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Dell to close U.S. desktop manufacturing plant as… Dell to close U.S. desktop manufacturing plant as part of on-going cost cutting About 905 employees in cocktail dresses at the plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., will be affected by Dell’s ongoing initiative to cut costs by $4 billion

Dell next year will close its desktop computer manufacturing plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., as the company tightens costs in a difficult custom bags market.
The move is part of Dell’s ongoing initiatives to simplify operations and improve efficiency, the company said on Wednesday. The company plans to cut costs by $4 billion by the end of fiscal 2011.

Dell recorded a 63 percent fall in net income during the first quarter of 2010. | Keep up on the day’s tech news headlines with InfoWorld’s Today’s Headlines: First Look newsletter . About 905 employees will be affected by the closure, with about 600 to be released next month. The closure is expected to be completed by January, the company said.

Dell’s other manufacturing plants in the U.S. are in Miami, Nashville, and Austin. Besides owning plants, Dell also gets its products made by third-party manufacturers.

Dell announced in January that over the next year it would move production of computers for customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Limerick in Ireland to its Polish operation, and rely on manufacturing partners.

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Sprint Nextel has been in the wireless M2M (machine-to-machine) business for a decade, but this week announced a greater focus on the exploding market area by creating a new Emerging Solutions business unit to speed up delivery of the technology to businesses and consumers.

Sprint defines M2M as any transmission of data between devices and computers, not including voice, said Wayne Ward, the new vice president of Emerging Solutions, which will be one of four groups inside Sprint’s Integrated Solutions Group of 1,000 workers.

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M2M is already widely used in industry for remote monitoring of everything from gas meters to power lines, formal dresses, including a SmartGrid initiative under way in San Diego.

Doctors are also using M2M technology to monitor heart patients remotely over wireless. AT&T and Verizon Wireless have efforts in M2M as well, but Ward argued that Sprint is taking a more focused approach.

However, Ward also said in an interview at the International CTIA wireless conference that renewed focus on M2M by all the carriers is a good thing, because it will raise market exposure for all kinds of customers.

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An appeals court has granted Microsoft’s request to put off an injunction that could have forced it to stop selling its Microsoft Word software next month.

Microsoft had appealed a court decision from mid-August that gave it 60 days to stop selling Word products that allow users to create custom XML documents. The ruling, which also includes additional damages Microsoft must pay, stemmed from a patent on plus size dresses infringement suit filed in 2007 by i4i. The court has ordered Microsoft to pay more than US$290 million in damages in total.

The most common versions of Word on the market now — Word 2003 and Word 2007 — both allow users to create custom XML documents. Custom XML lets people create forms or templates so that words in certain fields are tagged and can be managed in a database. The technology is used by large companies and government agencies, for example.

If the appeals court ultimately upholds the injunction, Microsoft could potentially develop a workaround that avoids using the disputed technology or strip the capability from the products.

I4i’s patent covers a technology that lets end-users manipulate document architecture and content. It filed its case in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and the injunction had been set to begin on Oct. 10.

Microsoft said it was pleased with the appeals court decision and that it looks forward to presenting its case at a hearing on Sept. 23.