December 2007 - Direct2Dell

You might have seen reactions to our teaser page on Dell.com. Today, we start taking orders for the XPS M1730: World of Warcraft Edition from United States customers who signed up for the e-mail. The product will be available to other customers in the U.S. begininng on December 11.

If you registered at the teaser site, soon you will get an e-mail that looks like this one:

Here's the deal. We have teamed with the folks at Blizzard Entertainment to create a product that allows fans of World of Warcraft (WoW) to immerse themselves in the game. Our partnership started earlier this year in January when we auctioned off two custom WoW notebooks for charity. For this system, we wanted to go way beyond a custom appearance. How did the XPS team go about doing that? They started with the award-winning XPS M1730 and beefed up the minimum config. I'll start with the system itself, and will explain other things that come with every system a bit later.

Every system comes pre-loaded with the games themselves: World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade expansion pack. We'll also install all the major client patches for both games as well. We'll continue to test and ship future patches pre-installed as they are released by Blizzard. Dell's goal is to get you into the game with as little effort as possible. Beyond that, it has lots of World of Warcraft content, including original artwork desktop wallpapers and screen savers. The image below is the default Alliance wallpaper that you'll see when you first boot: 

Alliance System:

Horde System:

Alliance and Horde systems side by side, front and back:

The Orc box, which contains the hardware accessories like the binder with User's Manual, the notebook power adapter, custom XPS WoW mousepad, WoW t-shirt, etc. coming down the manufacturing line.

There's a whole lot more to this than the system hardware. Everyone who orders this system will get three things: a Quest Envelope, a WoW backpack full of stuff and the system itself. Before I explain those things in more detail, I'll introduce Randy "Randydeluxe" Jordan to you. He's one of the hosts from the popular WoW podcast called The Instance. We recently invited him to Round Rock for a first-ever unboxing of the system so you can see exactly what you're going to get. This video is almost 30 minutes long, but it's a complete overview of what to expect.

Note: You can left-click on one of the video format links below to play that video in a browser window. Otherwise, you can right-click, then click on Save Link As, then click Save to download the video to your system. Either way, since it's a 30-minute video, it will take some time to load.

      Flash                                                                WMV                                                             MP4  

I'll start by explaining the Quest Envelope. Here's the YouTube video where Randydeluxe looks at the it. The Quest Envelope will come to you separate from the system via certified overnight mail. It contains the following:

• Golden Ticket - This provides you an opprortunity to get a customized figurine of your WoW character through FigurePrints. FigurePrints will access you character's data through Blizzard's servers to create a custom 3D figure of your character, complete with weapons and armor you can choose. Take a look at this video if you want to see what this is all about.
• Blizzard Beta Club Card - The code on the card registers you for Blizzard's Beta Club, which gives you access to five upcoming beta tests, starting with the Wrath of the Lich King. 
• Collector's Edition Account Upgrade Certificate - This allows you to upgrade your account to a collector's edition account, enabling you to get a special in-game pet.

The WoW backpack is what comes in the Night Elf box. Here's the video where Randydeluxe unboxes the it. The backpack has the following things in it:

• WoW BattleChest: This contains the retail versions of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade expansion pack. It also includes WarCraft III and The Frozen Throne expansion pack, and the strategy guides for both games.
• WoW Soundtrack
• Making of WoW Behind-the-scenes DVD
• WoW Trading Card starter decks: Heroes of Azeroth, Through the Dark Portal
• Book:WoW Strategy Guide from BradyGames
• Book: WoW The Burning Crusade Strategy Guide 
• Book: Rise of the Horde
• Book: The Tides of Darkness

In this vlog, you'll hear from Shane McWilliams, who is the program manager for the XPS M1730  World of Warcraft Edition development team. His main character is a Blood Elf Mage, and when this video was shot, he was level 56. Today, he's level 60, and has enough battleground experience to get the complete "Gladiator's Regalia" armor set when he hits level 70. He gives you a good overview of the system and the experience, and provides more insight into the design of the hardware.

Lots of folks have been waiting for us to release more details on the Latitude XT Tablet PC. My first brief post about it has received more than 400 comments and has gone on to become the #1 most viewed post in Direct2Dell's history. It's made some traction in the blogosphere too—almost 2,000 posts reference the product by name before we announced it.

Update: 12/11—Glenn just published his post. It has the capacitive touch vlog I mention in the last sentence of this post.  

And speaking of the blogosphere, many of you who are interested problably already have seen the updates from Engadget here and here.

We will begin taking orders and shipping the product by the end of the year.

The convertible tablet weighs in at 3.57lbs., making it is one of the lightest tablet PCs available. Pricing starts at $2,499. Now for some other specs...

