May 2009 - Direct2Dell

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about netbooks via IdeaStorm and through @Dell_Mini on Twitter since we asked you to join us last week. Since then, we've received lots of ideas and have over 150 followers on Twitter. We look forward to your continued feedback.

One of the first things we noticed at our @Dell_Mini Twitter account was that some of you are interested in running Android on a Dell Mini. I went looking for Doug Anson who’s one of our software gurus in the Office of the CTO to get his thoughts. He and other folks at Dell like him are responsible for investigating future technology options in our products.

Update: Just saw a tweet from Doug that he's kicking the tires on Moblin.

In this video, he shows off a couple of Mini 10v systems running Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Android where he had network and browsing functionality without too much of a fuss.

For more, take a look:

What do (PRODUCT) RED™, Passion Purple, Spiderman and Digital TV all have in common?  The Dell Inspiron Mini of course! Today we are adding a few more goodies to the Mini family or specific family members. Let’s start with the updates that impact the entire family (Mini 9, Mini 10, Mini 10v, and Mini 12.).

As of today the Mini is now Mighty in that the purchase of select Dell Minis can contribute directly to saving lives. Ideastorm posters like 22Cactus22 will be happy to hear that  all Cherry Red Minis are now part of the Dell (PRODUCT) RED portfolio, and Dell will contribute $5 of the purchase price of a (PRODUCT) RED Mini to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.  To date, Dell and other (RED)™ partners and events have helped to generate more than $130 million for the Global Fund. 100% of that funding goes directly to AIDS programs in Africa, with an emphasis on the health of women and children. Like the campaign says: Buy Dell. Join (RED). Save Lives. Update: Been getting some questions about global availability. The (PRODUCT) RED Mini 10 is available today for customers in the Americas; it will be available tomorrow for APJ customers in Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Singapaore and Malaysia; it will be available in EMEA countries within the next several days.

Next on the list is a Dell exclusive that should get some Spidery-senses tingling. For a limited time we are including a 2GB USB key with the Spider-man movie pre-loaded, a $12.99 value, with the purchase of select Dell Mini Deals. This is Plug & Play and doesn’t require any special handling, connections, etc. I personally like the potential of entertainment content on a flash drive and it’s a perfect pairing for the Mini class of product. USB keys are certainly easier to carry and more durable than DVDs.  According to my “sources” we can look for more than meets the eye in the future. Dell is on the leading edge of a growing trend and I expect to see an expanded selection of these “Movies in a Flash” in the second half of the year.

The popular Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is also getting a few additional features and options added today.   First we expanded the external personalization options on the Mini 10 to an even dozen with the addition of a seventh color option, Passion Purple. Individuals can give their Mini 10 a distinctive signature look with a color option or one of the five unique Design Studio works of art by Tristan Eaton. The next new option makes the Mini 10 a bit more businesslike – we are offering Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 ($149) preinstalled. This means the Mini 10 is ready to take on mainstream productivity tasks like Word, Excel and even PowerPoint while you are on the go. (hint – consider upgrading to the HD display (1366x768) for $35 so you can view more content on the screen, e.g. more spreadsheet columns, the entire PowerPoint slide, etc.)..

