Back at CES, we had a chance to see and feel the Dell XPS 13 notebook, which is the smallest 13-incher that we have seen so far.

There is no doubt that this Broadwell-U fifth generation Core i5 powered notebook is something special, but we have noticed that in Europe it costs an arm and leg.

The basic configuration in the USA starts at very reasonable $799 + tax and, and in this SKU Dell offers a Core i3 5010U, 4GB RAM and 128GB HDD and non-touch display.

The cheapest XPS 13 in Europe costs €1329.00 or $1511.40 at today's exchagne rate, which is almost double the price. Let's be clear in Europe you will get a Core i5 5200U, 8GB or RAM and 256 GB HDD with a touchscreen display, which is clearly a faster and better equipped than US basic $799 configuration.

If we want to compare apples to apples, the same configuration in US would set you down $1099.99, again significantly less than what you would have to pay in Europe.

In case you are happy with spending €1499.00 you can even get the Core i5 5600U, a CPU option that currently is not available for US customers. There is even a 512GB SSD option is available in Germany too.

We believe that $799 is really nice price for the XPS13 inch machine, but €1329 with tax is simply too much. In the US you end up paying a bit more, as $799 is the price without sales tax that ranges between zero and 12 percent and in the worst case scenario, if you live in Arkansas the same notebook will cost $894.88. Best-case scenarios like Delaware means the $799 notebook is $799 as there is no sales tax there, in Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon.

In the US, Best Buy has them in stock for roughly two weeks now and we had a chance to check one of them. We were lucky enough to have an internet connection and try a few websites and the general performance but we didn’t had the time to install Google Play applications and give this one hands-on preview with some benchmarks.

The display is gorgeous to read and look and the RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera is supposed to tell you the depth of picture as well as provide the ability to measure the pictured objects. We needed more time to really test the RealSense camera but, we did open a few website and swapped between applications.

The Dell Venue 8 7840 worked well, but it was not as snappy as some other Android tablets based on Qualcomm or Nvidia chips we had a chance to. This might be a limitation of Android 4.4.4, but again, some Tegra and Snapdragon based tablets with Android 4.4 are snappier. Dell is proud of this tablet, but the happy man at the picture Hermann Eul Vice President General Manager, Mobile and Communications Group promised us that we will see this tablet in late 2014. The reality was that Intel and Dell managed to ship it slightly later, in the first days of January 2015.

The runner up is powered by Core i5 5200U with 3MB of cache that clocks up to 2.7GHz, 4GB DDR4L 1600MB Intel HD Graphics 5500 and 128GB SSD for $899.

If $999 is your maximal amount you plan to spend, this money gets you XPS 13 with the same 13.3 inch 1920x1080 screen, 8GB DDR3L and same Core i5 5200U Broadwell CPU. All the XPS 13 that were selling below $1000 will not come with a touchscreen which is disappointing.

The most expensive XPS 13 option comes with 13.3 UltraSharp QHD+ (3200 x 1800) infinity touch display same Core i5 5200U processor based on 14nm Broadwell architecture TDP of 15W that can be configurable all the way down to 7.5W.

Dell tells us that the $899 and $999 machines will ship on January 29, while the most expensive machine with UltraSharp QHD+ (3200 x 1800) infinity touch display ships on February 4. The Core i3 $799 version should ship two days later. Dell didn’t use Ultrabook branding for this one.

Dell is obviously taking the 4K/UHD transition seriously and it currently offers five UHD monitors, along with a '5K' 27-inch unit.

Dell's latest UHD models started shipping in Europe late last week.

Dell Professional P2415Q replaces last year's Ultrasharp model?

The Dell Professional P2415Q is a 24-inch 3840x2160 monitor rated at 300cd/m2 and 1000:1 static contrast. The response time is 6ms.

The monitor is based on an IPS panel, supports 4K at 60Hz and packs HDMI (MHL), DisplayPort 1.2, Mini DisplayPort 1.2 and DisplayPort out. There's a 4-port USB 3.0 hub on board too, along with a 100x100 VESA mount.