Processors:

• Intel Core 2 Solo ULV processor U2100 (1.06GHz) or
• Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor U7600 (1.20GHz)

12.1" WXGA (1280 x 800) display:

• Optional LED-backlit display
• LCD Outdoor viewing display for increased brighness in outdoor use

Graphics: Integrated ATI Radeon X1250 UMA adapter

Memory:

• All configurations include 1GB of integrated 533MHz memory
• optional 2GB or 3GB configurations available

Power/Battery Options:

• 4-cell 28W/Hr Li-Ion primary or secondary
• 6-cell 42W/Hr Li-Ion primary or secondary
• 45W/Hr Li-Ion High Capacity Battery Slice
• 45W (small form factor), 65W, Combo Auto/Air (90W test only)
• 3-foot power cord standard, 6-foot optional

Hard Drive Options:

• 40GB 1.8" 4200RPM hard drive
• 80GB 1.8" 4200RPM hard drive
• 120GB 1.8" 5400RPM hard drive
• 32 or 64GB Solid State Disk (SSD) drives

Input Devices:

• Finger Touch - Capacitive Touch Screen
• Pen - EM Digitizer
  • Eraser functionality actuated via side switch
  • Optional tether
  • Interaction with display controlled by three different replaceable "tips" for user-selectable writing experiences
• Full-size keyboard / full Latitude localization
• Dual-pointing; rubber domes with leveling rods
• Scroll Wheel with enter and back functionality (on display / slate)

Operating Systems:

• Windows Vista Business (32-bit or 64-bit)
• Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
• Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005

Connectivity Options:

• Dell Wireless 1390 (802.11g)
• Dell Wireless 1490 (802.11a/g)
• Dell Wireless 1505 (802.11a/g/ Draft n)
• Dell Wireless 360 Bluetooth Module
• Dell Verizon Wireless 5720 Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO Rev A)
• Dell Wireless 5720 Sprint Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO Rev A)
• Dell Wireless 5720 Telus Mobile Broadband3 (EV-DO)

Tomorrow, we'll follow up this post with another that discusses functionality of the tablet with a nearly 10-minute vlog discussing the Latitude XT's capactive pen and touch capability. It's live now—see here.

Now that we have shared that Ubuntu 7.10 is available for sale on select Dell systems, I'd like to take the opportunity to give an update on what customers can expect with this offering. Most of the Ubuntu 7.04 technical details are still valid for this release, but there are a number of changes that I'd like to point out:

• On every system purchased pre-installed with Ubuntu 7.10, we are now providing Corel's LinDVD DVD playback software by default. This application will allow customers to *legally* play encrypted DVD movies on their desktop or laptop. Note that this is a closed-source, proprietary application, and is not included on the Ubuntu 7.10 OS media.
• Compiz Fusion desktop effects are enabled by default on all systems sold with Ubuntu 7.10. We chose to only turn on the effects that Ubuntu 7.10 enables by default, but customers can easily configure additional effects. Here's a YouTube clip that shows off some of the effects. And if you're interested, the Compiz Fusion wiki maintains a list of available plug-ins.  
• Based on customer feedback, as well as to enable desktop effects, we are now installing and enabling the NVIDIA 3-D OpenGL driver by default on systems purchased with NVIDIA video cards.
• We are now placing a DVD restore ISO image on the user's desktop. By burning this ISO to a disc and then booting to it, customers can restore their operating system to the exact state in which they received it. This now gives customers a second option to restore their OS, in addition to the reinstallation partition already located on the hard drive.
• The Adobe Flash player is installed by default (so you can watch Direct2Dell vlogs in their native state, plus a whole lot more).
• We have added support for several new hardware peripherals. These include the following:
  • Integrated laptop webcams w/ digital microphone
  • NVIDIA video cards on laptops, including suspend/hibernate support
  • Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 on the Inspiron 530
  • Support for the Dell 1720 and 1720dn printers
• Dell's DKMS utility can now be installed from the Ubuntu Universe repository
• Based on customer feedback, we now have an apt repository available for updating BIOSes from Ubuntu

Several key items have not changed:

• We continue to work with our hardware vendors to push Linux support for the devices we sell upstream. We have made good progress in this area, and our customers should really start to see a payoff from those efforts over the next year.
  
• As always, we want whatever Linux distribution you use (be it Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, etc.) to "just work" on all of our hardware.
• Our wiki page on our linux.dell.com website continues to give technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds. Please bookmark it and refer to it first for any problems or questions.
  

I did see some Direct2Dell comments from people like jmxz, Mark W. Tomlinson, usr and Lem asking about how to upgrade their Dell systems with Linux to Ubuntu 7.10. Easiest way is through the Update Manager in 7.04.  Here's a walkthrough from Canonical on the process. Thanks for supporting the cause!

