Consumer

• Select Systems Now Available with Ubuntu 8.04

  Fri. Jul. 18, 2008
  by Daniel Judd, Product Group Strategist

  After months of testing and development we are ready to release Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on select Dell consumer systems. For consumers in the United States, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom and many Latin American countries (like Mexico and Colombia) Ubuntu 8.04 will be offered on the XPS M1330N and Inspiron 1525N notebooks and the Inspiron 530N  Click on any of the country links above or go to www.dell.com/ubuntu to place your order. :)

  In early August, we will also add the XPS M1530n and Studio 15n to the line-up. This is just in time for LinuxWorld where we will participate in a number of the conference sessions. That will be your chance to hear directly about what’s been accomplished over the last year and where we see it going in 2009.

  In her post, Anne Camden mentions some of the new features the Ubuntu 8.04 brings. Beyond that, we took steps to make our Linux images more accessible to a global audience by including the ability to select your language during the first boot process. While this does not mean we’re shipping in every country (yet) it’s a step in the right direction. Stay tuned for a technical details post from John Hull will provide a good overview of the work we did on the new release. Similar post from him on Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10 releases have proved to be pretty popular with the Linux community.
  digg del.icio.us email this 59 comment(s)

• Wal-Mart to Test Solution Station Concept with Support from Dell

  Mon. Jul. 14, 2008
  by Downs Deering, Director—Retail Services

  You may recall that in April, Lionel blogged about our intent to develop premium services and services in retail. Well, today we have a little more information to share—specifically a concept Wal-Mart will begin testing in select stores called Solution Station by Dell.

  These services are designed to make it easier and more affordable for people to set up and use digital lifestyle technology. Beginning this month, Wal-Mart will be testing Solution Station by Dell services in about a dozen Dallas-area Wal-Mart stores.

  These services will be available on Dell and other branded systems and include things like home television installation, PC set-up, wireless network set-up, computer upgrades, services designed to protect computers and in-home training. Wal-Mart customers in the test locations can also sign up for basic computer support and repair for their laptops and desktops.

  We'll keep you posted as we explore different ways to support our retail partners in the marketplace.
  digg del.icio.us email this 0 comment(s)

• Direct2Dell Turns 2

  Thu. Jul. 10, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Wow... it's been another year already. Lots has happened on the blog front since this time last year: we launched in Norwegian and Japanese. Beyond languages, we've also introduced seven new blogs as well: an Investor Relations blog, ReGeneration.org, Cloud Computing, Inside IT, Small Business, the Consumer blog, and the Dell Channel blog.  Earlier in February last year, we introduced accepted solutions in the Dell Community Forum and since that time, our community has volunteered over 8,500 of them.

  To better support some of these new sites, several months ago we combined what used to be the blog outreach team and the Dell Community Forum to be part of our communications organization. Last night, I blogged that Dell employees worldwide can access many social media sites through the Dell firewall. Dwelling on past accomplishments is one thing... but in my view, it's more important to talk about the future. Put simply, I think the most important work we'll do remains ahead of us.

  Most people know that we started monitoring the blogosphere in 2006 a few months before we launched the blog. I've said on many occasions that listening was the foundation for Direct2Dell. We need to keep it that way, and that's a more challenging thing these days since there are more places for our customers to have conversations about Dell. It's true on two fronts: both on our own expanding list of properties and in more types of sites outside of Dell. This recent story in the Boston Globe touches on a lot of it. Besides blogs and forums, more customers are using sites like Twitter and Friendfeed. We're also seeing discussions about Dell products in the comment threads  like this one on Flickr and or in YouTube.

  Regardless of where the conversations occur, we have to remain focused on supporting our customers and connecting them to the conversations that are important or helpful to them. This concept is critical to all of our social media efforts, and I know we need to improve in this area.

  How are we going to do that moving forward? Integrating our social media properties is the first big step. Dig a little deeper and that means shifting from a tool-based focus like we have now to a topic-based one. I talked a bit about what this means at Blog Potomac last month. Some of our customers know exactly what systems they own down to the brand and model name, but there's a lot who don't. A topic-based navigation model should help those customers who may not remember they have Inspiron 530—they can start with a desktop and work their way in. Lots more to discuss as this evolves. At this point, I can say that lots of folks within Dell are working to combine Direct2Dell, the Dell Community Forum and wikis onto a single platform.

  Two years in, I think we've done a decent job reaching the tech-savvy customers who regularly interact on blogs or forums.  But there's a lot more of our customers who don't understand the difference between blogs, forums and wikis, and frankly, they shouldn't have to. Integrating these tools is a big undertaking and there's much work for us left to do on this front.

