More than a quarter of current iPad owners say the tablet is the first Apple product they’ve purchased, according to a new survey from the NPD Group. “iPad sales are growing much faster than any other Apple product has this soon after launch,” says NPD’s Ben Arnold. “In fact, one-in-five Apple owner households has one — nearly equivalent to the number that own an Apple computer.”

So the iPad is Apple’s newest ambassador? Not all that big of a surprise considering how well the device has been selling. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during its most recent quarter — that’s more than double the number it sold last year. More to the point, the newest model was only actually shipping during the last three weeks or so of the quarter. And, as Apple CEO Tim Cook noted during the company’s Tuesday earnings call, iPad supply was constrained at that time.

And sales to date have been fantastic.

“Just two years after we shipped the initial iPad, we’ve sold 67 million,” Cook said Tuesday. “To put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs, and five years for that many iPods, and over three years for that many iPhones, and we were extremely happy with the trajectory on all of those products.”

So is it any surprise that newcomers to the Apple brand are increasingly being introduced to it by the iPad?

According to NPD, 33 percent of U.S. households — or 37 million — currently own Apple products. How large will that percentage be a year from now given the iPad’s sales trend?

We all know how that turned out. Dell first conquered the PC market, and the ultracompetitive environment it created drove several companies out of the market: IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo; Gateway sold itself to Acer; Hewlett-Packard acquired Compaq. Other lesser players are all but forgotten.

It’s as if Dell was a victim of the hyperefficient world it created. HP is now the world’s biggest PC maker, followed by China’s Lenovo, with Dell in third place on a global basis, as of last quarter.

PCs — consumer and business PCs — still amount to about half of Dell’s business. But there’s another way to look at Dell, and that’s from the point of view of its enterprise business. I learned this in a recent conversation with Steve Felice, Dell’s chief commercial officer. I also learned that the consumer PC business, for which Dell is still widely known in the U.S., amounts to about one-fifth of its business, while its enterprise lines of business, including commercial PCs, amount to 50 percent.

It’s all part of the long-term transformation that has been underway at Dell for a few years now. The company recently did three acquisitions in as many days, the most significant of which was for Wyse Technology.

That caught my attention. But first I wanted Felice’s reaction to the findings of a J.P. Morgan survey of 100 CIOs, saying that the release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 wouldn’t be much of a catalyst for PC buying at large companies.

(We had a pretty good talk, so, arbitrarily, I left in an eighth question from our exchange.)

AllThingsD: Steve, there’s a survey out from J.P. Morgan recently that says that CIOs from large companies don’t see Windows 8 as the sort of thing that would get them buying PCs again. That, to me, could be interpreted as bad news for Dell. Is it?

Felice: I don’t think so. Operating system changes have never been a catalyst, at least not in the corporate world. Consumers and small businesses take off with it right away. Corporations have rollout schedules, and they stick to them. Some of them are just starting to deploy Windows 7. They do their three-year roll-out schedules, and when it’s time they’ll go to Windows 8. About 55 percent of our business are the larger mid-sized and up public companies. The other 45 percent are small businesses and consumer. We’ll see some buying within that 45 percent. On the others, they will go on their normal schedule.

On the enterprise side, I was just with a bunch of CIOs here, and there are some very common themes about why I think they are going to spend some money. And it’s really to continue a transformation of their own infrastructure, to take advantage of virtualization and cloud computing and bigger pipes to transport information. There is a pretty common theme that there is more opportunity to get more out of assets. There is more optimism around moving away from legacy architectures and into open systems. The whole concept of being more “open to open” is there. We view that as good, because we’re the pure play when it comes to moving to open architectures.

What are the CIOs you talk to worried about these days?

Security. It’s easily in the top three concerns. We think we added to our portfolio two of the best assets out there. One is intended to tell you how to figure out what’s going on in their world. That’s what SecureWorks, a company we acquired recently, does. It analyzes your infrastructure and tells you where your threats are coming from and how to prevent them. And then we just announced the acquisition of SonicWall. They built a nice unified threat-management platform. From my viewpoint, it helps enable the movement to open. Some people are afraid to leave the proprietary world because they think it’s more secure.

Where are you on mobile? I read that you just killed a smartphone model. Where is Dell going on the mobile front?

I would characterize the last couple of years as us experimenting with what form factors and operating environments will work. The good thing is that we’ve never overextended ourselves in mobile, yet we’ve launched a lot of products, and we’ve learned a lot from them. We’ve launched tablets — 5-inch, 7-inch, 10-inch. We’ve launched them in emerging markets first, we’ve launched them in developed markets first. We’ve launched smartphones around the world. So we have an active smartphone that we just launched in China, and one in Japan. We just end-of-lifed one in the U.S., which is what I think you’re referring to. We have a road map of other products that are coming up. We are predominantly a commercial-oriented business that has some consumer business, but the lines are blurring.

What we’ve learned is to look at the consumer from the commercial side, not the other way around. Some companies who have done well in mobility are all about consumers and entertainment. And looking at the consumer as an individual, without any regard to how they might interact on the professional side of their life. Executives of any company I talk to say these devices are driving them crazy. They don’t know what’s happening to their information, how they get it back, nor how to interact with the other devices that people are bringing into the workplace. Or how to support them and control them. No one is dealing with that. So, generally, you’re going to see Dell think more broadly about the mobile ecosystem. When you next see devices from Dell, you’ll see us thinking more about the security of them, the end-to-end aspects of managing them, from the data center to the end user.

