Michael Dell of Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) has confirmed the launch of a Dell-branded smartphone sometime in 2010, one has to wonder this: why? Now that Dell has slipped to third place globally in terms of PC shipments, the computer direct selling pioneer now appears to be rather non-innovative, save for the Adamo paper-thin laptop PC that it keeps touting.

Economic recovery starts on the ground. So, while it's nice to hear the likes of Stephen Schwarzman celebrate the return of IPOs and hefty exit strategies, the real indications that the economy is turning the corner will come when companies start to open their wallets and spend.

After dealing with only the have-to-haves for a while now, companies can start to make the improvements they've been putting off. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) CEO Michael Dell sees this happening in the IT space, with companies expected to ramp up their hardware spending aggressively.

Those with aspirations of unfettered wealth look for clues everywhere. From top schools to unique talents, they build profiles of what it takes to become absurdly wealthy ... as though the process can be blueprinted. Well, if you're looking for answers, the Forbes 400 list is a great place to start. If anyone has mastered the art of making money, it's this collection of billionaires. They have the answers, and you are ready to learn.

A look at the lives of the Forbes 400 implies that the most important attribute is the ability to sift through ambiguity. Contradictions abound, meaning that shades of gray hold the answer to your burning desire for riches. Should you go to a great school? Well, yes ... but only if you're going for an MBA and plan to work for a major financial firm. But, you can still go to an Ivy League school if you're not studying finance but join Skull and Bones. Of course, dropping out of Harvard can be a great way to launch a career in the technology field.

It's tricky. There are no easy answers. But, the road to billions is littered with the corpses of aspiring magnates who thought it wouldn't be difficult. So, don't just read the seven attributes after the jump. Understand them. Read them twice. Then, your future financial situation will be assured.

Or, you can just do one of those chain e-mails and wish for wealth.

[Thanks, Forbes and MSNBC]

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), which has been arguably pummeled in recent years by larger competitor Hewlett-Packard Corporation (NYSE: HPQ), is moving right along every quarter but definitely is not growing like HP is. The Round Rock, TX-based computer behemoth doesn't have the product and services portfolio HP has, and although it has launched into retailers in the last 18 months to great applause, it hasn't been enough. Dell is simply another brand of PC on the retail shelf. There is very little to no value proposition there. What to do?

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) welcomed back its founder, Michael Dell, a little over two years ago after ousting then-CEO Kevin Rollins. Rollins' goal of hitting $80 billion in annual sales never panned out as the company was getting pounded by larger competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) and was completely missing the boat in consumer sales and customized PC products.

Fast forward two years. Is Dell any better? Sure it is -- it has entered the retail market in just about every way, offered cool new designs and product types and has tried feverishly to shed the "PC commodity maker" status it has held for almost its entire history. Just as early as last year, the company re-focused its entire organization around the customer type instead of geographical boundaries. Who knew focus around the customer was the right way to operate?

While Lenovo is facing cutbacks and sluggish sales, the company right ahead of it in global PC sales -- Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) -- is going through some of the same motions. Not only has CEO Michael Dell changed the top management last week, it will continue shedding jobs. As of this morning, the PC maker announced that it would lay off 1,900 workers in Ireland at its main plant there and shift production to Poland instead.

So, U.S. workers are not the only ones feeling the unemployment pinch. In addition to moving all production work to Poland for the EMEA region, Dell will also move parts of the previous Irish production to third-party manufacturers -- something that outgoing operations chief Mike Cannon was an expert at.

Dell's about-to-be former Limerick, Ireland facility was opened in 1990 and employed 4,500 people at its peak. With swings in the global economy and the PC market, though, it's now going away. Dell's status as Ireland's largest single exporter may be at stake after the Limerick facility is closed, but that's not entirely clear yet. The PC maker will continue to operate its sales and marketing division in Dublin as well as keeping open its Global Innovation Solutions Center in Limerick.

This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

There's no doubt about it -- times are tough. People are struggling to find work and to pay the bills as the value of their homes and savings dwindle. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Or do they? It's all relative, of course, but world's billionaires have been taking some big hits too. We take a look at Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Lakshmi Mittal in their own separate posts, but here are some other billionaires who have lost billions this year (courtesy of Forbes and Business Sheet).

• Brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance lost $32.5 billion and $28.2 billion, respectively.
• Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, lost $16.5 billion. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) are down about 32% since the beginning of the year.
• Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen lost $12.3 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, while CEO Steve Balmer lost $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft are down 46% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google Inc. (NYSE: GOOG), lost $11.9 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, and CEO Eric Schmidt lost $3.8 billion. The share price of Google has fallen 55% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), lost $8.2 billion. Shares of Oracle are down 21% since the beginning of the year.
• Media maven Sumner Redstone lost $7.2 billion. Shares of his private investment firm National Amusements fell 70% this year.