  Thanks to our customers and to all the people at Dell who continue to support our social media efforts on a daily basis. Just like last year, it seems like we're just scratching the surface of what's possible.
  digg del.icio.us email this 16 comment(s)

• The Redesign of the New Dell.com Home Page

  Wed. Jul. 02, 2008
  by Tommy Lynn, Design Lead—Global Site Design

  To add to Fara’s post about the Dell.com redesign, I wanted to take the opportunity to explain how we design for the online user experience here at Dell and provide further insight into ways that Dell is continuing to foster a design-centric environment to benefit our customers.

  Note: Click on any of the images in this post to see larger versions of all of them.

  My team, an internal group of user experience designers, began our redesign efforts back in March with a lot of planning and strategy exploration. During this time we worked closely with internal business partners to define the objectives, requirements, and establish what success looked like to everyone. To build our strategy, we used current-state customer feedback and metrics as well as research and results from our previous design tests. This discovery process illustrated that there were a myriad of design options that we needed to consider.

  Exploring these approaches took a lot of people, time and creative reviews. The initial round of designs included 24 different concepts and over 14 ways to navigate the page. After aligning on the goals for the page, our mission was clear: Beautiful imagery, more targeted navigation, space for fresh content, and more deep links into the site.

  

  As we narrowed down the options, we tested the direction with users from our three main customer audiences (Consumer, Small & Medium Business, and Large Business) to ensure that we effectively captured each group’s needs. The feedback from this research informed some important design changes and reaffirmed the final design direction.

  We know that a positive user experience has a direct correlation to a strong brand experience by allowing users to accomplish their goals easily. The end result of our efforts, which now live in the US with a 50% filter, accomplishes this with a clean and simple way to address the needs of our users by getting you where you want to go quicker.

  

  Like Fara mentioned, we need your help to evolve the online experience at Dell.com. If you have thoughts to share about how to improve, respond to this post, go to the Dell Web Site area of IdeaStorm or weigh in at the Community Pulse page for Dell.com
  digg del.icio.us email this 9 comment(s)

• The New Dell.com Home Page: Aiming for Function and Beauty

  Wed. Jul. 02, 2008
  by Fara Howard, Sr. Manager—Global Site Design

  After months of customer research, planning, and design, we are ready to share the new home page for Dell.com. A well-designed home page sets the tone for the entire site experience. When we do our job well, you can easily find a product or information that’s important to you. We worked with this goal in mind.

  Getting the home page right is critically important, and that’s why we started our design process with feedback from the community. In her post last year, Laura Thomas discussed findability, load time and customer input. We focused our efforts on all three. When we spoke with customers this spring about the new home page, 100% of people found the ideal path to products. We learned that the imagery resonated with both our corporate, small business and consumer customers. We also focused on load time by building a page that will enable you to experience our products, and not to have to wait to enter the site.

  Through the collective work of many folks on the Dell team, we’ve worked to create a home page that is easy to navigate and that shows off our products. Hopefully, there are a few key things you’ll notice when you experience the new home page on Dell.com (click on the screen shot below to view a larger image):

  

  1) Clear navigation: With “For Home, For Office and For Data Center” present at the top of the page, it’s easy for you to find the products that are perfect for your needs.

  2) Focus on products: Technology is a huge part of our life, so we should be buying, carrying and using products that we’re proud to own. The new Dell.com home page highlights our products in a more visual way while clearly calling out the functional benefits that are important to you.

  3) It’s more than just shopping: At Dell, we introduce award-winning products at an rapid pace so we’ve allotted space on our site to tell you about them. We are also bringing technology headlines and Dell Deals to you as you start your dell.com experience.

  We started our launch yesterday in Canada, China, Mexico, Brazil and Spain. The US will started with a limited launch yesterday as well (so all of you won’t see it yet; but you will soon!). Over the course of this month, the design will roll out to other regions.

  We hope that the new Dell.com will be a great experience, starting from your first click. Thank you for all of your feedback—we’re always looking for more. So if you got some ideas on how we can continue to improve, you have several options:

  • Respond to this post
  • Submit an idea at the Dell Web Site area of IdeaStorm or
  • Weigh in at the Community Pulse page for Dell.com
  digg del.icio.us email this 17 comment(s)

• New Premium Service for U.S. Consumers: Your Tech Team

  Tue. Jul. 01, 2008
  by Laura Bosworth, Director - WW Customer Experience

  Last year, we experimented with a new type of service. Lionel blogged about it back in April It was provided to about 30,000 customers in the New York City area. The idea was to provide a more personalized support experience to them by designating a team of highly skilled technicians they could call anytime. It was very successful, running about 90% customer satisfaction, as the technicians are more familiar with their circumstances, require fewer explanations and are able to solve a broad-range of issues beyond just the basic warranty.