And yet what I’m hearing from a lot of companies is that they’re just adopting iPads, mainly because the bosses have them and love them. This is how Apple is penetrating the enterprise. How is Dell going to compete with that?

It’s unique, no question. And so it’s got some infatuation aspects to it. But then I talk to these customers, and because there isn’t a lot of alternatives, what they’re tolerating is pretty interesting. They say they have one of those products. Then the problems start coming out. First, the office applications don’t work very well, and they have trouble reading PowerPoint decks. And then they can’t wirelessly print easily, and some days they’re not able to get on the network at the office. And I look at that and say, they’re tolerating a lot because they like the form factor. Our conclusion is that there need to be some alternatives.

We’ve got the Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook, and we take it around and show it to customers, and invariably the decision-maker wants one. And then he says that if he had this, he never would have bothered with the tablet. So we took a consumer-oriented product and put pro support on it, and showed that to CIOs and said that if their executive team used it, they’d get the same support as they would on their Latitude product. So when it breaks, someone will come to the office and fix it, and you don’t have to go stand in line at the Apple store. Then we put image management on it. If you want a corporate image that has to be managed, we’ll do that. Institutions want thin and light devices, but they also want the options to secure and support them. The other thing that is happening, with ARM, you’ll get even more form factors.

Well, let’s talk about the PC, then. People keep talking about the decline of the PC. The research houses keep predicting market declines, and sometimes they materialize and sometimes they don’t. But even so, the numbers — at least globally — are flat to slightly up. Yet when you drill down to different regions, you see very different stories, with different countries growing like crazy. How does Dell see this right now?

This is a weighted math problem. The lowest growth rates are in the developed world, which will remain more of a replacement cycle world. The U.S. is like that because PC penetration is very high. Then you go to India and China, where it’s very low. What’s happening is that the emerging markets, where combined, they will be bigger than the developed world. And they are still growing rapidly, so the math is going to reverse itself. You’ll still see low-single-digit growth rates in the developed world, but healthy growth rates in emerging markets — but the emerging markets will be bigger. We still see double-digit growth in China. Look at Indonesia, there’s 300 million people just starting to buy PCs. As these countries industrialize and get more mature, they just need basic computing.

And how do those markets develop?

It comes back to the first thing I talked about. These countries don’t have the legacy baggage. They’ll grow, they’ll industrialize, they’ll need more infrastructure. And what will they buy? They’ll buy standard servers, storage, and open systems. This is happening in China, and its why we’re No. 1 in servers there.

Do you think people still associate Dell with the PC and don’t give it enough credit for its greater focus on the enterprise?

I’d have to say yes. Some of that is our own doing. We have this very large direct model, and we have a tendency to talk to customers one on one. So we tend not to do a lot of brand advertising. So our consumer advertising is more visible. If you ask people randomly what portion of our business is consumer, they’d say it’s more than half, but in fact it’s only about 20 percent. And if you ask people what portion of our business is servers and storage, they don’t know, but it’s more than 50 percent.

If you combine consumer and commercial PCs, how much is that?

About half is PC, and that’s global. But I think with all the acquisitions we’ve done, and a lot more customer testimonials we’re doing, the perception is changing. We’ve done some targeted testing of campaigns where we say, ‘Do you know that Dell does this?’ The perception of Dell as an enterprise provider skyrocketed. Brazil is an interesting case, because we entered the server and storage market there before the PC market. That’s because the only way to really be successful in Brazil with PCs is to have your own manufacturing there, because of the stiff tariffs. So in Brazil, Dell is thought of as an enterprise company. You’ll see more of a commitment this year to do more brand-oriented advertising around the enterprise.

A Chicago boy is going home, as former Yahoo PR exec Bradford Williams takes over as VP of Global Communications at Groupon.

Williams, who worked at Yahoo during its ugly takeover fight with Microsoft, will need his even-keeled personality more than ever now, as the social buying phenom heads into its upcoming IPO.

Groupon has gotten a lot of flack for the unusual accounting in its recent S-1 public offering filing, as well as for the huge amount of money that some of its founders have taken out of the company.

And its CEO Andrew Mason is also, well, somewhat of a death-staring character.

Williams has longtime tech experience, having also worked at VeriSign, eBay and Gateway.

He is one of many former Silicon Valley hires that Groupon has made of late, including several from Yahoo and also Google.

(By the way, that’s me calling on the other line, Brad, so get ready to pick up a lot.)

In a repeat of a trend seen last quarter, both firms report that the market shrank in the first quarter of the year. This would constitute the first market contraction in six quarters, and the first since the onset of the recession. They differ, however, on the size of that contraction: IDC pegs it at 3.2 percent since the first quarter of 2010; Gartner at 1.1 percent.

To be fair, let’s remember that the first quarter of the year is always seasonably slow for PC purchases because two things tend to happen in the fourth quarter: Consumers splurge on gifts for family and frankly for themselves too, and take advantage of crazy deals offered by retailers desperate to clear out their inventory. On the business side, some CIOs take the opportunity to use up unspent funds in their budgets, and get employees starting off the new year with a fresh new machine at their desks. However, this tendency is just as often offset by the start of a new budget year. Whichever way you slice it, the first quarter is always weak on consumer sales though a bit stronger on the enterprise side.

So what happened? The iPad 2, for one thing. “With the launch of the iPad 2 in February, more consumers either switched to buying an alternative device, or simply held back from buying PCs,” is how Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, put it. “We’re investigating whether this trend is likely to have a long-term effect on the PC market.” Ya think?

