November 2006 - Posts

• Dell Testing of Windows Vista

  Thu. Nov. 30, 2006
  by Mark Anderson, Client OS Development Mgr.

  With the news today that Microsoft has released Windows Vista “gold code” to Enterprise license customers I thought it would be a good time to talk about exactly what is Dell doing to prepare your system for Vista. The answer involves over 100,000 hours of testing, hundreds of engineers, and as mentioned in the previous blog a staggering number of test configurations. (By the way; 100,000 hours to over equates to over 52 years)

  This testing includes lots of things: usage-based feature and functionality testing of the OS; compatibility testing for peripherals and applications; customer based usability testing and performance testing. Dell has utilized its worldwide facilities to conduct testing around the clock to ensure that we provided timely feedback to Microsoft on feature/function changes as well as full milestone based test passes. At Dell, this means a lot more than testing done by other computer manufactures. Even the normal Dell testing means a lot more than just the testing of one configuration that we sell—it means literally hundreds of peripherals, devices, and applications in various combinations and configurations to ensure that no matter what is ordered, the system will work the way it was designed. To be done right, testing a new operating system like Vista is a big responsibility—it meant that we would need to rework our entire test process.

  What is the basis of the testing process? Very early on, we realized some of the changes that Microsoft made for Vista invalidated our ordinary testing process. So we redesigned our testing based upon a how a typical user might utilize the entire product. This holistic model creates an enormously more complex and effective test matrix that helps to ferret out problems that crop up when you test the whole system. This is quite different from the typical industry “test routine” that tests a specific part to see if it works and then moves on....leaving it up to the customer to find out if a specific combination of a TV tuner, graphics card, and mouse works or causes a blue screen.

  We try to think of how a customers uses their system. For instance, a high-end desktop user may use their systems for all kinds of things: playing 3D games, watching, recording and streaming live TV, editing videos and digital photos, surfing the web via a broadband connection, listening to digital music, etc. We designed a user scenario for a power user who will use multiple graphics cards and monitors to play games, surf the web, listen to music, do email, and homework all at the same time. We then designed a series of test cases to approximate this user scenario—configured the system with the maximum memory; added various devices that are generally used in this environment and connected it in a typical home network attached to a cable or DSL modem and stressed the machine to its full capabilities over an extended period of time. We then duplicated this process in Asia and Europe to take into account regional factors. In doing this, we quickly discovered issues not only with the operating system, but graphics, audio, USB and other devices/drivers as well as applications. While this real-world approach to testing takes longer, we feel it is more comprehensive and provides better overall test data for Dell and all of our partners.

  Dell has used the results of this testing to ensure all of our currently shipping systems would be ready to support Vista upon release and to verify that properly configured legacy products would provide an acceptable customer experience. Those results were also used to provide information to customers on our Vista site at www.dell.com/vista. Dell will utilize the experience gained in its testing to provide full solutions to its customers to who want to utilize the new Vista OS with Office 2007and Exchange Server 2007. In addition, Dell has logged hundreds of issues with Microsoft development teams and suppliers and worked directly with the developers to resolve the issues.
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• Unleashing the Community

  Tue. Nov. 28, 2006
  by Sean McDonald, Dir.—Dell Community | Conversations

  The Dell Community Forum has been in existence for over 19 years under many different names. Over the past 3 years, we have discussed the forum’s potential, and considered many different ways to make it better. Five months ago, my team set out to unleash the community. Currently there are over 750,000 registered users in the forum. We had 3,000 new users just last week and have more than a million visits every month. That said, we realize that numbers themselves don’t equal a community.

  Up until now, the Dell Community Forum provided a place to get technical problems fixed by discussing your problem with other users. Technical support is only one value a community can provide. With the redesign, we hope to give users a place to talk about product usage, get advice on purchase decisions and getting the most out of the hardware you currently own.

  With input from our users, we set out to create areas that foster sharing of news, events and training in three areas—Gaming, Digital Life and Tech Talk. If you have participated in the forum before, we aren’t removing anything. The product support aspect remains under Tech Talk. If you have a passion about Gaming and/or Digital Life, you now have specific content and a community to share and learn from.

