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Dell is shelling out $5 million to ex-CEO Kevin Rollins who stepped down on January 31 and will leave the company on May 4. The $5 million in cash will be given out over the next two years. Founder Michael Dell is back in charge and has to clean up the mess of disappointing earnings, a laptop battery recall, an accounting investigation, and HP taking over the number one spot in the market.

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The Yahoo Suggestion Board, Dell IdeaStorm, and MSN Reporter were all released last week and were all at least, shall we say, “Digg Inspired.” But should we call them Digg clones? How similar are they? Let’s take a closer look and compare things like purpose, voting/bury style, uniqueness, algorithm, login, default view, etc. See the chart below.

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Google today released figures showing fourth-quarter profits that nearly tripled, mostly from advertising revenue. The company continues to pull away from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft in terms of profits from advertising. Interestingly enough, analysts and investors wanted more than the expected impressive results, citing the company’s new business ventures that may hurt profitability down the road. With no surprises and boring quotes from CEO Eric Schmidt ("What is the key to our success? I think it’s search."), Google’s shares fell following the earnings report.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) has some unidentified
sources claiming that Dell will begin selling personal computers with
Vista tonight just before midnight eastern standard time. These first
movers will get their new Vista-loaded computers on Tuesday, the
official launch day of Vista for home users. My question:

Will there be
a spike or drop in Dell orders tonight?

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The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California hosted a symposium last month to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Intel’s microprocessor. But that’s only the beginning of milestone anniversary dates in computer history this year. As a result, anniversary celebrations seem to be on the rise in Silicon Valley. Some are attributing this to the computer industry coming to terms with no longer being as young as it once was. Whatever the case, here is a list of the most notable computer innovation anniversaries for this year:

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It’s official: HP is the biggest PC-maker with Dell falling to the number two spot after the latest earnings reports from both companies. Dell has been hit with a stream of bad news recently, including unexciting profits, a costly battery recall, an SEC investigation, a volatile share price, and the death of its MP3 player. What happened? And where does the company go from here? Well, in a move that’s getting polarized reactions, Dell wants to reinvent itself with an initiative called Dell 2.0 (Is the name hip or an eye roller? You decide). Here are the details:

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Interested in buying a new computer? This holiday season may be the best time if price is the determining factor for you. Because of Vista’s release being after the holidays, 70% of notebooks/laptops sold during this holiday season will be priced at less than $1,000 (compare that with 38% in 2004). This according to Current Analysis, a research firm in the business of tracking weekly PC sales. Research director Samir Bhavnani explains, "It’s going to be a blowout sale."

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Dell has announced it will discontinue selling its Dell-branded DJ Ditty MP3 music player. The company will redirect those financial resources to core consumer products like personal computers and televisions. The DJ Ditty product line was released only a year ago to take on Apple’s iPod Shuffle.

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