We found it listed in Britain for GBP 362, which translates into about €435. We do not know the official price yet. Judging by the spec, it should replace the old UltraSharp UP2414Q.

Dell Professional P2715Q offers similar spec

The Dell Professional P2715Q is essentially just a bigger model, with a 27-inch IPS panel and a very similar spec - 300cd/m2 brightness, 1000:1 static contrast, 6ms response and the same range of connectors.

Unlike the 24-incher, this model is already shipping in Germany and the asking price is €699. This doesn't make it the cheapest UHD monitor out there, but then again it does have an IPS panel and a few other goodies.

Dell got back to us about the Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet following our recent article, in which we pointed up that it has yet to ship. The company said the tablet will officially launch at CES 2015.

This is the tablet that Michael Dell held in his hand at IDF 2014 in September and later Jim Parsons promoted the sleek device in a commercial that aired less than two weeks ago.

Dell told Fudzilla:

"The Venue 8 7000 – the world’s thinnest at 6mm, with the world’s best display (2560 x 1600 OLED) and the first RealSense depth camera integrated into such a small form factor – is going to be officially announced with pricing and availability at CES."

It cannot be clearer than that, but we would be a tad happier to know what sort of SoC Intel uses in this tablet is and it would be great to know the price. There is still a chance that this will be the thinnest tablet by the time it actually launches, although we don’t think that Dell will be the only brand launching new products at CES.

The competition never sleeps and after a lot of digging around the most serious candidate for the SoC inside the ultrathin tablet is the Intel Atom Z3580, a 22nm processor previously codenamed Moorefield. This SoC is a quad-core clocked at up to 2.33GHz and based on the Silvermont architecture. The prototype that Dell showed back at IDF 2014 and Dell World was running Android 4.4 and Morefield Atom Z35xx has been confirmed as the SoC of choice.

Moorefield is ready for 64-bit Android 5.0 and this might be the reason behind the slight delay. Let's face it, Lollipop is the biggest Android refresh in years and it's a big selling point.

There is no doubt that Airmont, the 14nm follow up architecture for mobile Atom has been delayed. In September 2013, Intel's Hermann Eul, VP GM mobile communication group announced that Airmont 14nm Atom is coming in 2014. Well it didn’t show up and it won't as 2014 is coming to an end.

Seeing Jim Parsons' commercial that glorifies Intel's RealSense technology made us realise that the thinnest tablet that was showcased at the IDF 2014 never shipped. Jim, aka Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory, does hold one of these tablets in his hands.

The Dell Venue 8 7000 is an 8.4-inch tablet with an amazing 2560x1600 OLED Infinity Edge-to-Edge Display and it is just 6 mm thick. Another feature that makes it stand in the bushel of Android tablets is the Intel's RealSense Snapshot Depth Camera that can measure a depth in the picture and enable an alternative ways of computer interaction. It looked quite good at the Intel IDF 2014 Keynote, but unfortunately this particular tablet has failed to materialise.

The tablet was supposed to ship in November, but we haven't heard anything that would point to a retail availability. It has already missed most of the important shopping events and has only weeks before the Christmas shopping frenzy is over.

Dell is shipping the Venue 8 3000 with a 1920x1080 panel sans RealSense camera for $199, but this one is not the bezel-free, nor the thinnest tablet in the world, but it comes with an Intel Dual-Core Atom processor Z3480 that works up to 2.1GHz. Let's hope that the Dell Venue 8 7000 comes soon.

The Dell Venue 11 Pro is a business oriented hybrid tablet and the latest 7000 version comes updated with a Core M, Broadwell 14nm processor. This is a 4.5W TDP processor, it does not need a fan and brings you Core-like performance in rather small and thin for factor.

Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 comes with 64GB or 128 GB of solid state storage and an Intel Core M 5Y10a dual-core processor with 4MB of L3 Cache, clocked between 800 MHz and 2.0 GHz. This processor features Intel HD graphics 5300 with a base clock of 100 MHz and maximum clock of 800MHz. This might not be the only processor option, but Dell didn’t share more at present time.

Dell claims "whole day battery life", but we are quite sure that Dell means a full business day, or 8 hours rather than 24 hours. Dell has three nice accessories for the device, a travel keyboard for a full laptop experience and accompanying thin keyboard for ultra-portability or the Docking station for a traditional monitor, keyboard and mouse PC experience.

It is obvious that Dell targets Windows addicts with this tablet, people who need a bit more power in a compact form factor, more than what they can get from Atom - Bay Trail processors. Broadwell is definitely a huge leap forward for Intel in the tablet / dockable / convertible market, it just bugs us that it is not a bit more affordable.

Despite its reasonable $699.99 price, the Dell Venue 11 Pro is still $100 more expensive than an iPad Air 2 with 64GB of storage. Dell hopes that too many business users are too dependent on Windows, and this is their target audience. The new Venue 11 Pro should start shipping soon.

AMD has hired a former Dell executive to lead the chipmaker's push into the micro server business.

Forrest Norrod will be senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s enterprise, embedded and semi-custom business group and report to AMD’s Chief Executive Lisa Su.

“Forrest is an industry veteran whose strong track record of establishing and growing businesses strengthens our leadership team,” said Dr. Su. “Forrest’s unique combination of engineering, business management and technical expertise at both the chip and system level make him ideally suited to lead AMD into an expanded set of markets where our differentiated technology assets provide a competitive advantage.”

Before being drafted into AMD Norrod, ran Dell's server business and will be tasked with developing chips for new low-power servers to take on the might of Chipzilla in cutting-edge data centres.

Norrod created Dell's first internal startup focused on the hyper-scale datacentre market and was the vice president and general manager, Data Centre Solutions (DCS).He started at Dell as the CTO of Client Products before leading Enterprise Engineering and ultimately having responsibility for all of Dell's global engineering teams.

Prior to Dell, he ran the integrated x86 CPU business at Cyrix and National Semiconductor.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the enterprises of today and tomorrow demand a cloud platform that is reliable, scalable and flexible.

"With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 on the Microsoft cloud, we are delivering the industry's most complete cloud for every business, every industry and every geography," he said.

CPS scales from a single rack to up to four racks and is optimised for infrastructure-as-a-service for Windows and Linux and platform-as-a-service style deployments. It will be released next month, and is described as a collaboration between Microsoft and Dell to create a customer-focused system.

CPS can be installed at increments of one to four racks. A single rack offers 512 cores across 32 servers, 8TB of RAM with 256GB per server, 282TB of usable storage, 1360Gbps of internal rack connectivity, 560Gbps of inter-rack connectivity and as much as 60Gbps connectivity to the external world. Each rack can support some 2,000 virtual machines.

Michael Dell, founder of Dell, has said the company may use ARM for its mainstream servers. Speaking at the Dell Solutions Summit in Brussels, Dell said: “If ARM works, really works, and costs less, we will use ARM.”

This is a bit of a poke in the eye for the company’s relationship with Intel. The company has just released the 13th generation of its PowerEdge server suite, based on Intel’s newest Xeon chip, the E5 2600 v3. Dell said that as ARM moved to 64-bit architecture; it became more interesting to him. But at the moment Intel is absolutely the best and that’s what customers want."

Dell said the company has a long-standing partnership with companies such as Intel because the capital required to build the next generation of semiconductors is significant.

“We are co-dependent on each other. If you look at Intel’s revenue reports, you will find that Dell represents 15% of Intel’s 'other' revenue," he said. “If you look at the enterprise customers, their infrastructures have a long tail of legacy IT, which have to be tested and certified, so they are not exactly jumping on the ARM bandwagon."