Direct2Dell

Share Your Opinion For A Chance to Win $500 From Dell

DELL-Joe M — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:10:00 GMT

There's any number of studies that show that consumers trust product opinions from friends, family members and other customers more than they trust what a company says about its own products.. Since 2006, we've added the Ratings and Reviews functionality in multiple countries and added the ability to share them in other social media sites. Many customers have told us that these reviews are helpful during the shopping process.

Since the early days, we've amassed thousands of reviews written by people around the world, sharing thoughts about what was great, what wasn't ideal and so on. We appreciate those who take the time to write reviews, and want to encourage more people to submit new ones. So if you're one of our customers who have read reviews or used them to compare products, we're hoping you will take that next step and write one! Now it's the right time to finally grab the old pen and paper (or keyboard in this case) and put your words to use for a chance to win. Share your opinions on anything and everything from the Studio 17 to the Wasabi Photo Printer or even non-Dell products that we sell through the Electronics and Accessories area on Dell.com. Give us your thoughts, photos or submit a video review for all of the dell community to see.

From July 2 - September 4, everyone that submits a review will be entered for a chance to win one of three $500 gift cards. Write as many reviews as you want on each Dell product you own to increase your chance to win. And remember, when you're writing your review, think about all the things you wanted to know about the product and tell people how you use your product in real life.

To rate a product, you can visit www.dell.com/ratings or go to any of our product pages and sign in to write a review. Dell uses your reviews in action across all of Dell.com. The most useful reviews are selected to be Customer Spotlight Reviews (need to find that D2D post I wrote to link about the customer spotlight) which many customers have told us help them when they are making up their minds on what to buy. We want to put you and your review in the spotlight! Share your pictures, your stories, your thoughts with the community not only just for a chance to win but for a chance to be heard by all at the Dell community!

For more information, check out our official rules for our Ratings & Reviews Sweepstakes.

Why You're Waiting on Your Alienware M17x

DELL-John B — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:40:00 GMT

Last week I had the pleasure of emceeing three contests on Twitter for two Alienware M17x laptops and other prizes. I was simply amazed by the sheer number of responses I received. The M17x is a very popular item judging from the responses, and with good reason. It is an amazing machine, simply put.

While conducting the contest I received a personal message on twitter from co-optimus.com owner bapenguin, letting me know he had ordered an M17x to review for his site, and his order had been delayed for several weeks. A quick perusal of the internet showed others are experiencing similar delays as well. I knew something was up when I got a direct message from another twitter friend, csharpzealot, who wrote: "Seems like the popularity of the M17x has landed Dell/Alienware in a bit of a parts problem :) oops..victim of your own success."

I decided this deserved a little looking into.

Here's the scoop: due to popular demand, there's been a slight hiccup in the supply LCD panels for the M17x, so csharpzealot isn't too far off with his statement. These aren't just your average LCD panels, but some of the highest quality LCD panels available, so just substituting any old panel to fulfill the orders just won't do. This part shortage is the root cause of most M17x delays, and the system's popularity is a major cause of the parts shortage. That's the bad news.

The good news is that the supply problem is well on the way to being conquered, and while we can't say when the shipping delays will subside, we know they soon will. If you're one of those waiting for your M17x to ship, you can be assured that when your system is built, it will be built specifically for you with the highest quality parts available.

Hang on to your hats, folks! Your M17x's are on their way!

Dell Driver Download Manager

eoghan_osullivan — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I would like to share some details on an important update for the Drivers & Downloads application on Support.Dell.com. Recently, we completed the launch of the new Dell Driver Download Manager. This new functionality, which is available globally across all of Support.Dell.com, has been created to improve your experience when downloading files from Dell.

The big change you will see when using the new Driver Download Manager is an improvement in download speed. The time taken to download files using the Driver Download Manager is a lot shorter, up to a 30-40% reduction, depending on your internet connectivity.