Michael Dell needs to get his story straight. He recently said that Dell's (NASDAQ: DELL) sales were doing well in China and the Middle East. Investors should look at that as a good sign.

Now, the CEO of the No.2 PC company says his firm needs to make really big cuts. According to The Wall Street Journal, "The company is imposing a hiring freeze, offering employees voluntary buyouts and asking workers to take one to five days off without pay." The "without pay" thing seems a bit bizarre for a company that is still profitable.

Based on information from last quarter, Dell had $8 billion in cash and made $784 million in net income.

Dell is asking a lot of the people who are still with the company after several rounds of restructuring. The company's founder and CEO is not doing anything to pitch in. Not only is he a billionaire, but according to the firm's last proxy, he made $2.3 billion.

Dell got his company into trouble by overbuilding manufacturing operations. He can afford to take $1 a year so that the people he is asking to do more feel that he is in the trouble with him.

But he did not cut his salary one penny.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) founder and current CEO Michael Dell said this week at the Citigroup technology conference in New York that his company may make a wireless smartphone. Sigh. This rhetoric is getting ridiculous. I am sure Dell hired former Motorola wireless division chieftain Ron Garriques to man the company's technical support lines. Note to Michael Dell: just announce a friggin' phone already and get over it.

In recent years (until about the end of 2007), Dell's formulaic "me too" stance in non-PC electronics like flat-screen televisions, MP3 players and others have fallen flat on their respective faces. When the company saw the market for PDAs dissolving into nothing, it stopped making its Axim line of Windows Mobile PDAs -- which were regarded by some as some of the nicer ones on the market. Yet, it has not replaced that PDA line with a smartphone that is very powerful but features voice calling plus 3G wireless data. In other words, it's way behind the market here. Ask Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) about its iPhone sales for more elaboration on this.

Dell himself stated at the Citigroup conference, "I think you will see us with small screen devices ... you'll see us with smaller and smaller devices that have capabilities of the devices you are referring to. Not in the near-term." What does that mean? Sometime in 2010 we'll see Dell with another me-too smartphone that's cookie-cutter and years behind the competition? If that's the plan, Dell's new smartphone had better be game-changing like Apple's iPhone was in 2007. If not, Dell's history of making commodity products will ring up another boring (but sellable and profitable) semi-winner.

Since returning in January 2007 to the company he founded in 1984, Michael Dell has set many things straight with Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL). It's widely known that some of the best stewards of public companies are the founders, and this is certainly the case with Dell himself. Entering retail in a large way, busting out plenty of new designs, and concentrating on laptop sales have given Dell an edge to use against PC market leader Hewlett-Packard Corporation (NYSE: HPQ), which wrestled the world's largest PC maker crown from Dell in 2006.

Dell is now saying that his company will see more sales growth in 2008 than the overall PC market as a whole. No, this isn't just due to being more in retail with colorful laptops in the U.S. market. Most of the demand that will allow Dell to outpace the industry growth rate will come from strong demand in emerging markets like India and China.

Dell recently said ''The emerging markets are a big part of our growth ... 'Dell will continue to grow faster than the rest of the industry, certainly for the remainder of this year.'' Those are pretty strong words, but it's not surprising. In many instances, companies are pinning their hopes on international sales growth to balance out tepid waters in the U.S. market. Even up until recent times, the red-hot U.S. market was comfortable.

But that's not so much now as gas prices and a bombing mortgage market has turned off the consumer flame. The auto industry is the most lucidly aware of having a balanced product mix globally, and PC makers are there as well. Dell beat HP's shipment growth 21% to 17% in the quarter ended in June, so it's hitting on more cylinders every quarter.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) made quite a few changes in 2007. Its founder, Michael Dell, came back to lead the company, it entered the retail market in the U.S. in a large way and it began introducing more appealing laptop PC designs to cater to the consumers who love choice. As a result of all these changes, CEO Michael Dell is now predicting a strong second half for Dell in 2008.

Dell mentioned that the company he founded would "have a big second half" based on numbers so far in 2008. Dell's consumer business sales rose 20% for the Q1 period ended on May 2, and Dell is predicting even stronger growth for the current quarter and the Q3 period as well.