  This week we are launching the new premium warranty service called “Your Tech Team” modeled on our experiment. The new service will be an option for customers in the United States who purchase a system directly from Dell—it’s not available to customers who buy from retail. The service will cover all Dell-branded devices under warranty in your house-hold, gets you rapid access to specialists, allows you to schedule calls with your favorite technicians, and if you desire, can provide technical support options well-beyond what is covered under your warranty without needing to transfer you to a different group.

  Your Tech Team costs $99 and provides hardware warranty support for your new system and all other systems in your household (that are still under warranty). Other technical support options, like performance tuning, wireless network set-up and anti-virus support are available for a fee but can be purchased while you are on the call with your favorite technician.

  At this point, households are determined by billing address. This means if your daughter is away at college, but you bought her an Inspiron and it is still under warranty, she can call Your Tech Team  directly. If her system is out of warranty, you would need to purchase an extended warranty for her system before she is covered

  Finally, there is one other piece of information you’ll want to know about Your Tech Team—the agents are based in North America. Now, I know this can be controversial for some people but we have 2 critical customer needs to meet that are in direct conflict with each other. First and foremost, customers want low prices. We see time and time again, that when we increase prices to cover certain costs we drop in sales. We also have a great deal of research that corroborates that PC decision making is largely influenced by price and customers expect low prices from Dell. On the other hand, we must balance that with many suggestions that we provide North American support. Dell’s philosophy is all about providing customer choice and this service is no exception, rather than adding cost to every system for something that many people aren’t interested in, we will make it optional.

  Your Tech Team is not just about North American support, it is a different offering focused on your relationship with our technicians and ultimately it is about giving our customers the choice to prioritize what matters most to them.
  digg del.icio.us email this 29 comment(s)

• Dell Studio 15 and Studio 17 Details

  Thu. Jun. 26, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Jay Pinkert published a post about the new line of Consumer systems we unveiled earlier today. Beyond the blog post, you can also see information on the new line at www.dell.com/studio. 

  Click on the image below to see a larger version of it, or click here to see more images in Flickr.

  
  digg del.icio.us email this 9 comment(s)

• Dell & Twitter

  Sat. Jun. 21, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Whether we're classifying types of Twitter users, talking about Twitter at the center of breaking news, cool Twitter apps, why we love Twitter, using Twitter as customer service (@Zappos is simply on another level! Check out twitter.zappos.com to see what I mean) or Twitter downtime, seems like we can't quit talking about it.

  Still, for all that chatter, there's a lot of folks that still have questions about it. The folks at CommonCraft have a great introductory video, and Laura Fitton's blog post is probably still has the best big-picture explanation of Twitter that I've come across.

  From a Dell perspective, @RichardatDell told me yesterday that Dell has about 40 folks who use Twitter pretty regularly. We've got RSS feeds of all the Dell blogs and IdeaStorm in the Twitterverse. We also have other places where we sell Dell products in Twitter like @DellOutlet and @DellHomeOffers. Not too long ago, we added @DellSmBizOffers to the mix. Like BusinessWeek noted, we recently surpassed $500,000 in revenue through Twitter, and that number is growing. In all of our Dell brand Twitter locations, you will see one or two Dell individuals that they follow. That way, if you have a question, you have a Dell person to follow up with.

  I got a chance to sit down with Ricardo Guerrero (@ggroovin), who was one of the main folks behind our Twitter activities overall to talk about this stuff in a bit more detail.
  digg del.icio.us email this 3 comment(s)

• My Thoughts on Blog Potomac & More

  Thu. Jun. 19, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Last week, I had the pleasure of being one of the speakers at Blog Potomac, an event that was well-organized and driven by Geoff Livingston and Debbie Weil. It was an honor for me to be part of such a strong group of social media folks. Simon Heseltine wrote a wrap up post and also summarized each of the keynotes over at EndlessPlain.com. Or take a look at the Blog Potomac site for all kinds info—videos, photos from the Flickr feed and more.

  Since I still get broad questions about how Dell's social media strategy has evolved over the last two + years, I figured it made sense to begin my part of Blog Potomac by providing a framework for our external efforts:

  • Listening: Originally started from a pure customer service perspective in April 2006. I've blogged about this in the past.
  • Launching our own blog: Direct2Dell went live in July, 2006. Now we blog in five languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Norwegian and Japanese. We've also rolled out several additional standalone blogs: DellShares, Cloud Computing, Small Business, Inside IT, Dell Channel, Your Blog, and ReGeneration.org. A University Relations will be coming soon.
  • Brand presence in the blogosphere: Started in August 2006 as natural extension from the listening we had started earlier. Outside of customer service issues, we found lots of bloggers who were commenting Dell from a brand perspective. It made sense to have conversations on that front as well.  
  • IdeaStorm: Launch date, February 2007. Click here for a background on what it's all about.
  • Our latest phase is Microblogging: Twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube and Flickr comment threads.

