Speaking of design, Dell updates its 15.4-inch Inspiron notebooks

Dell said Thursday that it is updating its Inspiron 1525 15.4 inch notebooks with smaller versions and new colors.

Dell noted in its blog that its Inspiron 1525 is 25 percent smaller than the previous version and adds

four patterns with color-coordinated accessories--for those of you that care about those sorts of things. I can't color coordinate my clothes. Color coordinating my PC would really throw me off.

The update from Dell says a few things:

• First, Dell has its color problems under control and can do colors beyond the blue and red hues. If Dell can pull off patterns dubbed "Blossom, Chill, Commotion and Street" I suppose its painting issues are a think of the past.
• The other point reinforces the design issue with Lenovo, which also launched consumer laptops. Lenovo will have to roll out new designs quickly. The battle isn't memory and standard PC features--it's whether you have a laptop that's the right shade of fuchsia.

For those technically inclined folks that don't even know what fuchsia is (I had to look it up) Dell is also offering a data migration service that sounds pretty handy. Here's Dell's description:

Customers download an application onto their old system that "grabs" personal settings like desktop wallpaper, Internet favorites, Outlook contacts, encrypts it and then transmits it securely to the Dell factory to be loaded onto their new Dell PC. PC-to-PC Transfer can also capture data files like music, digital photos, documents and spreadsheets, presentation files and more, when customers purchase a subscription to DataSafe online backup.