'Buy our PCs or founder,' Dell tells nations

WCIT The Dell model isn't just about removing the middle man and creating an efficient business. When it comes to developing nations, the Dell model is one where the countries create policies that make buying computers, servers and storage easy.

"All governments should set an ambitious goal that anyone in their country that wants to access (modern technology) should be able to get it," said Dell Chairman and company founder Michael Dell, speaking today here at the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT).

Dell urged a crowd of about 1,500 people from around the globe to support technology – or else. Countries that don't alter their tax and regulatory policies to make buying computer gear as simple as possible could be in real trouble.

"As simple as it sounds, some nations have yet to (tweak their laws), and as a result, I believe they will never reach their full potential," Dell said.

Much of Dell's speech celebrated China and its policies around developing information technology.

China has "delivered fantastic results," Dell said. He, in fact, cheered China so much that we couldn't help but think Dell was doing some serious politicking while on stage.

Most of the CEOs speaking at the WCIT have preached a similar message to Dell's, which isn't surprising given the nature of the event. This isn't your speed and spec kind of trade show. It's all about discussing the "big issues" around technology such as pumping broadband into villages and making sure data centers don't destroy the planet on a scale far beyond automobiles.

To that last point, Dell announced that his company has joined the Green Grid project as a "founding member." This, however, is one of those deals where you buy founding member status as opposed to being an actual founding member of the organization. AMD, Sun, HP and IBM were the first big name vendors to back the Green Grid thing, which launched last month.

Dell and Intel were missing in action until today when Dell was grandfathered in as a green computing pioneer.

We asked Dell why his company still does not use AMD's more energy efficient processors given its green leanings, but he declined to answer the query directly in front of the WCIT crowd.

"There are a lot of new things going in the microprocessor world, including an improved focus on energy efficiency," he said. "We believe we're developing products that will give our customers the absolutely best technology in the market. I think I'll leave it at that." ®