Finally, today Dell is the first to offer one of the most exciting features to hit the netbook category yet – an optional built-in digital TV Tuner ($50) that will receive over-the-air live digital TV signals. You know all those commercials you’ve been seeing “Are you prepared for Digital TV?” Well, your TV may not be ready, but the Mini 10 is and will pick up most of the local TV stations digital broadcasts.  So why would you want a TV tuner on a Mini 10? If you’re a sports fan, imagine taking the Mini to the local ballpark and catching the color commentary and instant replays while flipping to the last round of the PGA match on another channel. Or, catch the local evening news while sitting out on the deck. Or, watch the latest episode of your favorite show while taking a study break at a local coffee shop. True story –a colleague was carrying a Mini 10 with the TV tuner for the last week or so and tuned in one of the NBA playoff games while at a local coffee shop. At one point he had about a half a dozen people standing around watching it with him. I saw this in action last week at our Urban Meet up event in New York City, and I’ve got to tell you, go with the HD display, the built in TV Tuner and the 6-cell battery and you’ve got a sweet deal for ~$450. To be clear, you will need to stay in one place to catch the broadcast signal – for now. You can’t be commuting on the train, or in a car and watch TV on the Mini 10. We need to wait for a “mobile” digital TV broadcast standard to be certified. Some of you “gadget gurus” may have caught that Dell Mini 10 was instrumental in a technology demo of the ATSC M/H candidate standard with LG and Roundbox, Inc. at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB2009) show last month in Las Vegas. I don’t know a lot about this but it’s the next step that will allow you to watch mobile television channels while moving from point A to point B – should be ready sometime next year.  But enough about the future – the Dell Mini 10 has the features mentioned above available today, and www.dell.com/mini is standing by to help guide you through your order. Have fun! 

Over the last few weeks. we’ve been adding more features and options to the Inspiron Mini 10, which will allow folks to personalize the popular companion device even more like a 720p HD edge-to-edge display, a bigger battery option and five Design Studio choices from Tristan Eaton.  For customers in the United States and Canada, today we’ve added Ubuntu as an OS option (starting price of $399) with additional hard drive options..

We’ve been tweaking the Dell-designed user interface on the Linux version of the Mini 10. For those of you who have never seen our unique UI, the best way to explain it is that it is activity-based. Our goal all along with our Ubuntu interface is to take the application out of the equation. Instead we are paving the way for people to interact with the Mini based on what they want to do – e.g. I want to browse the Internet, I want to look at pictures, I want to chat with my family, I want to play a game of Solitaire, etc. We’ve taken feedback from customers of the Mini 9 and Mini 12 and made some updates to the UI on the Mini 10, to make it more visually appealing. 

For a more visual explanation, here's a vlog from Doug Anson, Dell's Linux technology strategist:

The Linux version of the Mini 10 also gets some additional hard drive options, 32GB ($75) and 64GB ($125) solid state disc (SSD) drives. The Windows XP Mini 10 won’t get these hard drive options for now due to some original restrictions around what level of hardware can be offered on netbook-type devices – these guidelines are adjusting as the category grows.   

For the social media mavens and students who are on the go all day, the best news is we’ve added a 6-cell battery option ($30) for the Mini 10 that provides around eight hours of battery life (based on MobileMark 2007 and Linux BLTK (Battery Life Toolkit) v1.08) - mileage may vary based on configuration, settings, activities etc. We’ve also added a bigger 3-cell option (28WHr)($15) that gets about 25 percent longer battery life (just under four hours) than the base 24WHr battery. Obviously for a device like the Mini, battery-life is critical, so that’s why Dell offers two Minis that are capable of getting around eight hours – the Mini 12 also offers a 6-cell extended battery option.

We recently expanded the pallet of external personalization options an individual can choose from  to customize the Mini 10’s exterior. Joining the original six colors (standard Obsidian Black and Alpine White, or optional Cherry Red, Jade Green, Ice Blue, and Promise Pink- $40) are five original images by Tristan Eaton (The Muse in Purple  and Orange and Stickers in Green, Black and Blue- $60). For those of you looking for a Mother’s Day gift (hint, hint), remember a purchase of any of the  Promise Pink Minis generates a $5 contribution to the Susan G Komen For the Cure.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a feature we added a few weeks ago – an HD display ($35). The key benefits of this display are you can view more content on the display at one time – a LOT more content (around 70 percent more). So, even if you plan to just use it for e-mail and web applications, seeing more content is a useful thing. Besides that, the HD screen also delivers richer colors and wider viewing angles (meaning you can share the movie with the person sitting next to you if you want.)

For those of you who have read the fine print on the Design Tab on the Mini 10 product page will know we still have a few rabbits to pull out of our hat, including a 2GB memory option and built-in TV ATSC Tuner. I’ve confirmed they are on the way – and actually the Mini 10 with a built-in DVB-T tuner will be available Europe in the near future.

