Intel said Monday it had started shipping Sandy Bridge components without the fault. "We believe that over the next few weeks we'll have the situation well in hand," said Ricardo Echevarria, general manager of Intel's business client platform division, who was at the Dell event.

There are a few common themes running through the updates to Dell's new laptops, desktops and workstations announced Tuesday. One is better support for communications tools such as Skype, made possible by better cameras, microphones and sound cards, Dell said.

A new wave of workers -- generation Y -- are displacing the baby boomers and demanding more consumer-like technologies in their PCs. "They're going to be making the decisions about what our future customers will be using," said Ken Musgrave, who runs Dell's enterprise design group.