  But we’ve just gotten started. We will have a formal recognition program for the community members that contribute and help customers in the forum. We will have a better way to score content. Currently we measure success by volume of content created. Moving forward, we’ll provide community scoring based on user feedback—did the content resolve your problem or answer your question? We will upgrade our technology so forum members can easily find what they are looking for. We will establish forums in non-English languages for our international community and add additional interest groups based on your feedback. We will ask you about how you use your Dell products, share the information with the community, teach and learn from others about wireless networking, digital photography, home theater ... the list continues on. If you are currently a community member, thank you. If not, please consider joining—there is no charge and we welcome you to be part of the Dell community to deliver improvements. Please visit the site and tell us how you use our products—we’re running a Purely My Technology sweepstakes to encourage initial dialogue.

  My team needs your help to continue to improve. Please give us feedback on the changes. Let us know what you like and what you don’t. In this vlog, Dawn, Chris and Stephen from the DCF team discuss some of the enhancements and explain how they intend to use the site, not only as Dell employees, but as users of Dell products.

  Format: flv Duration: 3:28

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• Simplifying Systems Management

  Tue. Nov. 28, 2006
  by Subo Guha, Director—Enterprise Software

  Earlier this year, hardware standardization from the desktop to the datacenter was one of the key themes at our Tech Day event. But hardware is only one part of the equation. Industry data shows that acquisition costs are only a fraction of total cost of ownership when compared to the cost of managing that hardware. Because of that, we looked at ways to ease the burden of cost and complexity and came to the conclusion that it’s time to standardize systems management. Why? Customers are faced with a proliferation of tools and consoles in their IT environments, they are grappling with expensive and complex upgrade paths to software management. These transitions not only increase costs, but also cause upheaval in customers’ infrastructures because they have to implement new processes, dedicate more staff and move focus away from what's really important—growing their businesses.

  Today’s announcement outlines what we’re doing to simplify systems management for our customers:

  • We’re proposing Unified Manageability Architecture (UMA) as a blueprint for the industry to standardize systems management. Some Direct2Dell readers may have seen Winston Bumpus’ posts on the Common Diagnostics Model and Common Information Model. Both of these are part of our UMA framework. His team continues to work with standards bodies like the DMTF to provide a layered approach that enables a path to built-in management for hardware and software.
  • We’ve entered into an agreement with Altiris to co-develop the next generation of OpenManage products. We’re also adding functionality to our OpenManage products so they can not only manage hardware—which we do today—but also manage software with snap-in upgradeability.
  • We’ve announced the Dell Open Manage Certified Partner Program, which allows leading systems management vendors to integrate hardware management for Dell hardware. Subsequently, our engineers test and validate that the product works on Dell hardware.

  Industry standards don’t happen overnight, but we are putting measures in place to help customers get the functionality they need to manage their environment with two paths. One path is a single console from Dell and Altiris that manages both the hardware and software. The second is one where customers can choose the vendor of their choice with integrated hardware management for Dell products.

  I explain this topic in terms of customer trends in this vlog:

  Format: flv Duration: 07:38

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• System Requirements for Windows Vista

  Mon. Nov. 27, 2006
  by Daniel Judd, Product Group Strategist

  Last week, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista will be available for consumers on January 30. Earlier this month, they released final Vista code to manufacturers. Since we've received that code from Microsoft, we've initiated a 24x7 global effort to test our desktop and notebook computers. Unlike a “fixed” PC where you certify one arrangement of parts, the Dell teams are testing over 500,000 different combinations of systems, software, languages, and peripherals to ensure it all just works. The result is a better experience with Vista because we are going to catch most of the problems you might encounter before your system ships from the factory. We also test currently shipping systems and older Dell hardware to help customers understand whether their current systems will run Vista smoothly. Tools like the Dell Readiness Advisor provide customized details. Just click on the green button from that link, unzip the utility, double-click the Vista Readiness Tool file, and you'll see a customized report based on your system configuration.