I’ll close with this. In the near future my colleague Lionel will post a “Dummy’s Guide to the Atom Processor” as there are two versions out there: the Zxxx series (a.k.a. Silverthorne) and Nxxx series (a.k.a. Diamondville). In general, if you are planning on using a netbook device for video playback you should look for a device powered by the Z-series processor family, as it can handle hardware decode of 720p content and with Cyberlink codecs (which we do include on the Mini) can decode most of the more popular video formats. It also, surprisingly enough, contributes to better battery life because of lower power consumption. Both the Mini 10 and the Mini 12 are based on the Z-series Atom processors, and that’s all I’m going to say about that – stay tuned for Lionel’s post with more details.

If you’ve been following Dell’s social media story for a while, you’ve probably seen lots of positive articles written about us. And while there’s a lot to be proud of, there’s some things we don’t get right.

One of those things I think we can do better on is to streamline content on our external network of blogs. We’ve got to make content easier to find. Longer-term, this means that some of our existing blog content will be consolidated back into Direct2Dell. More on that front in the coming weeks.

Since I’ve always said Direct2Dell is a blog about Dell products, services and customers, product content seemed like a good place to start. All blog posts about new Dell products we’re introducing will appear here on Direct2Dell, regardless of the segment they come from. In other words, it doesn’t matter if it is a product meant for home users, small businesses or large enterprises. If it’s a noteworthy product, Direct2Dell will be a place where you can get the latest information on Dell what we’re up to.

We’ve already starting doing that with consumer products like the Mini 10, the Latitude 2100 netbook that’s built for the education market or the Fortuna server that developed by our Data Center Solutions team. So, if you want to see official word on Dell products that range from netbooks and mobile devices to servers and storage hardware, Direct2Dell is the place to check.

If you’re interested in subscribing to Direct2Dell, add this link to your favorite RSS reader, or follow @Direct2Dell on Twitter.

There's been a fair bit of discussion recently about Wolfram Alpha's upcoming launch of what they are calling their "computational knowledge engine." 

The Independent wrote a lengthy article on the capabilities of the new search tool, suggesting that it is "an invention that could change the Internet forever." They summarize what they consider to be the major milestones of the Internet with Wolfram Alpha's launch as one of seven events that are remarkable.

Worldwide network: A brief history of the internet (source: The Independent, May 3, 2009)

• 1969 The internet is created by the US Department of Defense with the networking of computers at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute.
• 1979 The British Post Office uses the technology to create the first international computer networks.
• 1980 Bill Gates's deal to put a Microsoft Operating System on IBM's computers paves the way for almost universal computer ownership.
• 1984 Apple launches the first successful 'modern' computer interface using graphics to represent files and folders, drop-down menus and, crucially, mouse control.
• 1989 Tim Berners-Lee creates the world wide web – using browsers, pages and links to make communication on the internet simple.
• 1996 Google begins as a research project at Stanford University. The company is formally founded two years later by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
• 2009 Dr Stephen Wolfram launches Wolfram Alpha.

Other's haven't lacked opinions and reviews of the service. Cnet's Rafe Needleman and Stephen Shankland got an inside look and have given their thoughts in this article and in this one, as have ZDNet's Sam Diaz and Larry Dignan.

Just when everyone had become overly fixated on who would acquire Twitter, along comes a company from Champaign, Illinois, to shake things up. For those under the age of 25, Champaign is home to the University of Illinois and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where the NCSA's Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina created Mosaic, considered to be the first popular graphical browser for the World Wide Web.

Wolfram Alpha published a blog post today outlining the two companies they are working with to bring their new service to market. R Systems Inc. has built the 44th fastest supercomputer (per the June 2008 TOP500 list) known as the R-Smarr powered by a Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) server solution. Dell DCS also provided another supercomputer based on quad-board, dual-processor, quad-core Harpertown servers for their data center.

There are many more details on Wolfram Alpha to come soon.