Dell Eyes a Future That's More Than Just New PC Hardware

LAS VEGAS—Dell and its Alienware gaming branch took to the stage at CES today to show off its coming lineup for the year, outlining a strategy that looks to include more just iterative hardware releases.

CES 2022 bug art The consequence, hosted past Boob tube and gaming personality Jessica Chobot, ran the gamut from ultraportable laptops to environmental responsibility and esports. The new white XPS 13 was the simply production revealed alee of the bear witness, while the residuum of the announcements were kept as a surprise until commencement.

Dell XPS 13 (2018)

Several speakers joined the stage for dissimilar portions of the upshot, including Jeff Clark, Vice Chairman of Products and Operations at Dell; Chris Walker, Intel VP and GM of Mobile Client Platforms; actress and sustainability activist Nikki Reed; and Frank Azor, VP and GM of Alienware, Dell Gaming, and XPS.

One of the big hardware announcements was the 15-inch XPS 2-in-1 laptop. It's the thinnest two-in-1 on the marketplace, but packs solid power for the system type by way of discrete graphics and Intel'south newest eighth-generation processors. Portability and tablet mode are a challenge for 15-inch systems, but the XPS 15 does about as good of a job as possible making a big screen usable in that grade factor.

Dell 15-inch XPS 2-in-1 laptop

Dell then went on to talk over non-system news, including new software named Mobile Connect, which I had a chance to check out at a preview event in New York last calendar month. Information technology offers iOS-to-Mac functionality for telephone messages, allowing your notifications to be viewed and answered on your Dell computer. You can cull to mirror a whole app onto your PC screen, too. It's not quite every bit seamless as Apple'southward organisation, but information technology does provide a solution that the Windows environment has been lacking for some time, and information technology works pretty well. It's compatible with iOS and Android devices, and comes pre-installed on any Dell organisation.

Dell too took fourth dimension to talk nearly the importance of sustainability and the visitor'due south efforts to reclaim gold from motherboards and other components to put these otherwise wasted materials back into rotation. Nikki Reed stated that $60 million worth of gold and silver inside technology is thrown away every year, and announced the Round Collection by Bayou with Love, a jewelry line made from these reclaimed minerals. Dell offers programs, including an effort with Goodwill, that encourage people non to throw away their technology, but recycle them for use in new products.

Further software discussion included Dell Picture palace, an acoustic solution for getting the best sound and look from the hardware. This includes CinemaColor, which decodes and displays high dynamic range (HDR) streamed content with enhanced detail; CinemaSound, which focuses on higher volumes and audio quality; and CinemaStream, a engineering powered by Killer and SmartByte that optimizes online streaming by reducing buffering and keeping the resolution high.

Moving on to gaming, Frank Azor briefly touched on a new Inspiron desktop, which gets you into VR adequacy for just $799. Alienware also spent time showing off its new Control Centre software, which provides a unified gaming client. It tin can pull your game libraries from Steam and other clients into its interface and so everything shows up in one place, and it'south designed very cleanly. It's hither that you control arrangement and peripheral lighting also, which is preferable to needing multiple applications.

Standing with gaming, Alienware discussed its partnership with esports arrangement Team Liquid, one of the largest in the globe. Alienware and Liquid announced the launch of the Alienware eSports Training Facility, an 8,000-square-foot facility in Los Angeles for Liquid players to train and scrim. The space will include an in-office chef, sports psychologists, nutritionists, and dedicated coach, and analyst spaces.

The wide-ranging conference, which focused less on systems than you might await, demonstrated the scope of Dell's strategy. The PC-focused company wants to have a hand in every area (obviously, the by purchase of Alienware fabricated gaming a clear colonnade of the business), merely additions like Mobile Connect and Dell Movie theater are looking beyond thinner laptops and sharper screens. Even most of Alienware'south time was spent not on new flashy laptops, but its software and esports initiatives. While will no doubt continue to roll out new hardware each year, the company is widening its scope to supplemental areas, enhancing or calculation software features, and building something that may eventually qualify as its own ecosystem within the Windows platform.