Based on all the strong moves Dell made in 2007 and into the last fiscal period, he could be right. Dell's retail partnering in the U.S. and with Gome in China is going to mean some wicked business the rest of this year. However, competitor Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) recently unveiled one of the largest product refreshes in its history and Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) just moved past Taiwan's Acer to take the third spot in U.S. PC sales. It won't be a simple task for Dell to keep this segment growing like it has predicted.

And that's just the consumer PC business. Dell's efforts in the large market area that includes Russia, China, India and others grew at a 58% pace in the company's Q1 period, and a grouping of emerging markets accounted for 12% of Dell's sales in the Q1 period as well. Add that to its push into a huge "cloud computing" marketing towards customers who order hundreds or even thousands of servers at a time, and Dell has many tricks up its sleeve to keep things growing at a decent pace.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) co-founder Bill Gates is riding off into the sunset today, at least he sort of is. The man who made nerds and geeks "cool" is shifting his focus away from the world's largest software company to his philanthropic work.

Gates contributions to modern society cannot be understated. When he gets older, my 20-month-old son will no doubt be surprised to learn that there was a time when computers were expensive, impersonal devices the size of several refrigerators. Gates helped make the computer personal. Of that there is no doubt. How he did it remains open to debate. The elite geeks despise Microsoft for developing expensive, inferior operating systems that are prone to crashes and computer viruses.

The shift by Gates, which has been expected for some time, comes as the Redmond, Washington-based company is at a crossroads. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Microsoft was the underdog that upended the tech establishment lead by International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM).

When Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) releases quarterly results Thursday how will it do? Dell has managed to quickly enter the consumer retailer market, which has helped it stave off the more valiant Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ) from running away with just about ever retailer PC sale these days. But investors are bound to say, "that was yesterday -- what have you done for me today?"

Analysts are expecting the company to report earnings of 33 cents per share on revenue of $15.66 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Although Dell announced a $1 billion share buyback plan just a few months ago, it needs to all it can to not let its stock price implode. The growth may be over (permanently), and the brand may not be the premier name it once was. Add that to the fact that the competition (most notably H-P) enjoys every cost savings Dell once did, and the picture become way less rosy.

Does Dell have any angles left? From a fundamental PC selling standpoint, it's hard to make that argument. In terms of Micheal Dell's famous comment that Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) should be sold off in pieces and money returned to shareholders. My, my how the tables have turned. Still, Dell is not going anywhere fast and its stock price could be languishing in the dust for quite some time.

I do a weekly radio show titled Good Day Wealth with Doug Stephan and Georges Yared every Saturday morning coast-to-coast. It's a fun and hopefully informative show about the economy, stock market, etc. We take listeners calls both in email and live on the air. I got an email from one listener, William, who is thinking about putting 60% or so of his portfolio into Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) because "if Steve Jobs can do it with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Michael Dell can do it with Dell."

My response to William is no way -- don't even think about it. Dell is NOT Apple.

Apple is a growth story with multiple legs to it. From the iPod to the iPhone, the new Mac and its attendant software, to, of course, the incredible retail store system that numbers more than 200 strong, globally, Apple is a true growth story for the next several years. Apple has another thing going for it: terrific and expanding margins.

As Doug McIntyre mentioned last week, Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) didn't hit its most recent quarterly numbers amid continuing higher costs during the quarter. The company "has a lot more work to do" -- so much that it seems the one golden boy of cost control is out of sorts with itself. Founder and CEO Michael Dell did say that "we won't grow at all costs" during the conference call. This was directed at the analysts' mosh-pit that expects growth over every other metric. Because, you know, profits are secondary.

Although its retail effort seems to be going well, Dell fights for shelf space and sales with all of its largest competitors at almost every retailer. Entering into retail was not some kind of exclusivity magic shell-game for the computer maker. It has to work long-term, and it hasn't even been a year since Dell entered retail. The company indeed made moves towards "transforming itself" during the quarter (read: cutting costs). But can it continue to expand its business in the U.S. and overseas without washing itself in red ink at the same time? That's the delicate challenge. Unfortunately, top competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) is the strongest it's been in over a decade behind CEO Mark Hurd.

Dell went on to say that "improvements in profitability will take some time," and it will continue to lower headcount to reduce overall costs in addition to designing market-leading notebook PCs for consumers. Both strategies are paying off: one on the costs side and one on the revenue side. Then again, another huge challenge is increasing sales outside the U.S., where Hewlett-Packard currently enjoys roughly two-thirds of its sales. As such, a downturn in any particular market insulates HP from sagging results with the breadth of global sales it has. If Dell can also achieve that level of padding, any consumer downturn that could happen this summer won't hurt nearly as much.