April 2009 - Direct2Dell

There have been millions of downloads of the Windows 7 beta since Microsoft made it official back in January this year. Since then, it's been good to see positive reactions to it in the blogosphere. As we all wait for the release of Windows 7 Release Candidate, I thought you might be interested in hearing about our experiences with the Beta Code.

Over the last month we have been testing hundreds of Dell systems and the results are promising.  

Here’s a peek into what we are seeing when testing:

• On many systems we are seeing noticeable improvements in boot to desktop times (versus Vista)
• Almost all existing Vista drivers are working – great sign in terms of compatibility
• Vista Application compatibility is promising as well (including the IE 8 compatibility mode)
• Transcoding (ripping) media files is faster than Vista

More to come as we test on later builds of Windows 7.

We would love to hear more about your experiences with Windows 7 on your Dell PC.  What did you like?  What may not be as useful?  Send us your thoughts.

If you keep up with products in the blogosphere, you might already be familiar with the Studio One 19, which is our new all-in-one computer. Darren Gladstone’s article kicked off some discussions when we introduced it in Japan last month. Today, we’re now offering it to customers in the United States and Europe.

Over the weekend, Gizmodo and others reacted to a design-focused video that Lionel featured in a blog post late last week. The Studio One 19 is an all-in-one computer that provides a great shared computing experience for families. As mentioned in an earlier post, the Studio One 19 features a simple and approachable design, with five different color options to easily match any home décor.

The Studio One 19 is no slouch when it comes to performance either. Because it’s built on a desktop chipset and features some desktop hardware like Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors and desktop hard drives. Video performance is solid too with NVIDIA GeForce 9200 graphics and 9400 performance graphics upgrade options.

For more on both the hardware and software behind the Studio One 19, take a look at this video that features Josh Duncan and Angela Blair from Dell’s product team:

Besides design and performance, the optional touch capability is something that stands out. The Studio One 19 is our first desktop to feature a multi-touch option. In case you missed it, here’s the preview of the touch capabilities we shared recently. Now that it’s here, I wanted to share more details about the touch features that the Studio One 19 offers:

• Easy multi-touch photo editing, slideshow creation, playlist compilation, notes, and even web browsing.
• Use Touch Zone to quickly locate touch applications and access media content including photos. Listen to music and create playlist.
• Unleash creativity with You Paint finger painting software.
• Record videos and upload directly to YouTube with the touch of a finger with TouchCam
• Flick to Flickr – Upload photos to Flickr to share with family and friends.
• More cowbell - Use Drum Kit to bang on the drums with the multi-touch percussion center. Lionel said this was a blast. 

You can see more photos of the Studio One 19 on Dell’s official Flickr page.

Update: Dell has also teamed with Cozi to feature the Cozi Family Organizer on the Studio One 19 (both touch and non-touch). Families use Cozi to schedule appointments and activities in the shared family calendar, to track shopping and to do lists, to keep a family journal and to send quick messages and reminders. For example how many times have you asked your teen to stop by the store and pick up a few items on the way home - and they remember half of what you needed? Well, with Cozi you speak their language by sending the grocery list via text directly to their cell phone. Really - Cozi is a simple and intuitive experience that any family member can easily use.

Cozi also offers a couple of extras on the Dell Studio One 19 including:

• Cozi Express - Launches Cozi right from the desktop for immediate access to the family's calendar, shopping and to do list and other information.
• Cozi Photo Collage Screensaver -Automatically creates and rotates stunning collages from photos stored on the PC, organizes the photos by family events and activities, and displays upcoming appointments from the family calendar.

Today Dell introduces the newest Vostro laptops, based on customer feedback and the needs of small business in the current economy. The redesigned laptops include the 13.3-inch Vostro 1320, the 15.4-inch Vostro 1520, and the 17-inch Vostro 1720 (You can check out product images here on our Flickr Page). In addition, the new Vostro laptops include free Dell Video Chat software helps small businesses survive budget crunch by replacing travel with technology. For more on how videoconferencing can work for your small business, check out the post on the Small Business Blog.

Products are available today in North America and select South American countries, followed by Europe, Middle East and Africa on April 7, and select Asian countries in May. In the vlog below, Alison Gardner, Dell lead for Vostro product planning, explains how customers were directly involved in the redesign and how the newest Vostro laptops help small businesses easily increase productivity, reliability and enhance security.

4-7-09 Update: Thanks to our members on IdeaStorm for highlighting that the newest Vostro laptops will be preloaded only with software that is requested by buyers -- an idea submitted by jervis961.

Dell has used IdeaStorm as a customer feedback and collaboration venue for over 2 years.  We have a thriving community that has submitted over 11,000 ideas and Dell has implemented over 300 of those ideas into our products and services.

Today, we are taking the next step to extend the reach of IdeaStorm and the ideas and comments within it.  With a click of a button, you will have the option to use Facebook Connect.  This verifies your Facebook identity and allows you to choose the information you want to include on your Facebook Wall.  It couldn't be easier to tell your friends about your ideas or other great ideas on IdeaStorm that you would like Dell to listen to and have them vote on the ideas as well.

First, you authenticate your Facebook account using Facebook Connect:

Then, you write any commentary you want included on your Facebook Wall.

When you click publish, everything is posted on your Facebook Wall for your friends to see!

We have also created two applications within Facebook for both IdeaStorm and Dell Social Innovation Competition.  From these apps, you can enter ideas and participate on either site without ever leaving Facebook. 

Check it out and let us know what you think!

We rolled out a new version of our Community site in early November last year. The goal was to create a community site that combined blogs, forums and wikis. Since that time, it’s been a bumpy ride for many of our users, and they’ve let us know it.

Up to this point, we’ve made updates to the site, improved performance issues that prevented users from posting reliably to the forum and worked to implement some fixes along the way. That said,  It's still a work in progress. Not too long after we went live with the fix for the performance issue, Geoff Knox published a poll to get feedback from the community. One clear request from our readers was to make the forums look and function like a forum. Last night we rolled out some design and functionality changes that attempted to do just that.

One thing we tried to do is make it easier to post. You'll see the Start a New Thread button right near the top of the Forum aggregator page. Clicking on a board from the left hand nav will bring you to a page that's divided into board sections. See the Laptop board below as an example (click on link or or the image below to go there). Each section then displays the three most recent related threads.

At the sub-board level, you'll see two clickable options:

• View All Messages - This will show you all threads in that board
• Create a New Message - This will allow you to create a new thread in that board section

At the main board views, you'll see Posted By, # of Replies, # of Views, Last Action which shows who last posted to it with a date/ time stamp and Accepted Solutions which shows if the original issue was marked as solved by the user who created the thread.

• Made it much easier for users to post a message on a forum
• Finally added the ability to mark a forum thread as Read
• Given Announcements and Floated Threads specific icons so they're easier to spot.
• made it much easier to see the latest post in a forum thread
• Added the ability to filter by Accepted Solutions
• Fixed many of the line break, bullets and numbering issues in the text editor
• On the blog side, we fixed the Category pages - See the Events category on Direct2Dell (or click the image below) as an example. From the category view page on any blog, you can get an RSS feed and filter it to show content from All Blogs that feature that category.

I hope these visual and functional changes move us closer to what you've wanted. There’s still a lot of things we have to fix: search doesn’t work, we need to improve the single sign on process in a big way, have more work to make blogs look like blogs and  we have more to do in forums etc., but we're committed to getting this right.

To customers who contribute to the Dell Community, we appreciate your efforts as well as your feedback. Know that we remain committed to making this work.