What You Need To Know

• Latitude XT Software Update is Here

  Tue. Jul. 15, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Since my post about multi-touch coming to Latitude XT customers via a software update. Several sites like GottaBeMobile, jkOnTheRun and Gizmodo mentioned it, and Joanna Stern from Laptop Magazine even published a pretty solid overview and video demo of the new functionality.

  Now let me get to it... the download is now available for Latitude XT customers at the following links:

  • Vista 32 Bit
  • Vista 64 Bit
  • Windows XP Tablet

  If you'd rather get there on your own from the Latitude XT Drivers & Downloads page, the update is called N-Trig - Application in under the Input Device Drivers section. All versions have a date of 7/15, and both Vista versions are 14MB and the XP version is 15MB.

  

  Here's a video where Hans Eilers from the Latitude XT team walks customers through installing and calibrating the update:
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• Multi-Touch Capability Available Tomorrow for Latitude XT Customers

  Mon. Jul. 14, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Since we introduced the award-winning Latitude XT tablet, capacitive touch capability is one thing that set it apart from the competition. Several weeks ago at the Wall Street Journal's D6: All Things Digital Conference, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer highlighted upcoming multi-touch capability that Windows 7 will bring. Chris Flores' post and video kicked off a flurry of conversations in Techmeme, and we were pumped that they used a Latitude XT was one of the machines Microsoft used show off multi-touch in Windows 7.

  But, Latitude XT customers don't have to wait for Windows 7 to use multi-touch. Tomorrow we will introduce a software update globally via support.dell.com for the Dell tablet that will bring multi-touch to both Windows XP and Vista. With this update, customers can use the functionality in several standard apps like Google Earth, Outlook and Microsoft Office, web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7, and XP's Windows Picture viewer and the Vista's Windows Photo Gallery. Take a look at this video from Hans Eilers and Roy Stedman from the Office of the CTO for a demo of how this works.

  I'll add the link to the software update here in this post when it's ready.

  Update, July 16: I forgot to update this post with the links. If you'd like a bit more detail on how the install process works, take a look at this post from yesterday.

  • Vista 32 Bit
  • Vista 64 Bit
  • Windows XP Tablet

  
  
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• 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.
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• 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”.
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• Helping in China’s Time of Need

  Wed. May. 14, 2008
  by Andy Esparza, Sr. VP—Human Resources

  Many of you have been following the earthquake that affected China on Monday – the second major disaster to hit Asia in less than a week. Fortunately, the Dell employees who were in our Chengdu and Chongqing facilities, closest to the epicenter of the earthquake, are all safe.

  However, thousands of others in the region have been impacted and are in desperate need of assistance.

  While the government is moving quickly to help the victims, Dell and our employees are anxious to do what we can to help. We’re contributing RMB 2.1 million to the relief effort, and we’ll stay in close contact with and offer help to our employees, customers, suppliers and the emergency response organizations in these areas as they rebuild their communities.

  China is one of our home countries. We’ve been doing business in China for 10 years now and employ more than 6,000 people across the country. And the Dell China team is extremely committed to its communities; in 2007, our employees volunteered more than 7,000 hours to Chinese charities. Their energy and commitment is an inspiration, one that has spread throughout Dell.

  I hope others, both individuals and corporations, will do what they can to help. To learn how you can contribute to the China relief efforts, visit the Red Cross donation site. 
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• What's Happening to XPS?

  Tue. May. 13, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  I saw that Gizmodo and Engadget reacted to the Wall Street Journal story about plans for our XPS brand and Alienware. Several other blogs like Tech Digest and CyberNet News and others reported details as well. IdeaStorm user dabrace1984 posted an idea called Keep the XPS Product Line.

  Bottom line, we aren't phasing out any gaming machines early and we are not dropping the XPS line. For more details on what's going on, take a look at Anne Camden's post on Your Blog.
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• Latest on the Graphics Card Upgrade for XPS M1730 Customers

  Tue. May. 13, 2008
  by John Blain, Consumer & Gaming Liaison

  A few months ago, Lionel blogged that Dell had added the NVIDIA Dual 8800M GTX to the XPS M1730. This raised a lot of questions from existing M1730 owners, as you can see from the comments to the post, mostly regarding the possibility of an upgrade program. Given how absolutely amazing this card is, I’m surprised it didn’t generate more churn than it did.

  As the gaming/consumer liaison for the Dell community, I was able to take some of these questions to those in the know and get a few answers.

  First thing’s first: an upgrade solution is in the works, and will hopefully be released later this month. From what I’ve seen, there will be two options, one with an installation package, and one do-it-yourself kit for those die-hard techies. Considering the number of screws holding this beast together, most people will probably want the installation, but the do-it-yourself kit will be appealing to people like me that like playing with computer innards. The price of these upgrades is yet to be determined.

