Microsoft’s renewed nervousness about Chromebooks was likely influenced by advance knowledge of Dell’s announcement that it would be joining Acer, HP and Samsung in manufacturing the ultraportable laptops in January.

The machine will have a Celeron 2955U processor, a choice of 2GB or 4GB RAM and 16GB of flash storage. The screen will be an 11-inch 1366×768 display with 720p front-facing webcam. You’ll get two USB 3 sockets plus HDMI in a case less than an inch thick and weighing under three pounds. Battery-life is said to be around 10 hours …  expand full story

Michael Dell hosting a hangout

GigaOm is reporting that Michael Dell, Dell’s CEO and chairman, wants to use Google+ Hangouts for customer service. Michael Dell has used Hangsouts more than a dozen times to connect with customers, showing he’s a fan of the service and he yesterday said on Google+:

I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?

As of now Google+ is in an invite only beta, so this idea couldn’t be executed yet. But this is certainly some good thinking.