Sony and crapware have a special relationship, so much so that it takes over two minutes for its laptops to boot into Windows (compare that with 30 seconds for a MacBook). The company has even issued press statements explaining its reasoning: “The programs are carefully selected and provide benefits to many consumers, up to 30% of whom act on the offers.”

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TechConsumer News is a feature we started out of a hobby of tracking the latest happenings within the consumer related technology sphere. The goal is to provide a concise, compiled overview of the most intriguing stories from the last few days. Feel free to give us feedback or send us tips. If you like what you find, you can subscribe via email or RSS.

Here’s the latest in TechConsumer news:

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Starting within the next few weeks, Dell computers (notebooks and desktops) will be for sale in more than 900 Best Buy locations in the U.S. After this move, Dell’s products will be available in almost 10,000 stores worldwide. This seems ironic considering Dell pioneered the low cost, online, skip-the-middleman model. But the company lost the “world’s largest computer maker” trophy to HP, and the retail distribution channel is one area where HP shines.

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div>The big computer companies seem to have one thing in common right now: bring computer gaming to the masses. Last week HP launched the Blackbird 002 desktop PC, the company’s first HP-branded gaming PC. The starting price is $2,500, roughly half the cost of much of the high-end gaming competition.

Then there’s Gateway (soon to be purchased by Acer), which plans to introduce a gaming PC in November called FX540 with a gaming-oriented notebook line planned for release in January. And let’s not forget that both Toshiba and Dell released new, more affordable gaming computers this summer. Toshiba, with its Satellite x205 series of gaming notebooks which start at around $2,000, and Dell with its XPS 720 gaming desktop, which starts at roughly $1,700.

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div>TechConsumer News is a feature we started out of a hobby of tracking the latest happenings within the consumer related technology sphere. The goal is to provide a concise, compiled overview of the most intriguing stories from the last few days. Feel free to give us feedback or send us tips.

Here’s the latest in TechConsumer news:

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div>A new feature we are experimenting with here at TechConsumer is providing a couple posts per week which follow interesting news specific to our sphere of consumer technology. Some of these stories may be a day or two old, heaven forbid. But the idea is to provide a concise, compiled overview of the most intriguing. We also plan to continue with more of our own original content. So without further ado, here’s some TechConsumer news:

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Intel’s code named project "Santa Rosa" today is being replaced by the real name: Centrino Duo. It will be used in over 230 laptop models and has some pretty nifty features including: additional "accessory chips" that display more realistic computer graphics, the latest wireless chip 802.11n that is five times faster than current wireless, extended battery life up to nine hours, and "Turbo Memory" for faster boot time.

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Late last week Michael Dell sent out a company-wide internal memo outlining how Dell will make a comeback. It looks like it turned out to be a great PR stunt whether intentional or not, as Reuters quoted from the memo extensively and the Wall Street Journal referred to it as reasoning for the stock to be up today.

During the last two years, Dell has had an SEC investigation, unexciting profits, a costly battery recall, a volatile share price, and the death of its MP3 player. But Michael Dell is back and ready to make some serious changes. Rather than go over the details myself, you can draw your own conclusions. Here’s a copy of the memo Michael Dell sent out to employees April 25:

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Microsoft software will sell for just $3 in some parts of the world in
an attempt to reach the five out of six people worldwide still not using computers. The software giant has a goal of bringing computing to a further one billion people by 2015 (doubling the current number of computer users). Bill Gates made the announcement during a speech in Beijing:

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With an estimated 500 million pounds of electronics collecting dust in California’s closets, garages and attics, finding ways to reuse those metals, plastics and chemicals is critical.  That’s where John Shegerian’s company, Electronic Recyclers, comes in.  The Futures Channel takes viewers inside the largest electronic recycling plant in California in its new online micro-documentary, “Recycling Computers.”

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