Dell broke the heart of another long time amour this week, ditching Microsoft in favour of Google as the pre-installed search engine on its machines.

According to a rash of US reports, Eric Schmidt told an investor conference yesterday that Dell PCs are to be Googled, with the search giant's desktop, toolbar, search engine, and home page all lovingly pre-installed. Previously, Dell customers would see their new machines spark into life plastered with Microsoft logos. The tie-up will cover the vendor's SME and consumer machines, according to reports, and may extend to some enterprise systems.

This is the second time in a fortnight that Dell has called a long-time partner and said: "We need to talk."

Dell, the quintessential Wintel house, announced last week that it would for the first time use AMD parts in its hardware.

In a third piece of desperate shape shifting, the vendor which pioneered the direct model to market announced this week that it would open its own retail outlets in the US.

Anyone would think Round Rock's finest was trying to invent itself in the face of slowing revenue growth and sliding profits Hang-on, it has just reported slowing revenue growth and sliding profits.

Is the world's biggest PC vendor having some sort of mid-life crisis? Here at El Reg we're dreading the moment Michael calls us and says, "it's not you, it's me", before kick starting his newly-bought Harley and riding off into the sunset, singing "I want to break free". ®