Tech Shout!

CES Letters Call it the battle of triviality. Which staid IT giants do you like more – Microsoft or Dell?

That’s the debate that has emerged after Chairman Michael Dell attacked Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console here at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Dell dismissed Microsoft as a “so called high-definition gaming” player, claiming that gaming consoles will never keep up with the ever-improving performance of PCs. Dell argued that the consoles initially ship with state-of-the-art technology, but consumers cannot upgrade the systems easily and after a few months the consoles are getting old. By contrast, PCs always distribute with the latest and greatest parts, and customers can upgrade internal components.

In particular, Dell pointed to the company’s new limited edition gaming giant – the XPS 600 Renegade. This box swanks a whopping four Nvidia graphics processors and an over-clocked 4.26GHz dual-core Intel chip. The system also has a glossy custom paint job done in a fire motif, which is apparently in reverence to Intel’s chips.

The Renegade which ships in the spring is not yet priced. The regular XPS 600 starts at close to $1,700, so you can figure that the special edition box will run well over $2,000.