We get that it’s exciting when you’re a part of a company that’s about to launch a new product. What we don’t get is how these employees failed so badly on a PR stunt that the police had to break up a party and haul them away. Anyway, here’s basically what happened: as part of an internal PR stunt, Bryan Chester ran through Dell’s Round Rock campus offices dressed in black, wearing a mask, metallic objects in hand, and telling people to “go to the lobby,” where, according to a source, some sort of promotional event for the new Dell Streak tablet was about to take place (it looks like it had something to do with the tablet being able to interface with Harley Davidson bikes, which might explain the black biker getup Chester was wearing, but doesn’t explain the decision to go about it that way). Unfortunately, only Chester and his supervisor Daniel Rawson was in on it. To cut a long story short, Round Rock police ended up arresting the two for causing the disturbance. Check out the news clip after the break, or read the whole story here.
When they announced the launch earlier this week, we all learned that the Dell Streak came in two options: you can either pick it up for $300 if you don’t mind signing up with AT&T for two years, or $550 without the contract… but you’re still going to have to go with AT&T. It’s just been confirmed by Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca that even if you shell out $550 for the contract-free version, it’s still SIM-locked to AT&T, giving you no choice but to use AT&T anyway.
It will, according to tech writer John Gruber who apparently gets his Apple inside-info from accurate sources. Not that the idea’s far-fetched. The iPhone 4’s FaceTime-ready dual cam already looks to be a certain addition, so packing the same high-res screen on the next iPod touch is something that we already expect.
The short mention of the Retina Display came on a post about Dell’s relatively expensive Streak, where Gruber wrote that the 5-inch Streak’s price would be “almost twice as much as a good iPod Touch, and if you wait a few weeks to buy the Touch, you’ll get one with a Retina Display and dual cameras.”
Finally, the last bit of info on Dell’s upcoming 5-inch Streak tablet has been revealed. We’ve known about the specs and the price, but Dell just came out with a release date, and it’s pretty close: it’s set to go on sale this Friday, August 13th, for $300 with a 2-year AT&T contract, or $550 without the network subsidy. If you signed up for the pre-sale, you can also pick up a sweet Plantronics Bluetooth kit for 99 cents when you get your Streak.
Dell just confirmed the price for the upcoming 5-inch Streak mobile tablet: it’ll be sold for $299 if you pick up the tablet-slash-Android smartphone along with a two-year AT&T contract or $549 if you want an unlocked version you can use with any mobile network. The pricing makes it significantly cheaper compared to Apple’s 3G-packing iPad that starts at $629, and could probably be better if you prefer a more mobile slate that can actually run Flash.