Bob O’Donnell, IDC’s vice president for Clients and Displays, wasn’t quite as willing to blame the iPad: “Slower than expected commercial growth in the first quarter failed to offset the ongoing challenges in the consumer market,” he said in a statement. “While it’s tempting to blame the decline completely on the growth of media tablets, we believe other factors, including extended PC lifetimes and the lack of compelling new PC experiences, played equally significant roles.”

Jay Chou, another IDC analyst put it much more succinctly: “‘Good-enough computing’ has become a firm reality.”

The picture gets no better when you look at regional results. IDC says shipments declined in the U.S. by 10 percent. Gartner pegged it at 6 percent. It was, Gartner noted, the third consecutive quarter for year-on-year declines in U.S. notebook sales. Shipments in Europe contracted too, and Japan, which was already expected to be a weak market this quarter, has other things on its mind since the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Asia was the only bright spot, where shipments increased by 5.6 percent in IDC’s forecast and 4.1 percent in Gartner’s. China, IDC noted, failed to reach double-digit growth, and consumers in India, Gartner says, were distracted by the Cricket World Cup. Okay, then.

So how do the numbers look? Since IDC’s forecast is the most dire, I’ll start there:

The worldwide demand for PCs was 80.6 million units. Hewlett-Packard sold 15.2 million; Dell, which just made it back to second place, shipped 10.3 million; Acer 9 million; Lenovo 8.2 million; Toshiba 4.8 million; while “others” clocked 33 million. All vendors except for Lenovo saw declines. The worst decline was Acer’s, whose shipments fell nearly 16 percent. (Now we know why its CEO Gianfranco Lanci lost his job.) Lenovo, on the other hand, saw its shipments improve by more than 16 percent.

Demand in the U.S. was 16.1 million. HP led with 4.3 million, Dell 3.7 million, Toshiba 1.6 million, Apple 1.4 million and Acer 1.3 million. Unnamed others sold 3.7 million. Acer saw its shipments fall by an alarming 42 percent. Apple and Toshiba posted gains of 9.6 and 10.4 percent respectively. HP and Dell both saw declines.

Now let’s look at Gartner’s numbers (remember that each firm tracks the market a little differently):

Gartner pegged the worldwide market at 84.2 million units. It says HP sold 14.8 million, Acer 10.9 million, Dell 10 million, Lenovo 8.2 million, Toshiba 4.8 million. (Clearly there’s a difference in how they see Acer and Lenovo’s performances.)

In the U.S., Gartner estimated the market at 16.1 million units. By its reckoning, HP sold 4.2 million, Dell 3.6 million, Acer 1.8 million, Toshiba 1.7 million, Apple 1.5 million, others 3.3 million.

The funding is an “inside round”–only existing investors participated in the funding–which sometimes, but not always, raises a red flag. In this case, AppNexus says the funding is also an “up round”–its existing investors now think the start-up is worth more than they did the last time they bought in–but didn’t disclose a valuation.

There’s also a bit of fuzziness, still, about what exactly AppNexus does. The company says it provides a “gateway” to ad buyers who want access to ad exchanges like the ones operated by Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO)–Microsoft (MSFT) will launch its exchange next year–though many industry types think that AppNexus is itself an ad exchange.

The company certainly boasts lots of ad exchange bona fides. Co-founders Brian O’Kelley and Mike Nolet are both veterans of Right Media, the ad exchange Yahoo bought in 2007. And in September, the company brought on Michael Rubenstein, who had been running Google’s exchange.

“After Gateway’s 2004 merger with eMachines, AMD attempted to revive the relationship it had enjoyed with Gateway until 2001, but experienced extremely limited success. While Gateway built one AMD-powered desktop model at the request of Circuit City, AMD remains locked out entirely of Gateway’s direct internet sales, its commercial offerings and its server line. According to Gateway executives, their Company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has beaten them into ‘guacamole’ in retaliation.”

– Excerpt from AMD’s 2005 complaint against Intel

Looks like it’s going to be a very busy fall for Intel legal. This morning, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the company, alleging that it violated state and federal laws with a “systematic campaign” of illegal conduct to maintain its monopoly.

At issue here, once again, is Intel’s alleged practice of using bribery and coercion to maintain its monopoly, something rival AMD complained about in its own antitrust suit against Intel (INTC) in 2005.

AMD (AMD) alleged, for example, that in 2000, Michael Capellas, then chief executive of Compaq Computer, told AMD that because of Compaq’s relationship with AMD, Intel withheld the delivery of some microprocessors he needed for servers. Capellas told AMD he would stop buying from it, saying he “had a gun to his head.”

Further, in 2004, Gateway officials are alleged to have told AMD that Intel “beat them into guacamole” in retaliation for their limited dealings with its rival. These are but two incidents in a list that includes similar alleged acts of coercion by Intel involving 38 other computer makers, distributors and retailers.

Apparently, Cuomo has found evidence of similar behavior. “Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”

And once Acer does that, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)–the world’s largest PC maker by shipments–best start watching its back. Said Lanci: “I would expect not only to pass Dell very soon, but also to breach the gap with HP.”

Have Acer’s buyouts of Gateway and Packard Bell gone to Lanci’s head? Perhaps just a little. That said, the company has seen quite a bit of growth thanks to the netbook phenomenon, which shows no signs of abating.

