebook computers to Dell each month.