Dell woos gamers and greens

LAS VEGAS--Dell wants us all to breathe a little easier about the power consumption of its PCs.

In his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show here Tuesday, Chairman Michael Dell introduced a number of new gaming systems and components--as well as a program to plant trees that will suck up the carbon dioxide indirectly generated by the fast PCs.

Although someone dressed as Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies came on stage to help demonstrate a new backup service called Dell DataSafe, the speech was generally low-key. One of Dell's other guests on stage was Naomi Halas, a professor at Rice University who has come up with a nanoparticle that may be used one day to fight cancer cells.

The "Plant a Tree for Me" program essentially encourages consumers to donate money--$2 for notebooks and $6 for desktops--when they buy new PCs from Dell. The audience clapped often, but only got responsibly excited.

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