“After Gateway’s 2004 merger with eMachines, AMD attempted to revive the relationship it had enjoyed with Gateway until 2001, but experienced extremely limited success. While Gateway built one AMD-powered desktop model at the request of Circuit City, AMD remains locked out entirely of Gateway’s direct internet sales, its commercial offerings and its server line. According to Gateway executives, their Company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has beaten them into ‘guacamole’ in retaliation.”

– Excerpt from AMD’s 2005 complaint against Intel

Gateway officials once claimed that Intel “beat them into guacamole” in retaliation for doing business with rival AMD. Five years later, the European Commission is poised to give Intel a similar beating for doing so.

The EC has finally completed its review of Intel’s practice of paying computer makers to delay or cancel the release of machines outfitted with AMD (AMD) chips and, suffice to say, the commission has not concluded that it is “lawful, pro-competitive, and beneficial to consumers,” as the chipmaker claims. In fact, the EC has determined that Intel’s methods are exactly the opposite. And on Wednesday, it is expected to penalize Intel (INTC) by slapping it with what may be the highest antitrust fines in Europe’s history–as much as 10 percent of the company’s annual world-wide revenue. With Intel’s 2008 revenue topping out at $37.6 billion, penalties could conceivably reach $4 billion, far in excess of the $1.51 billion in combined fines that have been levied against Microsoft (MSFT).

That’s not to say it’s a particularly good or bad idea to hire a former Dreamworks and Wal-Mart (WMT) exec named David Porter (pictured here) as vice president of retail stores to create Microsoft-branded stores–or as the company announced yesterday, “to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience.”

While Microsoft (MSFT) sells most of its consumer products via big-box retail stores like Best Buy (BBY), and the retail market for just about everything is weak, Apple (AAPL) has definitively proven that a well-designed retail store can be a powerful marketing tool.

The visually stunning and infectiously fun Apple stores, in fact, have been an important part of its recent surge in mainstream consumer appeal, becoming hubs of activity and even social life in its mostly big-city locations.

In fact, that was just the idea behind microsoftSF, which was located in San Francisco’s Metreon Sony Entertainment Center.

The huge 8,500-square-foot store, with 160 Microsoft products and related software and hardware from 30 partners, was billed in a June 1999 press release as “an interactive, hands-on retail environment in which people of all ages, from all walks of life and at all levels of technological expertise can explore the benefits technology can bring them. Far more than just another computer store, microsoftSF is a showcase for the latest technology from Microsoft and the hardware and software companies with which it collaborates.”

The microsoftSF store, which I visited several times (but bought nothing, although I was mostly a PC user at the time), was very attractive and the only such store in the world, with a “Road Warrior” arena, a lounge, a gaming area and more.

Said the press release: “To make all this possible, microsoftSF deploys Microsoft Windows and more than 100,000 feet of copper cable, 60 Sony PCs, 18 laptop docking stations, four dual-processor servers powered by Hewlett-Packard Net Servers, a Cisco Systems network, and an array of hidden audio speakers that create 16 individually controlled sound zones.”

And Microsoft CEO (then President) Steve Ballmer weighed in enthusiastically:

“We are delighted to be able to showcase in this one-of-a-kind retail environment the entire range of Microsoft software and hardware, as well as the technology of other companies who share the vision of how the PC and the Internet can empower people any time, anywhere. San Francisco and the Silicon Valley are home to the world’s largest and one of the most sophisticated high-tech audiences, so this was the natural place to create this site–dedicated to showing, in an interactive environment, the way technology can enhance our working, learning, living and playing.”

Not so much, as it turned out. The store closed in 2001.

But that does not necessarily mean that the new and much expanded efforts will have the same experience. The Metreon, which was sold off by Sony, was an odd mall then and still is, although its movie theater is successful.

And, in this effort, Microsoft will have control of the whole enchilada.

Plus, if well done, it is not such a bad idea to have a place–perhaps only in highly-trafficked locations in big cities–to show off its consumer wares, especially its popular Xbox 360 and other products (please, not the Zune!).

More importantly, given the disaster that has been the Windows Vista experience, it is probably a good idea to have a place to get people interested in Windows 7, especially its touch capabilities, when it rolls out this year.

Also, I still like the Surface interactive table, even if it is mocked in a popular video as a “big-ass table.”

Of course, only Apple stores have done well so far in this genre, as everyone, from Gateway (GTW), Sony (SNE), Nokia (NOK), Helio and Palm (PALM), has had rough retail experiences.

So, Porter certainly has his work cut out for him, at least judging from the press release from Microsoft yesterday:

“Defining the time frame, locations and specifics for planned Microsoft-branded retail stores will be Porter’s first order of business. The purpose of opening these stores is to create deeper engagement with consumers and continue to learn firsthand about what they want and how they buy.”

Said Porter: “There are tremendous opportunities ahead for Microsoft to create a world-class shopping experience for our customers. I am excited about helping consumers make more informed decisions about their PC and software purchases, and we’ll share learnings from our stores with our existing retail and OEM partners that are critical to our success.”

He’ll have to wait to see if the second time is a charm.

In recent days the commission has subpoenaed Intel, AMD and a number of their PC-maker customers as part of a probe into Intel’s pricing policies, which some claim are engineered to maintain a near-monopoly on the chip market. Intel, which has long claimed that its business practices are well within U.S. law, did so again today in a statement announcing its cooperation with the FTC investigation. “The evidence that this industry is fiercely competitive and working is compelling,” it said. “For example, prices for microprocessors declined by 42.4% from 2000 to the end of 2007. When competitors perform and execute, the market rewards them. When they falter and under-perform, the market responds accordingly.”

