May 2008 - Direct2Dell

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.

We recenty introduced the Dell Service Partner Program (SPP) for independent service providers who manage local or regional computer repair needs.  These are smaller service provider businesses - sometimes just one employee big.  And, like larger, multi-national computer repair companies, Dell Service Partners provide essential consulting and repair to their customers, so we're here to provide support that will help them answer a customer's needs fast. 

In an effort to offer more benefits to these smaller service provider businesses, including discounts and training programs, Dell has created the Service Partner Program because we know your business succeeds when you offer value, efficiency and reliable service to your customers.  When their computer breaks, you are there to fix it fast, so Dell wants to back you up on your customers' needs.

Before I jump into the FAQ, you can also find more details about the Service Partner Program at www.dell.com/servicepartner.

Who can join the SPP?

Service Providers in the United States are eligible to join the Dell Service Partner Program.  We plan to offer the Service Partner Program globally at a future date. 

What type of discounts can I get as a member of SPP?

• Discounts on Replacement Parts = 7% for telephone orders when you call this toll-free number 1-888-925-4528.  We will offer online discounts in the future. 
• Discounts on Service Warranties = 10% when you call 1-877-277-9723.
• Discounts though Dell’s Employee Purchase Program (EPP) = 7% on laptops and desktops.

How do I get these discounts?

By calling our toll-free, Dell Service Partner sales representatives, you can opt-in to receive discounts on Parts, Warranties or EPP system purchases.  Tell our sales reps that you would like to be a member of the Service Partner Program by providing your email and receive information on future promotions at Dell.  

What if I need a part late in the day or the Next Business Day for my customer?

You need a part, Dell has it for you.  Order parts as late as 7 p.m. CST M-F when you call our parts sales queue for your order.  This beats most industry shipping cut-off times that range from noon to 4 p.m. CST. 

Dell also reminds everyone that Next-Business-Day delivery (NBD) is always an option when you call one of our parts sales representatives. Our prices for NBD are also some of the best across all computer vendors and our competitors. 

Can I give Dell feedback on the Service Partner Program or Dell products and services?

Yes.  We hope that our customers and partners continue to provide ideas or suggestions about how we can improve things.  You can give your feedback here here on Direct2Dell  or at IdeaStorm.  We've implemented programs based on suggestions from businesses and customers, including Dell's participation in Red Campaign.

I think Dell products and services are great, but sometimes I feel I need more training on how to best use them for my customers?

Dell offers some great training for service providers, technicians and anyone interested in knowing more about how to get the most from our products. 

Anyone who follows Direct2Dell knows that we've been rolling out new blogs in the last several weeks. I see a key part of my job as Chief Blogger is to connect people with information that they're looking for (more on that topic from me soon). Things have been moving so fast, I haven't done a very good job of connecting the dots so far.

To try to improve on that, I wanted to try something new with this post. A while back, the IdeaStorm team started a Weekly Recap that has been pretty well received by the IdeaStorm community. In the week in review, I'll call out posts from the Direct2Dell family and try to provide a bit of context into where they fit in the blogosphere.

• Direct2Dell Japan launch: Overall traffic was modest for the first week.. only a handful of links from the blogosphere to the main site. We'll keep working to reach more customers there over time.
• Alienware and the Dell XPS Brand: A WSJ story sparked some discussion on this topic. Anne Camden stepped in to refute the idea that we were phasing out XPS gaming machines early, and reitierated that XPS brand isn't going away. Later in the week, John Blain blogged about our featuring two Alienware laptops on Dell.com as an example of how we'll work together. 
• HP/ EDS Deal: This one got lots of discussions going in the blogosphere. In her blog post, Lynn Tyson said that the service model that Dell continues to build is based on a fundamentally different strategy than the one the deal is based on. I thought both Jeff Kaplan and Ed Moltzen offered interesting perspective on the deal. Other folks like Om Malik reported that the deal was about building a cloud infrastructure for the future. Marc Farley provided a different viewpoint (from a car wash no less) that agreed more with Nick Carr's take: the HP EDS Acquisition was about cash from IT infrastructure outsourcing, not about the clouds.
• Dell's XS23 Cloud Server: Todd Brannon from the Data Center Solutions team shared more XS23 details on the Cloud Computing blog about a custom server setup that The Register hinted at recently.
• 8800M GTX Graphics Card Upgrade Option: John Blain answered why this upgrade option for exisitng XPS M1730 customers was taking so long. He'll continue to publish updates on Direct2Dell as we have new information to share.

Bottom line, I hope this becomes a useful snapshot for customers to get an idea of what's going on across all our sites and how it relates to the broader blogosphere. I created a category for all of these updates called D2D Week in Review.

Feel free to let me know how I can make it better.

Some of you have known this was coming. Today, we're rolling out the Dell Channel blog. Take a look at my introductory post for a bit more context of what to expect.

You can access the Dell Channel Blog here: www.direct2dell.com/channel

And if you want to check out content via the RSS feed, go here: http://direct2dell.com/channel/rss.aspx

It's no secret that Dell aims to be the greenest technology company in the world. But on Earth Day last week, sites like The Consumerist, Gizmodo, and other blogs showed us that there's still more work for us to do.

Shortly after we read those posts, we had a team on the road to Dallas to meet with the vendor that shipped this flash drive to see how we can improve the process. End result, there's some easy fixes and some longer-term issues for us to address. Here's an outline:

• Immediate: Directive to use envelopes for small items such as these.
• Short term: Use of smaller boxes. We have requested an optimization analysis of product volume to box size.
• Short term: Implementation of Dell-defined volumetric metrics on void space in the package to be incorporated into our periodic vendor business reviews.

While third party items such as these make up a very small portion of our overall shipping volume, folks here know we need to fix it. Our sincere gratitude goes out to everyone who pointed this irregularity out to us. We hope that all of you will continue to provide feedback like this on any of our green-focused Direct2Dell posts, or if you have ideas about ways we can make improvements, please share them in the Environment section on IdeaStorm.

To do that:

1. Go to www.ideastorm.com
2. Login or Register
3. Click this button near the top right corner of the site (or click this button to the right) 
4. Enter your idea, then choose Environment from the category list, plus whatever other categories that apply.
   

We still have a lot of work to do, but with your help we can make Dell the greenest technology company in the world.

Stay tuned for more updates.