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Dimension e521
Dell drops Dimension line after nearly 15 years of service

When Dell announced new Inspiron desktops yesterday, many people were puzzled by the naming. Dell's Inspiron nomenclature had traditionally been reserved for mainstream notebooks while the Dimension line has consisted of mainstream desktops.

But alas; the Dimension brand is no more and it has been fully supplanted by Inspiron desktops. Dell made no formal announcement of its decision to drop the Dimension line even though it has been the backbone of its desktop sales for the past 15 years.

Dell's current consumer desktop lineup will now consist of Inspiron, XPS and XPS Gaming desktops. The systems feature base prices of $349, $899 and $1,699 respectively.

The new Inspiron desktops can be equipped with either AMD or Intel processors and feature new case designs that are 40% smaller than the previous Dimensions. In addition, selected Inspiron desktop models come pre-loaded with Ubuntu Linux.

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<no subject>
By Scabies on 6/27/07, Rating: 0
RE: <no subject>
By Chadder007 on 6/27/2007 5:09:44 PM , Rating: 2
Yay for naming confusion! Bad idea IMO for the regular consumer.


RE: <no subject>
By pugster on 6/28/2007 3:12:32 PM , Rating: 2
Guess the 'Dimension' line is like the 'duron' line for amd. Too low for their taste.


RE: <no subject>
By smitty3268 on 6/27/2007 5:13:49 PM , Rating: 3
How is it actually confusing? Now they have Inspiron = cheap and XPS = more expensive on both the desktop and laptop lines rather than having a 3rd line Dimension = cheap desktop.


RE: <no subject>
By deeznuts on 6/27/2007 5:18:47 PM , Rating: 2
Yup. Just like Sony uses Vaio I believe for both desktop and laptop.


RE: <no subject>
By Sazar on 6/27/2007 5:23:15 PM , Rating: 2
True.

Besides, XPS was used for both desktop and notebook products. The Precision brand refers to both desktops and notebooks.

Dimension has a certain value in the market though so it should be interesting to see how this plays out.


RE: <no subject>
By Devo2007 on 6/27/2007 7:46:06 PM , Rating: 2
HP also uses the same name for their consumer desktops and laptops (Pavillion). There's probably other companies that do the same thing, but I can't think of any more at the moment.


RE: <no subject>
By bkiserx7 on 6/27/2007 11:25:43 PM , Rating: 2
it is confusing cause you have to know diff between inspiron xxx and inspiron yyy and which is desktop and which is laptop


RE: <no subject>
By Dactyl on 6/28/2007 12:49:45 AM , Rating: 2
it is confusing cause you have to know diff between inspiron xxx and inspiron yyy and which is desktop and which is laptop

You think so? I can tell just by looking at them.


RE: <no subject>
By mindless1 on 6/28/2007 2:14:56 PM , Rating: 2
Regardless, it is an unnecessary and potentially problematic thing to establish the model naming then abandon it to reuse a name formerly reserved for other products, especially when still being use for those others. If they wanted to stop calling them Dimensions they should've picked something other than Inspiron.


RE: <no subject>
By OblivionMage on 6/29/2007 4:39:33 PM , Rating: 2
He means by looking at the name only


Home systems
By Phynaz on 6/27/2007 5:42:39 PM , Rating: 2
"Dell's current desktop lineup will now consist of Inspiron, XPS and XPS Gaming desktops."

Should say the consumer lineup. The business systems still include the Optiplex and Precision lines.




RE: Home systems
By Choppedliver on 6/27/2007 6:27:37 PM , Rating: 2
Dont forget latitude, for "business" laptops.

Oh hell what does it matter really.

My d830 is in production :) Looking forward to giving it a test drive


RE: Home systems
By gerf on 6/27/2007 7:08:43 PM , Rating: 2
I'm getting one for work, once they can figure out how to install Win2000 on it (dual boot with XP).

It's not supported, unfortunately. We'll see if my IT guys can figure it out.


RE: Home systems
By PrezWeezy on 6/27/2007 7:45:45 PM , Rating: 2
Virtual PC my man. Other than that if they can find the chipset drivers from Intel they shouldn't have too much problem considering Dell has rather standardized drivers (their one strength).


RE: Home systems
By Topweasel on 6/27/2007 8:09:23 PM , Rating: 2
The only problem is both ATI and Nvida allow OEMs to handle the drivers for Video cards, so outside 7800go series you have to use dell provided drivers. Though since technically the drivers are included in the regular packages some sites have installations with modified .inf's to handle the internal IDs for these video card. Why I mention this is dell might not provide a 2000Pro compatible driver.


RE: Home systems
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 6/27/2007 11:21:32 PM , Rating: 3
This changed with the X1000+ cards for ATI. Now they use the standard generic Radeon drivers all other cards use. Definately a step in the right direction.


RE: Home systems
By Anosh on 6/28/2007 6:27:55 PM , Rating: 2
I've been using Nvidia drivers both for the motherboard and gpu since day one (two years ago) with my XPS600.

7800GTX SLI
Nvidia nforce4 Intel x16


RE: Home systems
By zephyrprime on 6/28/2007 10:12:12 AM , Rating: 2
How is this even news? This is nothing but a name change. There have been more significant hardware changes in dells before but they were not news. Now something as superficial as a name change is news? pffftt.


XPS....ahh
By fenderkb76 on 6/27/2007 6:25:51 PM , Rating: 1
For some reason when I hear XPS, I just can't stop thinking of Bass Pro Shops ;-)




RE: XPS....ahh
By teckytech9 on 6/28/2007 12:38:07 PM , Rating: 2
XPS, which may stand for EXtreme Performance System, can't be claimed as owned by Dell
or others for that matter. No trademark on XPS exist and its always just a bunch of marketing hype.

It could be claimed that the true XPS systems in development, (CPU/GPU)
is a couple of years away. Also, all products which use the current processor technology
are quite inferior today. One or two percent performance gains between systems doesn't really count much for that matter, i.e. 1000mhz->1333mhz FSB.

What makes an XPS system?
Multiple cores designed as a combination of CPUs/GPUs fused in a single package
i.e. [GPU-CPU-GPU-CPU-GPU-CPU-GPU-CPU]. What we have now is separate
packages that create bottlenecks, excess heat and power consumption with ducttape
between the cores.

Changing the name won’t increase PC sales anymore than being inspired by lack of PC innovation. I bought a 3000+ rated system several years ago and now we are approaching the 7000+ barrier.
Go figure! Now for business systems, which seems to be a big part of their revenue, justifies that everyone needs a new computer to play their favorite games while at work.
Asked me ten years ago that one needed 2-4GB of RAM to boot your new system to use a simple office application and I will laugh.


RE: XPS....ahh
By TomZ on 6/29/2007 8:37:30 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
No trademark on XPS exist and its always just a bunch of marketing hype.

Incorrect, at least in the U.S., a number of registered trademarks exist for "XPS," including those by Dell, Bass Pro, and others.

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=g...

(I don't know if that link will work, but you can search the USPTO trademark database yourself if you don't believe me)


It's an ATX Dimension
By Athlex on 7/4/2007 12:23:56 PM , Rating: 2
Just looked at dell.com and it looks like the Dimension name is alive and well in the small business store, Inspirons are just showing up for "home" users.

It also looks like the Inspiron desktops are using ATX cases and boards instead of the Dimension BTX layout. Considering how cost-sensitive low-end PCs are, I'm baffled Dell ever touched BTX...




how about a new brand?
By HardwareD00d on 6/28/07, Rating: -1
"Nowadays you can buy a CPU cheaper than the CPU fan." -- Unnamed AMD executive

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