But what if a competitor, say AMD, falters and underperforms because a rival is threatening its customers? What if it falters because a rival is using illegal inducements to dissuade PC-makers from buying AMD processors and “knee-capping” those who do? Which is what AMD accused Intel of in its 2005 antitrust lawsuit. In 2000, for example, Michael Capellas, then chief executive of Compaq Computer, allegedly told AMD that Intel had withheld the delivery of some microprocessors he needed for servers because of Compaq’s relationship with AMD. He told AMD he would stop buying from it, saying he “had a gun to his head.” And in 2004, Gateway officials are alleged to have told AMD that Intel “beat them into guacamole” in retaliation for their limited dealings with its rival. And these are but two incidents in a list that includes similar alleged acts of coercion by Intel involving 38 other computer makers, distributors and retailers.

Empire State AG Andrew Cuomo today opened a formal antitrust investigation against Intel to determine if it violated state and federal antitrust laws by engaging in a relentless, worldwide campaign to coerce customers to refrain from dealing with its rivals. “After careful preliminary review, we have determined that questions raised about Intel’s potential anticompetitive conduct warrant a full and factual investigation,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Monopolistic practices are a serious concern, particularly for New Yorkers who are navigating an information-intensive economy.”

Harder still for Intel rivals navigating a potentially antitrust-intensive economy. Rivals like Advanced Micro Devices, who in 2005 filed its own antitrust lawsuit against Intel, accusing the company of using illegal inducements to dissuade OEMs from buying AMD processors and “knee-capping” those who did.

Harsh accusations, but ones supported by some disturbing anecdotal evidence. In 2000, for example, Michael Capellas, then chief executive of Compaq Computer, allegedly told AMD that Intel had withheld the delivery of some server chips because of Compaq’s relationship with AMD. He told AMD he would stop buying from it, saying he “had a gun to his head.” And in 2004, Gateway officials told AMD that Intel “beat them into guacamole” after they purchased some AMD microprocessors. These are but two incidents among 38 other alleged acts of coercion claimed by AMD in its suit.

Intel, of course, denies them all. Just as it denies AG Cuomo’s. “We believe our business practices are lawful,” said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. “We also believe that the microprocessor market is a competitive market and is behaving just as one would expect a competitive market to behave.”

The most tangible example of this new approach is Dell’s XPS One desktop — an elegant, handsome, cleverly designed one-piece computer. If it didn’t have the Dell logo on it, the XPS One might be mistaken for a product of the PC industry’s design leaders, Apple or Sony.

Like Apple’s iconic iMac, the XPS One looks like it’s simply a sleek, flat-panel monitor. The guts of the computer have been stuffed into the back of the screen.

But this new Dell is no mere iMac clone. It makes its own style statement, even though it shares the same 20-inch widescreen display and a similar Intel dual-core processor with the base-model iMac. Where the iMac is squarish and silver, the XPS One is all black and rectangular, with speakers attached to the sides and a wide glass base. It looks more like a small TV set than a computer and, in fact, comes with a built-in TV tuner.

In my tests, I found the XPS One to be much better designed and equipped than Gateway’s iMac competitor, also called the One. In fact, the Dell XPS One is the first Windows all-in-one desktop I’ve tested that I believe matches or exceeds the iMac in hardware design. That’s no small feat, especially coming from Dell.

Unlike the Apple, for example, the Dell has a built-in slot for camera memory cards. It comes standard with a wireless keyboard and mouse, which cost extra on the iMac. Its screen can be turned off with the touch of a button without turning off the computer itself. Its USB and headphone ports are arrayed conveniently on the side, instead of mainly at the rear, as on the iMac.

And, when you wave your hand in front of the black border to the right of the screen on the XPS One, a set of blue, back-lit touch controls magically appear for controlling the playback of music or video. They go away after a few seconds. The Dell also comes with a free year of 10 gigabytes of online backup.

For my tests, I used the least expensive standard configuration of the XPS One, which can be ordered for $1,499 at dell.com/theonepc. It came with two gigabytes of memory (twice the comparable iMac’s standard amount), a 250 gigabyte hard disk and Wi-Fi wireless networking, unusual in Windows desktops.

The computer performed crisply and well for me. I installed several popular third-party programs that weren’t included, such as Microsoft Office, the Firefox Web browser, Apple’s iTunes and Adobe Reader. All worked fine.

I also successfully tested the built-in TV function, which requires a cumbersome external attachment to work with a cable box. I was able to view and record TV shows, something you can’t do out of the box on an iMac.

I still recommend the iMac over the XPS One for several reasons other than hardware design. First, there’s the software. I believe Apple’s operating system, Leopard, is superior to the new Windows Vista operating system, the only choice on the XPS One. In my tests, a reboot of the XPS One took more than twice as long as a reboot of the iMac.

And I regard Apple’s built-in software, especially the iLife multimedia suite, as superior to the Dell’s built-in software, which includes a group of Adobe multimedia programs that are less well integrated and more complex.

The XPS One, unlike the iMac, also came with a bunch of craplets — trial software like Yahoo Music and come-ons for online services like NetZero.

Second, the iMac, unlike the Dell, is immune to the vast majority of malicious software floating around, so you don’t have to run annoying, memory-hogging security programs. The first time I turned on the beautiful Dell I was met with a warning that I had “multiple security problems,” and was led to install a security suite in a complex and tedious process.