In this vlog, Lionel talks to two of the engineers on my team, Amit Bhutani and Jose De la Rosa, about what we've been doing to get systems ready for this, a demo of Gusty Gibbon's new features, and more.

 Update: Several people have been asking about the reinstallation DVD ISO's mentioned in the post. We have made these available for download on the wiki. These ISO's duplicate a factory-installed Ubuntu 7.10 image from Dell for those systems listed. They have not been tested on any systems other than those listed, so they may or may not work well on other systems. Note that these ISO images DO NOT CONTAIN LinDVD, as LinDVD is a non-free application that is included in the cost of a system purchased with our Ubuntu 7.10 factory-installation. We'll make information available on how this application can be purchased after the holidays.

As many of you know, we've been developing the Latitude XT for some time. During that time, we've spent a lot of time talking to Tablet PC customers about what they like and don't like about existing products.

Customers told us that existing Tablet PCs are just too clumsy and clunky. We've worked to address this by creating one of the lightest and thinnest 12.1" convertible tablets on the market at about 1" thick and 3.6 pounds. I'm glad to see that some reviewers like Andrew Baxter at Tablet PC Review said it was the smallest power adapter he's seen on any notebook or Tablet PC.

It's clear that displays are important to many customers as well. Many customers use Tablet PCs in outdoor or brightly-lit environments, and many existing products didn't have adequate screen brightness.  That's why we designed an optional daylight viewing panel that is the brightest in its category-at 400 nits, it's almost 2X the competition.  Now, this option does add a little more thickness and a little more weight.  So, for mainstream users more concerned about size and weight, we still recommend the backlit LED panel at 220 nits.

Next, as tablet users are mobile all day, they told us that battery life was becoming increasingly important.  We answered this with a standard six-cell battery that offers about 4 ½ hours of continuous battery life and an optional battery slice that snaps snugly on the underside for up to 9 hours of "all day computing." Regarding the battery slice, I saw that Engadget raised concerns about the battery slice blocking the air intake. Here's the deal: with the battery slice attached, there is  a small gap (1mm or so) between the slice and the bottom of the tablet. This space leaves sufficient room for air to flow from the fan through the sides of the system, allowing the unit to cool. In our tests, the system remains within spec for heat both with and without the slice.

But perhaps the biggest frustration customers told us about with existing offerings was around the use of "resistive" touch technology. This technology needs the user to apply force to the screen in order for the system to recognize interaction, which contributes to poor accuracy and durability issues with the screen itself. Many customers using resistive tablets that support both pen and touch actually wind up turning this feature off because the palm rejection technology is so cumbersome. On this front, I think we're making our biggest impact. The Latitude XT is the first sub-four pound convertible with both pen and "capacitive" touch technology. Capacitive technology senses the touch of a finger with no pressure leading to better accuracy, response times, screen durability, and ultimately, a better user experience. As an example, as far as accuracy and speed, our third-party tests confirmed this against the Lenovo X61T.  Also, the digitizer is rated up to 10 times more durable than competitors resistive touch digitizer technology.

In this vlog, Rick Seger from N-Trig and Bob Sparks from our Engineering team walk you through the capacitive pen and touch capability of the Latitude XT and introduce you to the benefits of freestyle computing. 

With this product, we've really made an effort to address our customers' issues with other Tablet PC offerings. I hope you agree!

Sorry I'm just getting to this topic now... I know a few of you have been waiting for more detail.

Last week, Direct2Dell reader Jon mentioned the recent PC Magazine article about CableCard support in the PC industry. Lots of Direct2Dell readers like Nick, Shaun Rowland and others have been asking when we would offer the digital cable TV tuner card on the XPS 420, and several others like them and Jon (glad to see your purchased the system now that we added digital cable support, Jon.) and Mike commented  that we added it to the configurator on Dell.com on Friday last week.

Back when we supported digital cable tuner on the XPS 410, we only offered it on a single configuration. On the XPS 420, it is a base option on the system. If you look at the XPS 420 configurator page, and click on the TV Tuner and Video Xcelerator section, you will see a page similar to this one. The digital cable tuner options are the bottom two.

As most of you who are interested in PC support for CabelCard probably already know, there are a few reasons why CableCard support for PCs is more complex than installing a high-def TV tuner card that allows you to watch over-the-air high definition broadcasts on a PC. Jim Clardy. who is our digital home strategy technologist in the Office of the CTO  describes some of those complexities on page 2 of the PC Magazine article I referenced earlier.

I'll see if I can get Jim (or others on the team) to blog more about this topic in the future.