  In terms of new functionality, Vista's scope is enormous. As with many OS releases, this additional functionality translates into steeper hardware requirements. With Vista, we're seeing higher processor, memory, and graphics hardware utilization in much of our testing. Microsoft's Office 2007 also represents a substantial update to the currently shipping Office 2003. While this presents users with a number of options to consider (picking the right hardware config, OS and applications, etc.), it’s also a chance to get a system with the latest Microsoft products all at once.

  As the “OS guy” at Dell, many people ask me for Vista system recommendations. Since many Dell systems shipping today will migrate to Vista in January, the majority of discussions revolve around the right system configuration. Of course, for small business and corporate customers, we'll continue to ship Windows XP. Based upon personal experience, early customer testing and what we’ve seen in our labs, dual core processors like Intel's Core 2 Duo or  AMD's Athlon 64 X2 really make a difference in in Vista performance overall. Quad core processors further those performance improvements.

  One of the key enhancements to Windows Vista is the Aero interface. Aero is the new graphical interface that uses sophisticated 3D graphics to make it easier for you to view, find, and manage information. It will be available in the Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate SKUs. To enable some of the visual enhancements that Aero will provide, there are some things to consider regarding graphics and system memory. To simplify the analysis, I will focus on memory utilization. Lower numbers are better here because it means you will have more system resources available for common, routine activities.

  Here are some memory configuration results from that the lab:

  

  So what does this mean? Fundamentally, Microsoft has created an operating system that scales with the hardware and requires much more from the PC to drive the new functionality and scenarios it delivers (versus previous versions of the operating system). In our testing, a system with 1GB RAM and a discrete (or dedicated) graphics card provides a decent Vista experience with some elements of the Aero interface. For optimal results with all the bells and whistles that Aero provides, I’d recommend configuring a system with at least 2GB of system ram and discrete graphics card. Vista and the Aero enhancements hum on my XPS 1210 with that much memory.
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• Information on Fake E-mails

  Sun. Nov. 26, 2006
  by Laura Bosworth, Director - WW Customer Experience

  In recent weeks, we’ve seen an increase in reports of spoof emails received by our customers. As the holiday shopping season gets underway, it’s likely that this trend will continue. Wanted to take a couple of minutes to let customers know more about the topic.

  Spoof e-mails (also known as hoax or phishing e-mails) are fraudulent e-mails that claim to be sent by well-known companies, usually in an effort to obtain financial or personal information in order to commit identity theft. One such spoof email pretends to be from PayPal to confirm a credit card purchase of Dell product and asks the recipient to provide certain information to cancel the transaction. Other fraudulent email messages brought to our attention claim to be from Dell, info@dell.com or customerservice@dell.com and some have suspicious-looking Acrobat pdf file attachments, which we recommend you not open or forward. The messages most often reference fraudulent order number 37679041. We encourage you to visit www.dell.com/spoof for more information and how to protect yourself against them.
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• "Rebate Free" Holiday from Dell

  Tue. Nov. 21, 2006
  by Ro Parra, Sr. VP, Home & Small Business
  With the traditional holiday shopping near, we wanted to share some news with you about our plans. We announced today that we’re simplifying the shopping experience by going “rebate free” across Dimension desktops, Inspiron notebooks and all other products and services that carry the Dell name.
  
  We know rebates can be confusing. We used them ourselves for the past four or five years. Even as we improved the redemption process, it became clear to us that customers didn’t want them. It was confusing to figure out the price for a system when comparison shopping—especially when multiple rebates were offered and subject to change from one week to the next. And for many of you they were a hassle to redeem no matter what we did to make it easier.
  
  We’re swimming against the tide this year. We are removing complicated deals, showing transparent and lower list prices across many price points and product platforms. When you open your new Dell computer system and begin using it at home or in your office, there will be no rebate albatrosses in the room with you.
  
  This is the opposite direction we see many retailers and other computer manufacturers headed. The early trend is to lure shoppers in with absolute rock-bottom prices structured in very complicated ways. One “deal” on a desktop was advertised for $99, but it required three rebates including a cell phone service contract. Even then there were limited quantities in stock. Not our idea of a good deal. Read the fine print before you leave the comfort of your home and search for a parking spot.
  