The Driver Download Manager also offers a number of improvements to help you through the process of downloading files from Support.Dell.com. You can now pause and resume your downloads. The progress of your download can be saved via an icon on your desktop which you can restart at any time. You can also restart your download should your internet connection get cut off in the middle of a download, as the Driver Download Manager saves your progress ensuring that you don't lose out.

To use the Driver Download Manager (Fig 1 above), you will need to complete a once off install of the application on your system.

Please take some time to visit your local Drivers & Downloads site and check out the Driver Download Manager. Hopefully you will find this new functionality useful and that it helps improve your download experience. I look forward to your feedback.

GPS and Wi-Fi Positioning Coming to the Mini 10

Lionel_Menchaca — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT

With the recent buzz around the forthcoming TomTom navigation app for the iPhone and recent report that demand for GPS devices is expected to grow steadily over the next few years, there's no question that there's a lot of interest in the technology. We're betting that location services will be a hit in netbooks as well. Starting next week in the United States, we're offering the Dell Wireless 700 location solution for our Mini 10 netbook that is a combination of hardware and software.

The hardware part is an internal GPS card with built-in Wi-Fi locationing. These two technologies work in tandem, which means the technology works both indoors and out. In other words, it can calculate your position using Wi-Fi access points or using GPS satellites. The Dell Wireless 700 is powered by Broadcom's A-GPS and Skyhook Wireless' Wi-Fi position solutions.

I asked our wireless team for a bit more about the underlying technology, and here's what they told me: The Dell Wireless 700 uses Wi-Fi access points and Long Term Orbit (LTO)-based Assisted-GPS (A-GPS) technology to determine location information. It provides a fast, accurate and reliable location source to applications and services by leveraging the strength of each underlying position technology.

And here's how the wireless team explained Wi-Fi positioning:

The Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) can determine the location of Wi-Fi enabled devices. All Wi-Fi Access Points broadcast a signal beacon known as a MAC address, notifying nearby devices of their presence. WPS refers to the mapped locations of millions of Wi-Fi MAC addresses to pinpoint the device location. WPS is complementary to GPS. It works best indoors and in urban areas, while GPS is limited by physical obstructions of ceilings and tall buildings.

On the software side, the Dell Wireless 700 location system features CoPilot navigation software to provide turn by turn directions. I offers things like 2D and 3D map views, lets you save up to 50 addresses for one trip, offers trip optimization to provide the most efficient route, can provide instant detour information when you encounter expected delays and provides continuously updated information about the trip.

Another piece of the location-based services that we're bringing to market is a location aware portal. For it, we've partnered with Skyhook Wireless and Loki. Loki is a browser plugin that comes preconfigured for Internet Explorer and Firefox. It works with Loki-supported sites to improve local search functionality by providing you details from nearby restaurants store locations and your friends' location information from supported social media sites like Flickr, Loopt and BrightKite.

In the OS department, initially, it will support Windows XP. Vista and Windows 7 support will come later. The Mini 10 is the first system that we'll offer with the optional Dell 700 Wireless location solution. Stay tuned for more details about more supported systems, accessories and more regions.

Vostro 1220: no-compromise ultraportable laptop

DELL-Sam B — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:00:00 GMT

You’ve heard a lot in the past few weeks about Dell’s new enterprise solutions for small and medium businesses. At the other end of the spectrum, we’re also helping redefine the way small businesses think about mobile computing.

Business is no longer restricted to the office environment, and entrepreneurs need the flexibility to work wherever and however business requires – especially in today’s tough economy. For most small businesses across the globe, laptops continue to be the most critical tools that keep day-to-day business going and growing. That’s why we offer the industry’s broadest lineup of small-business laptops to meet the diverse needs of our customers on the go.

You may have already seen this sneak-peek, but let me give you some inside perspective on today’s announcement (insert link) of the new Vostro 1220 ultraportable 12.1” laptop – the industry’s only 12” designed especially for small business that packs the punch of a full-size laptop into a small package. Our competitors can’t make that claim nor do their small business systems offer the security options of the Vostro line – mobility solid state drives, fingerprint readers and encrypted hard drives.

