Dell announced two refreshed top-of the line 7000 series models, and brought the Wyse PCs into the OptiPlex family for the first time with the OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client.

The last decade has not been a strong one for much of the desktop PC market. While wide-eyed projections that PCs of all types would be replaced by phones never came to be, for the most part it has been the notebook market that did well, as people creating content found phones problematic for anything for rigorous than email. That is no longer the case, however. The worldwide commercial desktop PC industry [excluding Chrome grew 10.5%] year-over-year in Q4 2021. According to IDC, Dell Technologies’ share increase was significantly larger than that, with growth of more than 26% in their OptiPlex commercial desktop brand.

“We feel there will always be a place for desktops, especially in the commercial market,” said Susan Craig, Product Manager on the OptiPlex product management team. “When people moved to home, because of COVID, we initially saw a mass shift to notebooks. However, many of them didn’t like to work on a 14 inch screen. So many – including our own employees at Dell – rediscovered the power of desktops at a much lower price point than a notebook. While we recognize there has been a shift to notebooks, customers still see a strong place for desktops.”

Three new desktops are being announced. Two of them, the OptiPlex 7000 Micro, a premium high-performance, super-compact PC with optional Intel vPro, and the OptiPlex 7400 All-In-One, designed for premium collaboration experiences, are refreshes of existing models in the 7000 series at the top of Dell’s lineup. The third model, the OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client, brings the Dell Wyse thin client technology into the OptiPlex brand.

“Now that we have an OptiPlex thin client product, we think people will have a close look at it,” Craig said. “It’s a follow-on of our Wyse offerings, moving our Fixed product from that to OptiPlex.”

The OptiPlex 3000 Thin Client has the latest N-series Intel processors, and multiple OS options including Dell ThinOS, Ubuntu Linux and Windows 10 IoT Enterprise.

The refreshed OptiPlex 7000 Micro high-performance, super-compact PC with optional Intel vPro, and the OptiPlex 7400 24-inch All-in-One both have the latest Intel chip technology. Craig emphasized that this is much more significant than the normal regular processor updates.

“It’s exciting for desktops to be able to offer Alder Lake,” she said. “In desktops, we had not had a lot of processor improvements recently. Now we have a 10nm stack and can take advantages of those improvements.”

The Alder Lake enhancements will of course, be available to all OEMs, including Dell’s competitors.  However, Craig stressed that improvements to Dell’s software in the desktops, something that is unique to them, are significant.

“The big one here is the Dell Optimizer software, which enables desktops through AI to perform better based on a user’s proclivities,” she said. “The top five applications on the computer will automatically be recognized and Optimizer will open them faster and respond quicker.”

Intelligent Audio is another feature, which delivers audio and mic enhancements and reduces background noise.

“Allowing the system to see through external noise is really useful on conference calls,” Craig said.

The webcam has also been upgraded with Temporal Noise Reduction (TNR) and Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) technology for improved video-conferencing experience.