  You may think we’re hypocritical to point out the complexity of some of the deals. In some cases you are right, that we went down similar paths in the past. I encourage you to move beyond finger-pointing and see what we have to offer. For those of you who follow our business, you will have seen a steady decrease in use of promotions and discounts from dozens per product line to few. Rebate removal is another step. There are more to come—stay with us and stay tuned!
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• Why Blu-ray?

  Tue. Nov. 21, 2006
  by Brian Zucker—Technology Strategist, Gaming
  Lots of folks are pumped about the Playstation 3 launch. Besides the gaming performance, Blu-ray Disc capability is part of the hype. Sony’s PS3 is one mainstream device that uses Blu-ray’s BD-ROM disc for its optical storage. Dell has been a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association since the early days, and in that time we’ve worked with consumer electronics companies, movie studios, music publishers, and other PC companies, to support Blu-ray as the next-generation follow on to the successful DVD platform.

  Why did we do it? Because of the many benefits it provides:

  • More storage capacity than both DVD and HD-DVD—50 GB for a dual-sided disc, compared to 8.5GB for DVD and 30GB for HD-DVD—to handle the huge storage requirements of high-definition movies and interactive content, as well as PC data storage and sharing requirements. This kind of capacity provides enough headroom for years to come.
  • Java-based interactivity and the ability to connect to the Internet and leverage more interactive content.
  • Content protection system that satisfies the major movie studios’ content protection requirements as well as providing flexibility for the consumer. Here’s a link to a PDF white paper on Blu-ray Discs’s content protection.
  • Same form factors as existing CDs and DVDs, allowing for backward compatibility. In fact, most Blu-ray Disc PC drives will support the recording of CD, DVD, and BD.

  A hurdle to this transition from DVD is the format battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. How do we hope to avoid that, along with the compatibility problems that plagued the CD and DVD rollouts? By designing Blu-ray Disc from the beginning to meet the requirements of PC and consumer electronics applications. Another strategy: to release all formats—read-only, writable, and rewritable—at the same time. This strategy, along with an industry compatibility program, should help to avoid the compatibility headaches many of us remember all too well. Blu-ray Discs will be readable in any Blu-ray disc drive, whether it’s in a consumer electronics device or a PC.

  We’ve supported Blu-ray Disc from the beginning and believe strongly that it’s the right solution for the industry. Blu-ray Disc is a revolutionary optical technology transition and not simply an evolutionary change to an existing format like we see with the competing solution. Time will tell if we’re right, but we believe both the technology benefits and consumer demand indicators show us to be on the right track.
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• “My name is John, and I am a customer advocate at Dell headquarters.”

  Sun. Nov. 19, 2006
  by John Blain, Consumer & Gaming Liaison

  Since joining the team in July, I have typed these words hundreds of times, and I’ve always taken for granted the words would be believed by the recipient. Until a blogger voiced concern about my honesty several weeks ago, I didn’t realize people were placing a large amount of trust in me by merely responding when I contacted them.

  When the blogger questioned my veracity, I was decidedly taken aback, but it did make me think. There really wasn’t any reason for this person to believe me other than evidence posted by other bloggers I’ve contacted; bloggers who were happy enough with the results I’d provided to chronicle the exchange on their blogs. For the first time, I felt it necessary to reach into my collection of success stories to provide a blogger I was contacting evidence of my authenticity.

  In a previous post, Downs Deering introduced us as a team of Customer Advocates who were reaching out to customers in the blogosphere. Every day, we receive reports from a search string in Technorati and other blog search engines, and we meticulously analyze the results. When we find someone who has an unresolved issue with their Dell computer or our services, we reach out to offer assistance.

  The job has been one of the most rewarding I’ve ever had. I’ve had an MP3 player named after me, was able to disclose my opinion about a Hasselhoff music video, worked with our European representatives to solve a problem for a customer halfway around the world, and even had the opportunity to try to reach out to Jeff Jarvis.