We first launched a 12.1” Vostro in Asia in late 2007 with incredible success, and now the 11-12” panel size is growing in popularity among commercial customers everywhere. From the launch of our first Vostro 12.1” system to today, we learned a lot from our customers in Asia and made critical improvements based on their feedback and technology advancements that will now benefit customers worldwide. The biggest improvements since the last generation include:

Improved performance with the latest generation Intel processors;

Up to 8GB of memory and faster HDD options;

More ways to secure your data – encrypted hard drives, solid state drives;

Video conferencing;

Faster connectivity with gigabit and wi-fi options, and

Up to 9 hours of battery life.

Finally, let me add that this is just the beginning of what Dell is innovating for our small business customers! We’ll have more exciting news to share soon, so stay tuned to Direct2Dell for the latest scoop.

For more images of the Vostro 1220, check out the set on our Flickr page.

Getting Even Closer To Our Medium Business Customers

DELL-Chris Mu — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:00:00 GMT

Dell’s first ever SMB Customer Advisory Council Meeting took place in the UK last week – and I’m delighted to say it was a big success!

We invited 13 of our medium-sized UK customers to our Executive Briefing Centre in Bracknell for an in-depth discussion with Aongus Hegarty and representatives from our sales and product group teams. The objective was simply to listen and understand the key issues on their minds.

We focused on three main areas:

1. Their feedback on Dell’s current and future SMB products

2. What future trends they were forecasting

3. How Dell can better engage with them to help meet their business objectives

We were able to gain some excellent insights on key subjects like Mobility and Enterprise requirements. For example, we learned that Latitude notebooks are seen as a really great and suitable product by Medium customers. We also received very valuable feedback on some of the IT complexities they faced – and how Dell can help them going forward in this critical area.

It was really interesting to see just how diverse the customers were. We had Jagex, a developer and publisher of online games, Pole Star, a company providing tracking, security and asset management systems to help prevent the threat of shipping piracy in hostile environments, and Pensions First, an innovative financial solutions firm. The one thing they all had in common was a genuine desire to grow their business and reduce IT inefficiencies.

All of the companies certainly appreciated the opportunity to engage with their peers and also felt extremely valued by Dell for creating this M-specific event for them – helping cement our position as a trusted adviser.

Our plan is to now roll-out this event across EMEA/Global, and run on a bi-annual basis in our key countries. Watch this space for more details.

Rackspace Cloud Event - Expect a Hybrid Approach in the Short-Term

DELL-Bruce Eric — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Last week I had the opportunity to join my colleagues at Rackspace at a customer event at the New York Stock Exchange where they shared their vision for the future of cloud computing.

The evening began with cocktails on The NYSE Trading Floor where @kiwilark and I mingled with @scobleizer, @rocmanUSA and @rjamestaylor, among many others.

From there we moved to The Historic NYSE Boardroom for an intimate dinner with Rackspace customers and prospects where we heard from RackSpace Chief Technology Officer John Engates (@jengates) discuss Rackspace's business and their view on cloud computing.

One of the issues many IT managers and CIOs face today is continued pressure to lower their capital expenditure, even if that means that operating expenses increase in the short term. This is where Rackspace's view that companies won't move everything to the cloud immediately comes in.

In the current economic environment, they may choose to pilot cloud hosting for their e-mail services or to host a blog or wiki. Their view is that they use these smaller projects to essentially kick the tires of cloud computing, which may eventually lead them to move more of their computing requirements to the cloud. This seems practical to me. I imagine many CIOs and IT managers are pretty conservative in their approach to making technology available to their clients, their employees. Why risk your company's life-blood, it's data, because it sits in a cloud somewhere under someone else's watchful eye. I imagine cloud computing will see a crawl, walk, run approach in the coming years. This mirrors much of what our own Data Center Solutions team is seeing as develop optimized systems for hyper-scale, search engine and other types of data center customers.

