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Dell Shakes Itself Up

by Terrence O'Brien on May 29, 2007 at 02:32 PM


Dell is continuing to shake up its business model by announcing it will start selling two yet to be determined Dimension desktops through Wal-Mart and its wholesale outlet Sam's Club. Dell's market share has been in steady decline, and it was recently overtaken by Hewlett-Packard as the top PC maker.

The sales through Wal-Mart will likely only make up a small portion of Dell's total sales, but it's part of a broader strategy to expand the company's market reach. The strategy was jump-started, no doubt, by founder Michael Dell, whose recent return as CEO of Dell promises to turn around the company's fortunes in the same way that Steve Jobs rescued Apple when he returned after many years away. (Interestingly, Dell is overhauling its computers' designs so it can compete with Apple on the aesthetic front, according to Wired.)

Dell has already placed kiosks with sample products in malls across the country, where potential buyers can test and order equipment. And late last week, Dell's new Ubuntu Linux based PC's were finally made available on Dell's Web site.

Dell, unfortunately, has not made its Linux PCs easy to find. If you don't know to go directly to www.Dell.com/open, you're forced to dig through the site to find them. After pointing your browser to Dell.com, you have to select "Home and Home Office Solutions" from the right hand side. Then, from under the Desktops or Notebooks drop-down menus, you select Open-Source PCs.

If Dell is serious about Ubuntu and open-source computers, it will either place a link to the Open-Source page prominently on its home page, or simply make Ubuntu an operating system choice alongside Vista when building a PC. Still, the open-source offering is gutsy and welcome.

Dell may have once been known for value, but new designs, funky open-source offerings, and wider availability make it increasingly a company that will be known for innovation.

From USA Today

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Tags: dell, linux, ubuntu, wal-mart

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