  In this vlog, you’ll hear more from me and some of my counterparts on the team. If you need help with your Dell, let us know. If you don’t have a blog, you can send us an e-mail at customer_advocate@dell.com."

  Format: flv Duration: 8:00

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  Note from Lionel: With this vlog, we're introducing a new video player on Direct2Dell. Many of you have requested videos in the flash format. Moving forward, flash will be the default format that will play. On the bottom right of the player itself, you will see three different link options. Right-clicking any of those links and choosing Save Target As or Save File As (depending on your browser) will allow you to download video clips in a few other formats: Windows Media Video, MP4, or Ogg Theora for our Linux readers out there.
  
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• XPS 700: 590 Chipset Revisited

  Thu. Nov. 16, 2006
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Several Direct2Dell readers like Leonard, pointguard1122, Kevin and others have asked us to respond to pictures on a Dell Community Forum thread that shows the southbridge chip labeled as 570 SLI. Here’s what Bryan Del Rizzo, NVIDIA spokesperson, had to say:

  “The Dell XPS 700 and 710 desktop platforms use nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition MCPs. This chipset has dual X16 PCI Express slots for SLI, which is the primary feature upgrade over the nForce 570 chipset. The correct chip label on the southbridge for the Intel implementation is NF 570 SLI. All nForce 590 SLI Intel products use this chip paired with our northbridge. Since the AMD architecture and memory controller operate differently than Intel’s, we also use this same chip in one of our single-chip AMD configurations. We’ll have more details regarding this topic on our website soon."

  What does this mean to XPS 700 and 710 customers? On both systems, Dell implemented the parts required (north and southbridge) for the nForce 590 according to NVIDIA's specification for Intel processors. On AMD products, the combination of parts required is different based on processor architecture.

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• XPS 700 BIOS Update Coming Soon

  Wed. Nov. 15, 2006
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  It's no secret that we continue to get questions from XPS 700 customers from the blog and on the Dell Community Forum. Sorry for the delay in getting details out for folks who have been asking. Later this month, Dell will introduce a BIOS update for XPS 700 that will enable the following: Update: Version 1.1.6 of the XPS 700 BIOS is now available for download. It enables the following:

  • Virtualization Technology (VT) - The new BIOS will allow users to enable or disable the feature.
  • Windows XP 64 support - We won't sell the operating system as an option, but the BIOS update will allow customers the ability to install the retail version of the operating system.

  As most of you know, Intel's Core 2 Extreme QX 6700 Quad-core processor will ship soon. Several of you have asked if this new processor will work on your existing XPS 700 motherboard. I'm still working through some details on this—will have a more extensive update on this soon.
  

  Update: Here’s what our development team had to say. Based on Intel’s current design guidelines, the Intel Quad Core Extreme Processor should work on the XPS 700 motherboard. However, Intel revised the design guidelines for boards to be compatible with this quad core processor to decrease the signal impedance of the front side bus. This is different from the board specifications on the XPS 700. Also, Intel specifies that the Quad Core Extreme Processor needs 4 GTLREFs (GTLREF is reference voltage to the CPU front side bus to recognize signals as high or low for data coming to the bus) and the XPS 700 board has only two references. Intel’s revised design guidelines for the signal impedance change and the requirement for two additional GTLREFs to support its Quad Core processor caused Dell to make system-level board changes that have been implemented with the new XPS 710. With those changes, Intel’s new quad-core processors are fully supported on the XPS 710.

  Here are the legal disclaimers:
  

  • Intel quad core processors may have stability/life expectancy issues when used on the XPS 700 because it lacks the required GTLREF support, or they may not work at all.
  • If you attempt to upgrade an XPS 700 with an Intel Quad Core Extreme Processor, we can’t guarantee that the Intel Quad Core Extreme Processor will work, nor will it provide support for quad core processor-related issues.

  Readers have also asked about SLI memory support—no change at this point. We’re investigating making changes to the BIOS to enable this support but currently, we only support memory up to 667MHz, but it can be overclocked via nTune. I know we've only covered the Automatic overclocking portion of nTune up to this point. In the future, we’ll cover advanced overclocking on the blog.
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