  So what’s taking so long? The core issue is that MediaDirect 3.3 is not compatible with the driver for the NVIDIA card. This incompatibility means that the Media Direct software needs to be upgraded. Unfortunately, the upgrade will require a reformat and reinstallation. Beyond that, it will also require you to repartition the hard disk to make room for the new version of MediaDirect, which is a bit larger. Data loss has been a major concern for the engineers working on a solution. At this point, it would appear that there’s really no way around wiping the drive to make the upgrade work with every feature.

  Since this card is obviously “the r0x0r”, I would think people’s inner gamer would be perfectly fine with a reinstallation in order to make this card work. This card is just that cool.

  I know this upgrade has been long in coming, and I know it's caused some frustration. We're sorry this is taking so long, and are working to get this card into your hands as quickly as possible.
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• Konnichiwa: Dell Enters the Blogosphere in Japanese

  Sun. May. 11, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Folks who keep up with this blog have heard me mention it a couple of times. Today, we're launching Direct2Dell in Japanese. I think it's worth noting, not only because it is the fifth language that we've added to the Direct2Dell family, but because it's one of the most important ones: according to Technorati, Japanese is the most common language in the blogosphere.

  Japan leads the world in Internet download speeds (check out the report from speedmatters.org—note that Japan's average broadband speed is 30 times faster that of the United States). And that kind of leadership also extends to the mobile phone space thanks to technology like NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service and competing technologies. That translates into millions of users who routinely use text messaging, access video and other multimedia content on mobile phones. That's one reason I think that services like Twitter—despite the fact that they just launched service in Japan—are really taking off there.

  Today, Michael Dell will mention the Direct2Dell Japanese blog in a speech to students and media at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, part of  Hitotsubashi University.

  So why is this important to Dell? Because we want to enable more direct conversations around the world. We understand that social media is global. Other recent studies like this one from Universal McCann show just how global it is. Click here for the PDF of that report.

  If you are interested in following our Japanese blog, go here: http://japanese.direct2dell.com

   

  Konnichiwa - こんにちは。 デルが、日本語のブログワールドに参入します。

  過去の私のブログでも、他言語の追加について言及したことがあります。本日、日本語のDirect2Dellがオープンします。Direct2Dellに5番目の言語として追加されるということはさておき、もっと重要なのは、Technoratiによると、日本語は、ブログワールドで最も多く利用されている言語だということです。

  日本は、インターネットのダウンロード速度 においても世界をリードしています。（speedmatters.orgのレポートによると、日本のブロードバンド速度の平均値はアメリカの30倍に匹敵するそうです） NTTドコモのi-modeのようなテクノロジーに代表される携帯電話の世界でも、日本の先進性を見ることができます。何百万人もの人が日常的に携帯電話でメールをし、携帯電話から動画などのマルチメディアコンテンツにアクセスしているのです。Twitterのようなサービスが、日本語でのサービスを立ち上げたばかりにもかかわらず、非常に人気が高いのも、こういった理由によるものでしょう。

  本日、マイケル・デルが、一橋大学大学院国際企業戦略研究科の学生へのスピーチの中で、日本語のDirect2Dellについて言及することになります。

  ところで、なぜ、このことがデルにとって重要なのでしょう？それは、デルが、今まで以上に、ダイレクトな会話をグローバルでできるようになるからです。ソーシャルメディアは、グローバル規模のものです。ユニバーサルマッキャンの最近のレポートでも、ソーシャルメディアが如何にグローバルであるかが示されています。このレポートのPDFフォーマットは、こちらからどうぞ。

  日本語のDirect2Dellに興味のある方は右記URLにアクセスしてみてください：  http://japanese.direct2dell.com
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• Issue Fix: XPS M1330 CD Eject Freezes System

  Thu. May. 08, 2008
  by Bill Bivin, Laptop Liaison

  Thanks to Notebook Review user nexas for pointing out an issue with the XPS M1330. When a user presses the eject button on the optical drive, the system may hang for a few seconds.

  Dell Community Forum users like Vishnu M. issue reported this issue. We've identified the issue and corrected it with the latest BIOS revision posted yesterday, version A10, which will correct the symptoms.

  Again, users that have encountered this issue can click here to download the BIOS.

  There have also been reports of this issue on the XPS M1530. The next BIOS revision is being tested now, and will also correct the symptoms. That revision is slated for web posting in June.
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• Europe Vostro 1310 and 1510 Keyboard Update

  Thu. May. 08, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  You may have read about a Vostro 1310 and 1510 keyboard issue that's affecting some customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa. See Bill Bivin's post over at the Small Business blog for more details.
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