June 2007 - Direct2Dell

This has been an exciting month at Dell, not only because we launched some new notebooks, desktops and workstations, but also because we made great progress toward our commitment to become the greenest technology company on the planet.

We expanded our ‘Plant a Tree for Me’ program to Europe, launched a global zero-carbon initiative and announced a new company policy that requires primary suppliers to report CO2 emissions data during the quarterly business review process. We also started a new dialogue with our customers to help us build the "greenest PC on the planet," something you’ll be hearing more about in the coming weeks.

On Wednesday, Greenpeace International gave Dell high marks for ongoing environmental initiatives in its latest Green Electronics Guide. In the report, we rank ahead of our industry peers, based on our recycling and design for the environment programs. Take a look at the current Greenpeace rankings and let us know what you think.

With all the excitement surrounding our new products, we also wanted to point out a few environmentally-smart features:

• LED Display: Customers who purchase the super thin 13.3” XPS M1330 notebook have the option of adding a WXGA (1280x800) light emitting diode (LED) backlight display, a state-of-the-art, environmentally-smart feature that’s halogen-free and uses up to 15 percent less energy compared to cathode fluorescent lamp displays.

Another new technology we’re committed to is solid state drives. They feature improved reliability and better performance than traditional hard drives overall. We support the technology on most comprehensive set of products in our industry, including the XPS M1330, the Latitude D430, 630 and 830 notebooks, and the Precision M4300.

• Energy Star 4.0: Corporate customers who prefer the Latitude D430 and Precision M4300 can configure their systems to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Energy Star 4.0 standard. We’ve also added the Dell Precision 390, 490 and 690 to the list of Energy Star 4.0-compliant systems ahead of the EPA’s July 2007 deadline, giving customers the most comprehensive selection of Energy Star 4.0 products in the industry.

• EPEAT Gold: Dell was the first to offer global EPEAT Gold notebooks and also listed two of our leading Energy Smart desktop products as gold, in contrast to a limited offering from a competitor.

Our challenge to you: Keep the pressure on. Share your thoughts, ideas and comments. Visit Direct2Dell, IdeaStorm and DellEarth. Tell (or show) us how we can strengthen our partnership for a cleaner environment. We’ll not only listen…we’ll keep raising the stakes for our friends and competitors to join us along the way.

Since yesterday's launches, Direct2Dell readers like Concerned asked what we are doing to offer OS choice on the new products. From a Ubuntu perspective, we're now offering Ubuntu 7.04 to customers in the United States on the Inspiron 1420N notebook and the Inspiron 530N desktop. Both are available for order now at www.dell.com/open. Since these are new systems, it usually takes us a bit of time to ramp production. Because of that, we expect to ship these new systems by the middle of next month.

In terms of how of what to expect, the same technical details that John Hull blogged about before we launched Ubuntu systems apply to these new systems. 

Here's the base configuration on the Inspiron 1420N:

• Core 2 Duo T5250 processor (1.5GHz/ 667MHz FSB)
• 1GB shared dual-channel DDR2 667MHz RAM
• 80GB hard drive
• Ubuntu 7.04

And here's the base config for the Inspiron 530N:

•  Intel dual-core processor E2140 (1.6GHz/ 800MHz FSB)
• 512MB single channel DDR2 667MHz RAM
• 160GB hard drive
• Ubuntu 7.04
  

In this morning's Linux Live Expert Forum session, John Hull confirmed that we do plan to offer Linux on the client side in additional locations outside the United States. More details to come later this summer. That's something that we continue to see a lot of interest in—the Sell Linux PCs Worldwide from user ergo has been the top idea for a few weeks now, and I've received hundreds of comments on Direct2Dell about the same thing. John also said that Dell is considering bringing Linux to our small business customers as well.

You can take a look at this thread to follow most of the discussion from this morning's session. A couple of new threads were added outside of the live one, like this one where John asked the community what Dell could do to improve our Ubuntu offering.

Update 6/28: Yesterday, Direct2Dell reader Brandon asked about a price increase on the Inspiron E1505N notebook. The issue also came up in last night's Live Linux Chat. That price mistake was due to a website glitch, which we have fixed. The Inspiron 1505N is available for a starting price of $599. My apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.

We've got another Linux Live Expert Forum session again tonight from 8pm - 10pm. Both John Hull and Ben Collins from Ubuntu will be there again tonight. To join it, go to the Linux Community Forum area, and look for the second Live Linux Chat thread.

