Dell Debut's AMD Laptop As System Builders Complain

Written by Adam Gosling

Thursday, 02 November 2006

Dell has unveiled its first notebook computers featuring AMD CPUs with the release of the 1500 series Inspiron. It's good news for AMD, but smaller system builders have begun to complain that it's now harder to obtain processors with Dell soaking up AMDs supply. The Inspiron 1501, now available in the US at a starting price of US$549 is based around the AMD Sempron, Turion 64 and 64X2 processors and comes in a 15.4-inch screen form factor. At the top end of the range, the 1501 can be fitted with an AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology (TL-56) and up to 2GB RAM, though this configuration will cost much more than the US$549 Sempron-based unit. The systems use an ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 chipset. ATI was acquired by AMD earlier this year. Dell's decision to use AMD processors came back in May this year, but the company was more eager to see its servers with AMD Opteron processors than the laptop range. It took AMD years to get Dell's business. Traditionally an Intel shop, Dell was believed to be concerned that AMD would not be able to supply sufficient quantities for Dell's high volume, low margin direct sales business. While AMD evidently convinced Dell it could supply, this has come at a cost. Although AMD has denied current shortages are the result of its relationship with Dell, AMD channel partners are up in arms over what they say is preferential treatment being given to Dell. They say Dell has ordered up all the available stock leaving resellers vulnerable as they cannot satisfy their own demand for AMD processors. Related news items Tiny Rugged UMPC WIth Vista -10/10/2007 HP Goes iPaq Mad -06/09/2007 Leather-Bound ThinkPad Has Its Own Nerd -06/09/2007 Semi-Rugged With Grunt -05/09/2007 With Half A Billion Cell Phones China Readies High Speed -24/08/2007 Newer news items New Lenovo Tablet Knows Which Way Is Up -14/11/2006 Budget MacBook Gets Core 2 Makeover -08/11/2006 AMD-Based Dell Inspiron 1501 Launched in Aus -06/11/2006 Dell Has AMD Latitiude Planned -06/11/2006 Sony Plans World's Lightest Laptop -05/11/2006 Older news items Massive Sony Battery Recall Completes Debacle -24/10/2006 MacBook's Get Processor Upgrade -24/10/2006 Pioneer Adds Grunt To UMPC -27/09/2006 Acer Low-Cost Vista-Ready Laptop -18/09/2006 Acer's Core 2 Duo Laptops -12/09/2006 Tag This Now: