Global PC shipments grew by 14.6 percent to 69.5 million units in the first quarter of 2008, which beat previous estimates of 13.2 percent according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.

The U.S. market showed signs of the economic slowdown, but growth remained positive at 3.5 percent for the quarter. The other international markets compensated for the U.S. coming in more than 2 points above estimates due to continued strength in developing countries.

No April Fools joke here, as Dell plans to shut down its manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, as part of a broader series of job cuts.

At first glance, the random acquisition of an email services company doesn’t sound all that intriguing.  But Dell spent $155 million for MessageOne, so it’s pretty noteworthy from a business perspective.  And to make matters even more interesting, MessageOne’s cofounder is the brother of Michael Dell.

If you make less than $2 million per month, and can deal with doing something that is illegal and perhaps "morally annoying," have we got a career for you: typosquatter.  As a development in a Dell lawsuit shows, it’s an extremely profitable position.

Shoppers can find Dell computers in retail stores.  Any displays aren’t likely to feature neon arrows and all-caps lettering, however, as various people have noted that there’s not an all-out push taking place.

Forget about trademark infringement; computer manufacturer Dell wants to make a statement in its lawsuit against domain registrars.

If something’s both manufactured and sold by one company, does it make much sense to call it by another corporation’s name?  I’m not sure, but it’s something Google and Dell may want to address; Dell now handles a lot of things related to the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini.

Another “tops in tech” list has come out, and most of the names you’d expect to see are on it.  What’s surprising, though, is that no one closely connected to Google made the top three; instead, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell were voted the most influential IT personalities.

Dell Inc. embraced social media in a big way with the launch of Direct2Dell, its customer focused blog. Greeted originally with catcalls by many observers, the blog—under the guidance of Lionel Menchaca and other members of Dell’s communications and customer service team—has been a cornerstone in the computer maker’s reputational turnaround success story.

About three months ago, Ask joined a tree-planting program created by Dell to offset carbon emissions.  Those trees are presumably doing just fine.  The bigger piece of news relates to energy-efficient servers the two companies discussed, and those are also on track.

The CEO of Dell recently discussed his company’s future, and things are not going to be business as usual; “acquisition” and “innovation” were two of the talk’s main themes.

A carbon-reducing tree planting initiative backed by Dell and Ask.com will complement the deployment of new energy efficient servers for Ask’s datacenters.

Search engine Ask.com and Dell have partnered to protect the environment with custom energy efficient servers.

Lenovo Group announced today that it would sell no thrills personal computers targeted at China’s large poor rural population starting at $199.

Amazon.com and Best Buy were ranked #1 for being the best online electronics retailers according to a Keynote Customer Experience Rankings for Electronics Retailers study.

PC shipments worldwide reached 61.1 million units in the second quarter of 2007. There was an 11.7 percent increase from the same period last year according to Gartner.

Google hasn’t yet mentioned the deal on its Official Enterprise Blog, but luckily for us, Bluewolf issued a press release.  It turns out that the company “has joined the Google Enterprise Professional program to help organizations more efficiently and effectively implement and deploy Google Apps.”

This is not an attempt to bash Google. However, you can sometimes learn what not to do from some very successful people and products.

With its market capitalization of over $160 billion, Google can probably do just about anything.  The search engine giant has chosen not to focus on manufacturing the Google Search Appliance, however – and instead handed over those duties to Dell.

New statistics have indicated that online sales are slowing, and this has worried some people.  Yet “slow growth” is still growth, and – some projections accompanied those stats – even if 25 percent per year (in 2004) was great, nine percent (in 2010) won’t be too shabby.

The deal between Dell and Google that places Google’s toolbar on new Dell PCs has OpenDNS founder and CEO David Ulevitch questioning their practices.