A pair of computer glitches have eaten into Dell's third quarter with the company today lowering revenue guidance for the period.

Dell now expects third quarter revenue to come in at $13.9bn - well below a previous revenue range of between $14.1b and $14.5bn. Weak sales of consumer goods in the US and business products in the UK were fingered for the shortfall. The earnings miss stands as a rare occurrence for the hardware maker.

"The charge also includes the costs of workforce realignment, product rationalizations and excess facilities," Dell said.

The Austin American-Statesman reported that Dell laid off hundreds of workers last week.

Analysts will be paying close attention to see if Dell's results also suffered as a result of increasing interest in AMD's Opteron processor. Dell is the only major server vendor not to sell servers with the increasingly popular chip, opting for an Intel-only position. Intel has fallen behind its rival with dual-core processor technology, making Opteron servers more attractive to the likes of HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems and their customers.

Dell announces full third quarter results on Nov. 10. ®

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