Third, defying popular perception, the iMac costs less than the XPS One. The base, 20-inch iMac costs $1,199 — about $300 less. And even if you double the memory, and add a wireless keyboard and mouse to match the Dell, it’s still $1,399 — $100 less than the base XPS One (though Dell is currently running a sale that wipes out the $100 gap). Even the cheapest iMac has a dedicated video card with its own memory, something the base XPS One lacks.

Plus, while Dell offers only 20-inch screens on the XPS One, Apple has higher-end iMacs with huge 24-inch screens for the same price, or less, than the higher-end Dells.

Still, if you want a stylish Windows Vista machine that runs well and won’t cost a fortune, the XPS One fits the bill, despite its unlikely heritage.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071227/dells-all-in-one-pc-has-the-guts-design-to-compete-with-imac/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ed-coleman/ http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ed-coleman/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:02:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20071217/ed-coleman/ Gateway CEOs are like Spinal Tap drummers–they don’t seem to last very long. The company has had five CEOs (four permanent and one interim) in six years. And now the fifth is departing as well.

Gateway CEO Ed Coleman, who joined the company in September 2006, announced his resignation today. He’ll leave the company in January, handing over his responsibilities to Rudi Schmidleithner, president of American operations for Acer, the PC maker that acquired Gateway this summer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ed-coleman/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ddv20071217/ http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ddv20071217/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:00:32 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20071217/ddv20071217/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071217/ddv20071217/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20071101/new-gateway-desktop-takes-on-look-of-imac-but-cant-match-it/ http://allthingsd.com/20071101/new-gateway-desktop-takes-on-look-of-imac-but-cant-match-it/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20071101/new-gateway-desktop-takes-on-look-of-imac-but-cant-match-it/ If you’ve lusted after Apple’s sleek, one-piece iMac desktop computers but have no interest in switching to the Mac, you’re in luck this holiday season. Two of the big Windows PC makers, Gateway and Dell, will offer their own all-in-one desktops, which — like the iMac — are designed for style and pack an entire computer into a svelte body that looks like it’s merely a monitor.

The Gateway One

Both new contenders, oddly, are named “One.” I’ve been testing the Gateway One, which can be preordered now at beautyofone.com, and is set for delivery this month. It will also be available at Best Buy stores. Dell’s entry, called the XPS One, will be unveiled later, though Dell is already teasing it on a page buried within its huge Web site.

All-in-one desktops have been around for many years, but they failed to win a big slice of the consumer market. The iMac has been a success, however, partly because it combines beauty and power. It is speedy and can even optionally run Windows. Another factor is that mainstream, nontechie, nongamer consumers are gradually turning away from clunky towers toward laptops and other smaller forms.

Like the iMac, the Gateway One is striking, though the two products look very different. While the latest iMac has a brushed-aluminum front with a black border around the screen, the front of the One is all black, clad in a seamless sheet of plastic. The iMac sits on an aluminum foot; the One’s bottom edge rests directly on the desktop, supported by a small tilting metal stand in the rear.

I can’t recommend the Gateway over the iMac, however. It offers smaller screens and lower resolution — huge factors in an all-in-one machine — for prices that can exceed the iMac’s. It starts up and restarts more slowly. Unlike the Apple, it comes with annoying trial software. It also is noisier than the iMac, and lacks a built-in Web camera. Plus, twice during my few days of testing, it crashed with a blue screen, losing all open data.

The Gateway One comes in three models, priced at $1,299, $1,499 and $1,799. Unlike the iMac, which comes in two screen sizes, 20-inch and 24-inch, Gateway is offering only one screen size across the entire line: 19-inch, considered a middling dimension these days for a desktop. Best Buy has an exclusive on the low-end and high-end models. The midrange model will be sold directly by Gateway. All can be bought only with Windows Vista, not Windows XP.

Shockingly, for those who still cling to the notion that Windows machines are always priced lower than comparable Macs, the entry-level Gateway One costs $100 more than the entry-level iMac, which is $1,199. And the less expensive Mac gives you more in several key areas: a slightly larger screen with much higher resolution, a faster processor and a better video system.

At the high end, the $1,799 Gateway One has a much smaller screen than the comparably priced iMac, which sports a huge 24-inch display with much better resolution for the same price. The $1,799 iMac also has a faster processor. All the iMacs come with a better operating system and better bundled multimedia software.

Apple also offers a built-in camera, while Gateway’s is an ugly snap-on gadget that ruins the lines of the design. On my test model, the camera never stayed on straight and the videos it made contained so much background noise as to be worthless. This may have come from the One’s fan, which seemed to run a lot.

But the Gateway offers some advantages. At every price point it has more memory than the iMac — double the amount in the base model and triple in the $1,799 model. The One also has larger hard disks — 320 gigabytes in the base model compared with Apple’s 250 gigabytes, and 500 gigabytes in its top model compared with 320 gigabytes on the same-price iMac.

The Gateway also has a wireless keyboard and mouse, which cost extra from Apple, plus built-in slots for camera memory cards, which Apple doesn’t offer. On the high-end model, Gateway throws in an external TV tuner, something Apple doesn’t include.

Gateway also boasts that, unlike the iMac, its One model has only a single, thick cord protruding from its rear. This is partly due to the standard wireless keyboard and mouse, but mostly it’s due to the fact that, unlike on the iMac, the power supply isn’t built in but is contained in a bulky, heavy module meant to rest on the floor. This power module contains the networking port and a few other ports meant for peripherals you don’t plug in and out often.

