Dell gives away free kit

HARDORE GAMING WANNABE Dull Computers has told readers of its Direct2Dull bog that gamers well-heeled enough to purchase the XPS 700 monstrosity will be able to get a new motherboard, gratis.

The boys from Texas caused a storm last year by releasing a gaming PC that was actually quite good. The XPS 700 packed GeForce 7-series cards into an nForce 5 motherboard, coupled it with Core 2 Duo and put it all in a massive aluminium case with metal so thick you could kill a man with the application of side panel to head.

It was well designed and well priced, but with one rather massive flaw - despite being advertised as nForce 5, it lacked many of the features that characterised the Nvidia chipset, namely networking, EPP memory, VT and overclocking functionality. This cheesed off a number of buyers, unhappy at Dell's mis-implementation.

Well, Dell, in the spirit of user-interactivity and bogosphere love, has decided to do a few things to put this right. There's a new BIOS coming in the next few weeks which adds support for Intel's Virtualisation Technology as well as BIOS overclocking for Core 2 Extreme processors and EPP memory support.

However, it won't enable support for Quad-core Kentsfield processors - not great for a top-of-the-line gaming PC. For that, you'll be pleased to hear, Dell will give you a new motherboard later on this year that you can whack into your system for a free upgrade. Goodness knows what chipset it will be based on - could be Bearlake from Intel, could be nForce 6 or even 7 from Nvidia - but it will be, Dell assures us, better than the current one. If you want to purchase a Kentsfield at the same time as getting the new motherboard, you can even get 25 per cent off.

The financial hit that Dell is taking by providing free components and free onsite installation suggests that the firm is taking a serious line on pleasing high-end customers and gamers, perhaps signalling that Michael Dell's new tenure as CEO of the company could see it go more upmarket, and away from the cheap-as-chips PCs that have dominated the past half-decade of its online sales. Round Robin at Round Rock? µ