Tech news you should be interested in this week:

Microsoft announced on Tuesday that its Vista operating system won't be released until January of next year (link from CNet news.com). Office 2007 is also delayed to come out in tandem with the new OS.

PC manufacturer Dell bought gamer-targeted manufacturer Alienware (link from Ars Technica). Alienware will continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and at least at the moment, Dell continues to sell its own ludicrously expensive high-end gaming machines, the XPS series.

The Game Developers Conference has been going on in San Jose (link to GameSpot's coverage). Highlights so far have been Nintendo head Satoru Iwata's keynote about the company's plans for the Revolution and the Nintendo DS, and a presentation from Will Wright of Maxis talking about the influences towards the design of Spore. Wright is also guest editor of this month's game-centric issue of Wired magazine.

And because it wouldn't be the SFist Tech Labs without mentioning Apple: Gizmodo.com is passing along a rumor that seems to give more weight to all the speculation about an upcoming iPod cell phone.

Image from Hanes.com