The One started up faster than some other Vista machines I tested, but it’s still slow compared with even an older, 20-inch iMac. It scored very well on Vista’s built-in performance rating, garnering a 4.4. But my high-end iMac, set up to run Vista, scored a 5.0.

The Gateway One may appeal to style-conscious Windows users, but I think the iMac remains the best consumer desktop on the market.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20071101/new-gateway-desktop-takes-on-look-of-imac-but-cant-match-it/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828/ http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:00:26 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828-2/#comments Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:00:26 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828/

[ See post to watch video ]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070828/ddv20070828-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20070827/acer-gateway/ http://allthingsd.com/20070827/acer-gateway/#comments Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:25:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070827/acer-gateway/ In today’s “eat or be eaten” personal-computer market, Gateway was a steak dinner waiting to happen. After faltering during the economic downturn of the late ’90s, the PC maker never regained its footing. In the ensuing years, Gateway shipped fewer and fewer of its signature black-and-white dairy cow PC boxes. It steadily lost market share to rivals like Dell and Hewlett-Packard and its share price sunk deep into the manure. But it continued to rank among the top five PC vendors in the United States.

Little wonder then that PC manufacturer Acer, which has been looking to expand its nominal market share in the states, said this morning it will purchase Gateway for $710 million. Quite a sum for a struggling PC maker, but from Acer’s perspective, money well spent. Aside from making the Tawainese company the world’s third largest PC vendor, the acquisition gives it right of first refusal to buy Packard Bell, which it plans to excercise ruining its rival Lenovo’s plans to acquire the European company. “The company that loses the most from this is Lenovo,” said JP Gownder, a PC analyst at Forrester Research. “Acer is saying [it's] going to be a world player. That is a huge stake in the ground.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070827/acer-gateway/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20070426/ddv20070426/ http://allthingsd.com/20070426/ddv20070426/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:49:22 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070426/ddv20070426/

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070426/ddv20070426/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20070426/acer-recall/ http://allthingsd.com/20070426/acer-recall/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:29:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070426/acer-recall/ Better to be safe than sorry or, rather, better safe than Sony. That’s likely what Acer was thinking when it announced a recall of about 27,000 Sony-made lithium-ion batteries–six months after claiming its machines were unaffected by a manufacturing issue that could cause them to overheat and catch fire. Today Acer said that, though it has received no reports of exploding batteries, it is issuing a recall out of an abundance of caution. In doing so, Acer adds its name to a list that includes nearly every major PC vendor in the world–Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba, Sharp, Gateway, Hitachi and Fujitsu. Some 10 million notebook batteries have been recalled worldwide since this issue first came to light, costing Sony an estimated $430 million and untold damage to its reputation in the consumer electronic industry.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070426/acer-recall/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20070412/new-pc-junk-programs/ http://allthingsd.com/20070412/new-pc-junk-programs/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:01:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070413/new-pc-junk-programs/ Last week, when I condemned the flood of crippled trial software, ads and offers that come loaded on new Windows Vista computers, readers reacted strongly. I received roughly 700 emails, all but a handful agreeing with me. The column was the most popular article that day on WSJ.com and was cited on numerous other Web sites.

Clearly, many people are furious about these unwanted programs and icons, which are sometimes called craplets. Many would like to smite them without going through the laborious process of uninstalling them manually, one at a time. Some readers suggested strategies. The following are some options.

One ray of hope is a free program called PC Decrapifier. It can be downloaded at pcdecrapifier.com. This software automates the process of uninstalling craplets. It was written originally to clean up Dell computers, but its author says it will work on other brands, too. Before PC Decrapifier runs, it allows you to remove from its proposed deletion list any programs it considers junk, but which you might prefer to retain.

I haven’t tested PC Decrapifier, but even assuming it works well there are a couple of downsides. First, it may not remove every craplet from every manufacturer. Also, unless you carefully tweak the deletions list, PC Decrapifier might remove some full working copies of preinstalled software that you want; it can’t easily differentiate between trial and real versions of some commonly bundled programs.

Another option is to order a PC without the craplets in the first place. Some high-end Dell gaming machines are sold this way. Dell says you can also opt out of some third-party software on other models. Certain business models from various makers can be purchased clean, as well. But even business machines sometimes come with unwanted trial software, like limited versions of accounting programs, and may not be configured for consumers.

Dell, Sony and others say they are moving toward a new scenario in which all of this stuff will be easily refused on all models.

An alternate strategy is to avoid brand-name Windows computers and buy a Vista PC from a local shop that will construct it to your specs and leave off all the craplets. The catch is that you may pay more, and you must be certain that the shop will be around and willing to provide support for the life of the machine.

Some techies wrote me to say that the first thing they do with a new PC is to wipe out the hard disk and reinstall Windows so they start with a clean machine. But I can’t recommend this for average users. For one thing, many new PCs no longer come with disks for reinstalling a full, clean version of Windows. Some have special sections of the hard disk from which you can perform a “recovery,” but these recoveries may not be complete or may reload the craplets along with Windows. You could, of course, buy a fresh copy of Vista to reinstall, but that could cost hundreds of dollars.

Also, wiping out and rebuilding an operating system can be tricky for nontechies. Dell told me, “It is not advisable for nontechie consumers to wipe the hard drive and reinstall. … This is intended as an emergency backup or for the technically sophisticated.” Sony and Gateway sent me similar warnings.