  I know this was familiar territory for folks that have followed Dell throughout our experience in social media. In fact, Technosailor called our blog outreach efforts old news, and asked me what we planned to do moving forward. My answer was that we've combined our outreach strengthen our focus. This combined team is a mix of our Digital Media Communications team, the Dell Community Forum team and our blog outreach team.  I went on to add that we're also beginning work to better integrate our social media properties. More on that in a bit.

  I failed to mention the concept of accepted solutions will play an even greater role in the future. Essentially, any customer who creates a new thread on the Forum can mark a response as an answer to the question or issue they raised. Take a look at Natalie's blog post for a better understanding what they're all about. Accepted solutions have taken off quickly—we've recently surpassed 7,500 accepted solutions since we introduced them in the Forum. We need to bring that functionality to the blog, and longer-term figure out how to pull useful information from accepted solutions into wikis.

  That's where Integrating our properties comes in. We're really just getting it off the ground, and it's going to take us a while. We're aiming to have Dell Community Forum, Direct2Dell and wikis on the same platform. May seem easy on the surface, but it's pretty complex thing to solve. In my view, all of our social media efforts should revolve around connecting our customers to information that's helpful to them—whether they are looking for product support or trying to educate themselves on new technology or the latest Dell products.  Lots of work to do there, but I think if we can get it right, we'll reach a more mainstream set of customers. We need to make it easy for all our customers to have conversations with Dell employees or other customers, and most importantly, to find the information they need.
  digg del.icio.us email this 1 comment(s)

• A Beast of a Card for a Beast of a Laptop

  Tue. Jun. 17, 2008
  by John Blain, Consumer & Gaming Liaison

  You may remember my last post on Direct2Dell, where I had announced the imminent arrival of the GeForce Dual 8800M GTX upgrade kit for existing XPS M1730 customers. In fact, we’ve been talking about this for quite some time. Back in January, Lionel blogged that Dell was offering the 8800M GTX to new customers. Last month, he said we’d be offering this upgrade to existing customers. For customers in the United States, that day has finally arrived!

  The card can now be purchased from our Dell.com, either as a stand-alone part for the slightly more adventurous, or with an installation service for folks that don’t want to do it themselves. I would recommend seeing what is involved in changing your video card before deciding which option is best for you. The service manual for the XPS M1730 can be found here, and we’ll soon post a vlog with Louis Bruno that walks you through the installation process.

  Update: Below is the vlog for customers who will install the 8800M GTX card themselves. If you would like to see a larger version, click on the links to download or view the Windows Media Video file or this version for QuickTime/ iPods and the iPhone.

  For those of you who opt to buy the installation service, here is what you should expect. After you place your order, a work order will be sent to a service provider in your area, who should contact you within 48 hours after you place the order to set up a service appointment for the installation. When the day of the service appointment arrives, your service technician should once again contact you to make sure you’ve received the parts from Dell, after which the technician will arrive at the appointed time to do the installation. After the work is complete, the technician will leave you to enjoy your new video card.

  Also of note, M1730 customers with version 3.3 of MediaDirect will have to install version 3.5 for MediaDirect to work with this new card. The catch? The MediaDirect partition has to be enlarged for the new installation to work, requiring that users repartition their hard drives, and then reformat their Operating System partition and reinstall Windows, drivers, software, and Dell QuickSet. MediaDirect 3.5 will be included with the upgrade kit for this purpose. If you opt for the installation service, the MediaDirect reinstallation will not be done by the service technician. If you want MediaDirect functionality, you’ll have to do the MediaDirect 3.5 installation yourself.

  Despite the complications in bringing this to you, this beast of a video card boosts performance over the older Dual 8700M GT cards by up to an astonishing 49%, and is capable of up to a 13,496 3DMark ‘06 score. Since I’m not a benchmark junky myself, I have to ask, what does this mean for real performance?

  The answer is astounding. Dell Labs noted an average of 43 frames per second in Crysis as opposed to 30 frames per second on an identically configured XPS M1730 with a Dual 8700M GT, and 21 frames per second on an XPS M1730 with the single 8700M GT. The answer, simply put, is that the difference this card should make is DRASTIC.

  So, all of you hardcore gamers out there that jumped on the M1730 when it launched, now you can upgrade your video card and make your machine truly worthy of the nickname “Beast”.
  digg del.icio.us email this 91 comment(s)