September 2007 - Direct2Dell

You've seen the details on Engadget. You might have seen the promotional video we released on YouTube. Today, our XPS M1730 gaming notebook—the machine our development team calls the beast—is available for order in most regions today. We will offer it to customers in Latin America later this year.

So, what makes it a gaming machine?

• It supports the latest Intel processors, including the Core 2 Extreme X7900 processor overclocked to 3.2GHz (Bin+2).
• It supports dual NVIDIA GeForce Go 8700M GT graphics cards in SLI mode.
• All models come with a bright 17" Ultrasharp 1920x1200 display with a 7ms response time.
• It's the first notebook in the world to support AGEIA PhysX 100M mobile physics card.
• It supports two hard drives in a RAID 0 or 1 configuration
• It's the first notebook we've shipped that integrates Logitech's GamePanel LCD, which displays stats and in-game details for a growing list of game titles.
• It also features a full-sized backlit keyboard that has a 10-key number pad

I've seen some stories like this one from Anandtech mentioning that there are only a few titles out there that support the PhysX card. Customers who order it will receive a copy of one of those games—Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. There's more games coming that will also support the card: Unreal Tournament 3, Warmonger, and one that I'm really looking forward to called Crysis.

Update 9-28: Direct2Dell reader Keith correctly pointed out that Crysis will not have PhysX support. My mistake for the oversite—sorry about that. I'm still looking forward to it in November though. LM

To accommodate all these hardware options, this machine is big. It's thick too, and that's because the NVIDIA 8700M GT card can be swapped out for the next-generation SLI card later this year. We begin taking orders today and expect to ship most orders within 10 days from the time the order is processed.

The XPS M1730 unveiling will be part of Dell's activities during the DigitalLife event September 27 - 30 in New York City. Dell and Alienware are sponsoring an on-site gaming tournament there, and Valve Software's Gabe Newell will also show off some content from their upcoming compilation called The Orange Box.

Update 9:30a.m.—Louis Bruno, who's a gamer and also one of the service program managers for XPS desktops and notebooks, provides an inside look at the XPS M1730.

Earlier this week, we announced the Dell Precison M6300 mobile workstation. It joins the M4300 as our second mobile workstation based on Intel's Santa Rosa chipset. The M6300 supports Core 2 Duo amd Extreme Edition processors up to the 2.8GHz X7900 processor, and the NVIDIA Quadro FX1600M for strong performance in graphics-intense applications that are commonly used by workstation customers. As far as displays, we offer two 17" UltraSharp versions—one that supports 1440x900 resolution and another that supports 1920x1200.

Like the M4300, the M6300 supports up to 4GB DDR2 memory, and on the storage side, it supports optional 32GB solid state hard drives as well as traditional hard drives at capacities up to 200GB. Mobility is a key component, and we offer lots of flexibility there as well—Wi-Fi options include a/g/ and Draft-n; and on the mobile broadband side, we offer the Dell Wireless 5510 HSDPA card.

In this video, Mano Gialusis from the Precision team shares more details about the M4300 and M6300.

 As I hinted in my last post here, a rather large 2D web project has been taking my focus away from 3D initiatives lately. That project is a redesign of the home page of Dell.com.

How can one single web page be a big project?  When it's a page that gets more than 35 million visitors a week.  When it is the subject of some of the most popular posts on IdeaStorm. When that one page is the entryway to both a corporate and a commerce site. When it must appeal to everyone from individual consumers to large corporate clients, from institutional investors to mainstream media and citizen journalists. When it has to be a place where a student can research a company for their freshman business action lawsuit, and purchase a computer upon which to write that same paper.

This is the challenge faced as we roll out a  beta test of a new design today in the United States. Canada will follow next week. More regions will offer the beta in the future. Here's how it will work: 20% of visitors to Dell.com over the next week will be randomly selected for this beta test. 10% of that test audience will see the page as it is today. The other 10 % will see the redesigned page.  We will then compare clickstream data and basic metrics from those two groups to determine if the new page works or not.

How will we know if it works? If customers tell us it is easier to find the right level of information they need-whether that means finding support for existing products or researching information for future purchases, or adding to the conversation. We don't want to be an Irrelevant Corporate Website. To us, that means integrating community sites such as this blog, the Dell Community Forum, StudioDell and more. Customers like jorge are telling us the same thing on IdeaStorm.

Click on the image below to see a larger version of the screenshot. 

What the redesign doesn't do is what many have voted for—eliminate customer segmentation. We still believe segmentation offers benefits for the customer and here's one reason why: when we have discussions with customers many of them say they dislike being asked to segment themselves when they begin shopping on dell.com; but, many also tell us that they use technology in very different ways and have different needs.  An example of this is a recent survey of small business owners and decision makers conducted by Dell and the International Council for Small Business.  This sort of feedback went into the development of the new Vostro line of notebooks and desktops, as well as the suite of services designed specifically to support small businesses.  As Dell continues to differentiate the products and services we offer our customers, segmentation will begin to make more sense to site visitors.

So, if you visit Dell.com over the next week and see the new design, feel free to click on the "feedback" link at the footer of the page to let us know what you think.  Or, you can come back here and share your comments on this post.  I look forward to hearing even more opinions on this challenging page.

Earlier this week, we launched DellDirekte (www.delldirekte.no), our corporate blog in Norwegian. This is the fourth language for the Dell corporate blogs, following Direct2Dell in English, Chinese and Spanish.

Corporate blogs are not common in Norway. In fact, we believe we are one of the first large companies to launch our own blog.

We are looking forward to following the success of the other Dell blogs, and the other means of communication such as IdeaStorm and Dell Forums. In Dell Norway, we sincerely believe a corporate blog is an excellent way to strengthen the dialogue between ourselves and our stakeholders, first and foremost our customers.

DellDirekte is obviously designed for customers who prefer to communicate with Dell in Norwegian, although Danes and Swedes will also most likely be able to understand the content. The blog will focus on Dell's operations in Norway, but will also feature translated content from the English version of Direct2Dell that is worldwide in nature.

We look forward to hearing from all stakeholders in Norway, and invite everyone familiar with the Norwegian language to share comments, content ideas and feedback with the DellDirekte team.

Just received an e-mail tip that I thought I would share with Direct2Dell readers. Bunte featured a profile of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. Folks here were pleased that Chancellor Merkel uses a Dell flat panel monitor—from the looks of it, maybe a 17" or a 19".

Click on this image to see a larger version: