Dell | wide-area wireless | cellular network | area network

We've taken our newest generation of notebooks and imbedded this 802.11 inside … so when someone orders a computer they can specify that they would like this service built-in. They can either access networks that are already out there, or they can set up their own with an access point in an office or home or that sort of thing.

There is also wide-area wireless, which essentially you can think of like a cellular network, but applied to data, which means it's available on the ground just about anywhere you can make a cellular telephone call. Those networks are still being deployed, and they are in the early stages. Our notebooks have support for those kinds of architectures once they become available. Bluetooth [another wireless technology] is more wireless for a personal- area network.

The state of wireless right now is to get a notebook - preferably from Dell - that has both a wireless Internet connection and a wired Ethernet connection. You can find in any major city a hotel that has connections at a high speed, so you don't have to drop down to a much lower speed just because you are on the road. I was in China [recently] and stayed at a hotel in a small town in Xiamen, where we have a factory. They had high-speed access in the hotel room. It has become a global phenomenon.

AW: What about your strategy for data storage?
Dell: Storage is perhaps where servers were a few years ago. Our external storage business outside of servers grew over 200 percent in the first quarter. It is the fastest-growing part of our company. What is happening is that companies are consolidating large amounts of storage that previously existed in a very dispersed way throughout a company or organization. Consolidating these massive storage farms, we use the same economic principles that worked for Dell in the server market, in the workstation market, in desktops, and in notebooks. Customers, as it turns out, want to save money no matter what they are buying.