Finally, an excellent way to avoid or minimize the craplet problem is to simply buy an Apple Macintosh computer. New Macs don’t have any craplets displayed on their desktops. On a new Mac, no third-party software is automatically launched when you start the computer, and you don’t need antivirus or antispyware programs because the Mac is essentially free from those menaces. So, even my year-old Mac laptop reboots roughly three times as fast as my three-week-old Sony.

Apple does include a few third-party programs on Macs, including one that, oddly, is for drawing comic-strip effects on photos. But these are tucked away in the applications folder and most are full working versions, not trials or offers. The main exception is a trial version of Microsoft Office. With some Mac models, you get trials of two Apple programs, iWork and FileMaker Pro. But these trials can be deleted simply by dragging the icons to the trash can.

Computer makers should stop dumping craplets on us. Until they do, you can find ways to avoid them.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. See video versions of my reviews at wsj.com/mossbergvideo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20070412/new-pc-junk-programs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20060518/h-p-lenovo-laptops/ http://allthingsd.com/20060518/h-p-lenovo-laptops/#comments Thu, 18 May 2006 23:59:00 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20060518/h-p-lenovo-offer-small-affordable-laptops/ The laptop factories of China have begun to churn out a new wave of diminutive, portable PCs for brand-name computer makers that should help lighten the briefcases of road warriors without lightening their wallets too much.

These latest models aren’t quite as small as the teeniest laptops available, like Sony‘s Vaio TX series, which are flaunted at airports like skinny fashion models at a photo shoot. But the new contenders have larger screens than the TX and cost less than the $2,300 or more that the Sony commands.

These new laptops all have screens that measure 12.1 inches diagonally. All hover around four pounds, though in some basic configurations some can weigh as little as three pounds. Even well equipped, they cost between $1,400 and $1,700.

Gateway began the most recent wave with a slender model released earlier this year, the NX100X, starting at just $1,400. But, unlike the Sony TX and other new models, it lacks an internal DVD drive.

I’ve been testing and comparing two newer entries that do pack an internal DVD drive into their small cases. One is the first ultraportable laptop from Hewlett-Packard in years, the Compaq nc2400. The other is one of the first crop of portables to be sold in the U.S. under the brand name of Lenovo, the Chinese computer giant, which now owns the IBM ThinkPad line of laptops. It’s called the Lenovo 3000 V100.

The H-P Compaq NC2400, already shipping, can be bought for as little as $1,549. A stripped-down model of the new Lenovo 3000 V100, which will be available soon, can be had for a mere $1,099. But the configurations of both computers I tested — selected and provided by the manufacturers — each cost precisely $1,649.

I like both of these machines, despite the fact that the H-P and Lenovo marketing people apparently skipped the class in business school about giving products simple, memorable names. You won’t go wrong with either of these laptops. But for their identical price, you get very different computers.

Based on “speeds and feeds,” the raw specs of a computer, the Lenovo offers much more than the H-P. But based on the key components of road-warrior mobility — weight, size and battery life — the H-P crushes the Lenovo.

Lenovo 3000 V100

The H-P is a dark-gray and black model that feels svelte, but solid. It is less than an inch thick, and the version I tested, with an extra-strength six-cell battery that protruded from the rear, weighed in at 3.8 pounds.

The Lenovo has a silvery lid and a black body that manages to look bulkier than it really is. It’s 1.25 inches thick, and the version I tested, which also had an extra-strength, six-cell battery that protruded from the rear, weighed 4.1 pounds.

The H-P also has a smaller footprint for a desktop or airline tray — 11.1 by 8.38 inches vs. 12 by 8.9 inches for the Lenovo.

I put the two contenders through my harsh battery test, where I turn off all power-saving features and keep the hard disk working.

The Lenovo’s battery lasted two hours, 41 minutes, an OK time for a little laptop. In more normal use with power saving on, it would likely approach 3.5 hours.

But the H-P Compaq nc2400 blew away the Lenovo on battery life, with a startling endurance of four hours, 27 minutes. This performance, one of the best I have ever recorded, suggests that with its power-saving features turned on, the little H-P could allow you to work for six hours straight without recharging.

On speeds and feeds, however, the tables are turned. The H-P I tested has a relatively wimpy Intel Core Solo processor running at 1.2 gigahertz, though it can be ordered with faster processors. The Lenovo has an Intel Core Duo, with the equivalent of two processors, running at two gigahertz. The H-P has 512 megabytes of memory; the Lenovo has one gigabyte — twice as much. The H-P has a 40 gigabyte hard disk. The Lenovo’s hard disk is 100 gigabytes.

I didn’t find the H-P sluggish at the typical, mainstream tasks I threw at it. But for the same price, you get much more power and storage in the Lenovo.

About the only basic spec where the H-P beats the Lenovo is screen resolution. The H-P’s is slightly higher — 1,280 by 800 compared with 1,200 by 800 on the Lenovo.

Both machines include built-in fingerprint readers, but the Lenovo also has a built-in camera, which the H-P lacks. The Lenovo also uses the same keyboard found on the ThinkPad line, which I regard as the best on any laptop.

The Lenovo lacks the rugged magnesium frame and hard disk shock-protection features that were pioneered on the ThinkPad. The H-P does have versions of these protective features. And the Lenovo uses a typical touch pad to control the cursor, while the H-P uses a mid-keyboard pointing stick.

With these two contenders, your $1,649 can either buy you a somewhat smaller machine with bare-bone specs but fabulous battery life, or a better-equipped model that’s a bit bigger and much more power-hungry.

Take your pick.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

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