August 13 - 3:15pm EDT   Dell is phasing out its distinct XPS line in favor of its regular brands, the company has revealed today. While not explicitly saying it will discontinue the XPS label outright, the name will now be folded into the Inspiron and Studio systems as a high-end trim level. The stylized Studio line will effectively replace the XPS for most purposes, Dell's worldwide marketing chief Mark Jarvis says. The official doesn't provide a motivation other than to suggest the move is part of "brand consolidation" that trims the number of labels at Dell. [full story]

August 12 - 12:55pm EDT   Dell's high-end gaming division, Alienware, has announced that it will be adopting AMD's new Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card effective immediately. The card combines two GPUs into one board, and features 2GB of DDR5 RAM as well as DirectX 10.1 support; maximum performance is rated at 2.4 teraflops. Due to its size the card is only being offered in the company's three desktop systems, the Area-51, Area-51 ALX and Aurora. [full story]

July 29 - 2:00pm EDT   Alienware this afternoon turned its m15x gaming notebook into a 3D modeling workstation with the introduction of an option for NVIDIA's top-end Quadro FX 3600M chipset. The portable is the first 15.4-inch notebook anywhere to hold the graphics chip and uses the extra headroom for much faster work rendering 3D effects, CAD, or other projects in DirectX 10 or OpenGL 2.1 without having to resort to a 17-inch desktop replacement or else a slower graphics chipset. [full story]

July 8 - 11:30pm EDT   Samsung tonight said it has started mass production of 128GB solid-state drives based on multi-level cell (MLC) technology that should dramatically reduce the cost of switching to flash storage in notebooks. By using a new implementation of the format, the Korean firm says it has managed to provide inexpensive storage without hurting the relative speed that would otherwise need a faster but expensive single-level cell drive: any of the new drives can read at 90MB per second and write at 70MB per second, making them faster than most any notebook-class rotating hard drive and faster than earlier SSDs. [full story]

May 22 - 1:05pm EDT   Dell's Alienware division has once again refreshed its top-of-the-line gaming PC, the Area-51 ALX. At the center is the option of a quad-core, 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme processor, overclocked for even greater performance to 4GHz; to avoid corresponding overheating problems, Alienware has equipped all ALX computers with liquid cooling. Motherboards, meanwhile, can now be configured with up to 4GB of 1,600MHz Corsair DDR3 RAM. [full story]

May 14 - 12:35pm EDT   Dell has no plans to eliminate its XPS line of computers, a company representative says. On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Dell intends to phase out four of its XPS gaming systems, on the basis that they are eating into sales of its newly-bought Alienware division. Dell is said to be in tough financial circumstances, having lost its former dominance in PC sales to chief rival HP. In April the company revealed plans to fire at least 8,800 people, and close its desktop manufacturing plant in Austin, Texas. [full story]

May 12 - 11:35pm EDT   Next month Dell will begin phasing out four of its popular XPS gaming systems, in favor of the high-end PCs that are part of its recently acquired Alienware PC line. The surprising move is part of its continued turnaround efforts--along with an expected design overhaul in its Inspiron line-- after slipping behind rival HP in overall PC sales and struggling to achieve profits in consumer PCs, the Wall Street Journal reports. With the focus on the Alienware line, Dell says that a combined gaming design and development unit will focus on the seven current Alienware models, which has lost some "mojo," according to one analyst. Dell also noted that the gaming market, which ... [full story]

April 30 - 12:50am EDT   Alienware today unveiled the m17x, a gaming behemoth stuffed into the confines of a 17-inch wide screen laptop, featuring an option of Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme processors and dual Nvidia graphics cards. The hefty, sleek laptop uses a high-definition screen, featuring a resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, with up to 4GB of dual channel DDR2 memory, and up to two hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration for up to 1TB of storage. The m17x also has space for a third modular hard drive or DVD burner. [full story]

April 15 - 6:50pm EDT   Alienware recently updated its Aurora gaming desktop to include an upgrade option for the AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition processors, which feature the latter company's HyperTransport technology. The Phenom 9850 is a quad-core processor that provides users increased system bandwidth and true multitasking, while also supporting up to four ATI CrossFireX video cards. In addition, users can run either 32-bit or 64-bit applications without additional hardware, and the processor's Cool'n'Quiet technology reduces power consumption, heat output and noise. [full story]

March 24 - 1:55pm EDT   Quickly following on the heels of its GeForce 9800 GX2 update, Alienware on Monday afternoon refreshed the Area-51 gaming tower to add Intel's 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770 as its best processor option. The new speed eclipses the 3GHz limit set by the older system and also brings with it a faster 1.6GHz system bus; the extra bandwidth helps keep traffic going to all four cores and also more properly feeds the DDR3 memory. [full story]

March 18 - 2:45pm EDT   Alienware this afternoon upgraded its Area-51 gaming tower to take advantage of NVIDIA's latest speed boosts. The new system uses NVIDIA's just-introduced nForce 790i Ultra SLI mainboard and now has the option of the GeForce 9800 GX2 for video. The combination not only provides the fastest gaming performance from a single card, according to Alienware, but also adds more breathing room for expanded performance: the new nForce platform freely allows more CPU overclocking in its BIOS than earlier Area-51 models and also provides extra bandwidth for peripherals through PCI Express 2.0 as well as DDR3 memory. [full story]

March 18 - 11:15am EDT   At least one major computer manufacturer is encountering an unusually high rate of failure among notebooks equipped with solid-state drives (SSDs), according to a report by analyst group Avian Securities. Declining to name the company in question, manager Avi Cohen of the research firm claims that a major PC manufacturer is seeing returns of at least 20 percent and as much as 30 percent of the SSD systems it sells. Most of these, or up to 20 percent, are from drives which failed outright, though Cohen doesn't say whether this stems from the storage itself or the controller chip, which manages data transfers between the SSD and its host computer. [full story]

March 5 - 12:55pm EST   Alienware today claimed to have one of the fastest gaming desktops yet with the ALX CrossFireX. The system is one of the first from a major PC builder to use AMD's CrossFireX technology to pair up two of its twin-chipset Radeon HD 3870 X2 cards in a single system. The four-GPU setup is enough to supply nearly four times the performance in ideal conditions and 2GB of total video memory. Users can also use official drivers to overclock the entire setup if they like, Alienware says. [full story]

February 20 - 4:05pm EST   In the wake of Dell's addition of Penryn to Inspiron notebooks, systems from Gateway and Alienware have also been upgraded with the Intel processor technology. Alienware's Area-51 m15x has been given the option of a 2.5 or 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo, or else a 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme; its display measures 15.4 inches, and costs start at $2,149. Gateway's contribution is the 17-inch P-171X FX, which uses a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo chip and is priced at $2,000. The company adds that an M-series notebook will also be equipped with Penryn "in a few weeks," but refuses to disclose further details. [via Crave] [full story]

January 11 - 8:20am EST   Alienware today quietly began shipping the m15x, its new-era gaming notebook. Besides a new minimalist look with a backlit keyboard, the portable is the first 15.4-inch system to include performance parts normally reserved for 17-inch desktop replacements; with custom orders, users can fit a 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme while the top-end system includes a 512MB GeForce 8800M GTX that matches the performance of better desktop cards. It also makes room for a second hard drive bay for those who want such options as a 64GB solid-state drive for performance without compromising on a larger hard drive. [full story]