DELLCOMPUTERS

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), an American computer-hardware company based in Round Rock, Texas, develops, manufactures, sells and supports personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, personal digital assistants (PDAs), software, computer peripherals, and certain other products.

As of 2006 Dell employed more than 50,000 people worldwide. Formerly holding a substantial lead in PC sales, it recently slipped behind Hewlett-Packard (HP) in this market.

According to the Fortune 500 2006 list, DellComputers ranks as the 25th-largest company in the United States by revenue. In 2006, Fortune magazine ranked Dell as No. 8 on its annual list of the most-admired companies in the United States. One publication has identified Dell as one of 38 high-performance companies in the S&P 500 which consistently out-performed the market over the previous 15 years.

The corporation markets specific brand names to different consumer segments. It typically sells the OptiPlex, Latitude, and Precision names to medium-sized and large business customers, where the company's advertising emphasizes long life-cycles, reliability and serviceability.

The Dimension, Inspiron, and XPS brands have an orientation towards consumers, students, and small home office environments, emphasizing value, performance and expandability. In 2005 Dell re-introduced the Dell XPS brand to target the lucrative gaming market. XPS desktop systems use silver rather than the black cases found on newer Dell PCs. Dell has also diversified its product line to include peripheral products such as USB keydrives, LCD televisions, and printers.

Dell currently ships Microsoft Windows Vista as the default operating system for most of its new computers.  But it also offers Red Hat and SUSE Linux for servers; as well as "bare-bones" computers without pre-installed software (N series by default and XPS as well as Inspiron notebooks upon request) at significantly lower prices.

Due to Dell's licensing-contract with Microsoft, Dell cannot offer those systems on their website and customers have to request them explicitly. Dell has to ship such systems with a FreeDOS disk included in the box and must issue a so-called "Windows refund" or a merchandise credit after sale of the system at the "regular" retail price.

When Dell customers elect to use Microsoft Windows as the operating system of a newly specified Dell system, Dell bundles a large quantity of software with it.

Dell has expressed willingness to offer Apple's new Intel version of the Mac OS X operating system to its customers, but to this point Apple has stated that the OS will only run on Macintosh machines, and will not agree to licensing Mac OS X to Dell.