Know many of you have already seen some of the details, but earlier this morning we officially introduced a whole bunch of Inspiron notebooks at a launch event this morning at Macy's Herald Square in New York. For those who are interested, you can view a recorded version of the webcast from this link a bit later today. We're also hosting launch events today Spain, Japan, China, Singapore, Australia and India.

There's five Inspiron notebooks in all: three Intel-based ones, and two AMD-based ones. All of these notebooks can be ordered in one of eight different colors—Ruby Red, Midnight Blue, Spring Green and Jet Black to name a few.  All models feature widescreen displays, a host of integrated Wi-Fi and mobile broadband options, and optional 2.0 megapixel integrated webcams with microphones.

Lots of customers have asked us for this functionality. The Laptop Webcam and Microphone idea from user terrymain is another example of a popular IdeaStorm idea submitted on the first day we launched the site. Regarding displays, these notebooks can be ordered with a variety of widescreen resolutions and finishes, including the high-gloss TrueLife or the non-glare finish.

As far as connectivity options, all support integrated 802.11g by default, and all can be ordered with integrated 802.11 Wireless-N, which offers faster throughput and greater range than previous Wi-Fi options. Beyond that, Dell also supports a variety of mobile broadband options across the entire lineup—including Sprint, Verizon Wireless (EV-DO Rev A), or AT&T (HSDPA).

In this vlog, Matt Jorgensen walks you through some of the features the new Inspiron notebook family supports.

Santa Rosa in All Intel-Based Inspiron Notebooks:

Direct2Dell readers like Bobby Kay, Andrew and anand and others have asked when Santa Rosa would make its way into Inspirons. All three of our Inspiron models we're launching today feature Intel's Santa Rosa chipset. Each of the Intel-based notebooks can be ordered with Blu-ray optical drives. Also, all three of these models support either integrated or discrete graphics card options.

• Inspiron 1720
• Inspiron 1520
• Inspiron 1420

The following AMD-based notebooks feature Turion 64 X2 dual core processors. They support the same colors and connectivity options as the other notebooks. Additionally, the 1721 supports RAID 0 and 1 functionality as well.

• Inspiron 1721
• Inspiron 1521

Several of you have already seen the stories in Engadget, but now I can share all the details of our XPS M1330. As many of you know, I've been here at Dell for a long time. Having seen my share of products (and product launches), it's been a long time since I've seen the kind of internal excitement we're seeing so far with the XPS M1330. Typically, I'm a desktop guy, and I definitely want one of these.

What's the reason for the excitement? The thin and light design. It's less than an inch thick and packs a lot of performance inside. It's based on Intel's Santa Rosa chipset and is our first notebook that features an optional 13.3-inch WXGA (1280x800) LED backlight display, which is notable for two reasons:

• it's brighter than a typical LCD display
• it allows for an even thinner profile compared to its LCD counterpart

The XPS M1330 comes in three finishes: Tuxedo Black, Crimson Red and Pearl White. And these aren't your average paint jobs—the Pearl White color, for example, is made up of seven layers of paint. Other nice touches: touch-sensitive media buttons across the top, an integrated remote that fits in the ExpressCard slot, a full-size keyboard, aluminum palmrests, a standard webcam (2.0 megapixel with the LCD display, VGA resolution with the thinner LED display) dual digital microphones and noise isolation earbuds, an optional biometric reader, dual headphone jacks and an 8-in-1 card reader right in the front of the notebook.

In this vlog, I talked to Vio Luminosu, the lead industrial desginer for the product. Before the M1330, he was the lead designer on our XPS 2010. Many of the design elements he's proud of first appeared in the XPS M2010 and have made it into the M1330. One thing that the new notebook brings with it is a lower price of entry—the XPS M1330 starts at $1,299.

If you're interested in this product, bet you've already seen the design-focused blog entry and vlog on the XPS M1330. A few performance-related things that this sub-4 pound notebook supports are: 

• Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 2.4GHz
• An optional 32GB SSD drive
• Regular hard drive capacities up to 250GB
• HDMI, Firewire, USB ports
  
• Optional for NVIDIA's GeForce Go 8400M GS discrete graphics card with 128MB.

In this vlog, Matt Jorgensen provides a good overview of the features that the XPS M1330 offers.