Rackspace's Chief Strategy Officer and President of its Cloud Business, Lew Moorman, was recently interviewed by Larry Dignan on their vision: "The theory: Customers will begin toggling between hosted data centers and cloud computing resources as standard operating procedure." He also blogged about it here.

One of John's slides resonated with many in the audience. It said: "Cloud is part of a computing strategy: Everyone, NOT Everything." I take that to mean that leveraging the power and ubiquity of cloud computing IS for every one or every company, but not necessarily for every single application.

Rackspace is clearly a force to be reckoned with in the hosting and cloud computing space and they have some big goals. As an example of how they're pushing the envelope, they recently hired Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica to build out a community of Internet fanatics called building43. Michael Arrington recently wrote an article describing exactly what Robert will be doing with building43

If you haven't been to the site, it's really cool and has recently featured interviews Robert and team have done with leading Internet companies, industry thought leaders and people and companies that are using technology in unique and cool ways.

Some of those interviews include Luke Kilpatrick who runs Fire On The Bay, an Adobe Fireworks Users Group; Don Tapscott, author of "Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" as well as eleven other books on the Internet and other topics; and, Kelly Nelson, director of marketing at the Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto, who is the first person within the Four Seasons family to use Twitter on behalf of the hotel chain.

Dell and the Windows 7 Upgrade Program

Daniel_Judd — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:00:00 GMT

For those that have been keeping up with Microsoft's Windows 7 development effort, Brandon over at Microsoft made it official today—the Windows 7 upgrade program will be here tomorrow on June 26. That's when we will begin Dell's Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program in multiple regions. Our upgrade program includes more than 55 countries and over 20 languages.

Here's what this means:

Customers purchasing specific Dell consumer and business PCs with qualifying Windows Vista versions (Vista Home Premium, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate) will be able to register to receive a free upgrade kit for Windows 7.
This offer applies to customers who purchase their systems either on dell.com or through their favorite retailer or reseller. Shipping and handling fees may apply depending on retailer or reseller. Program terms vary by country.
Dell will ship the Windows 7 upgrade kits on or after the official launch of Windows 7 on Oct. 22.
Customers can visit www.dell.com/windows7upgrade to check eligibility.Customers will be able to register for their free* Windows 7 upgrade kit through www.dell.com/windows7upgrade when we get closer to the Oct. 22 launch date
Microsoft has designed the upgrade program with consumers and small business customers in mind and will not allow more than 25 upgrade kits to be sent to any one address.

Overall we are looking forward to bringing Windows 7 to market on October 22^nd. Early feedback from our customers and Dell engineering testing efforts is that Windows 7 on Dell clients is making everyday tasks faster and simpler for our customers. Key pundits and analyst are also very bullish about the new operating system. Dell's engineering and services partnership with Microsoft will enable customers to deploy on day one when Windows 7 ships.

* Shipping and handling fees may apply

Update from Lionel: Since Daniel published this post about the Windows 7 upgrade program, I've gotten several questions from customers like jrporter40, kdsreferee and hartwilson about eligibility requirements.

The upgrade program is for customers who have ordered an eligible Dell system on or after June 26, 2009. The order date is one of three determining factors. System eligibility and operating system version are the other two. Eligible systems ordered between June 26 and December 31, 2009 qualify for the Windows 7 upgrade. If you qualify, then you need to register for the upgrade at www.dell.com/windows7upgrade.

You'll need to enter your service tag number in the registration process. If you do not yet have a service tag number for an existing order, have further questions about the program or need to discuss your specific situation, please contact Customer Service.

Customers in the United States can call 1-800-624-9897. Customers outside the U.S. can do the following to find the correct phone number to call:

Go to support.dell.com
Choose your country or region from the drop-down list
Choose the Contact Us link
Choose Technical Support
Choose Call Technical Support

For Dell customers who have been running Vista for a while, Ars Technica and other sites have written about an option that's available to you. Microsoft recently rolled out a Windows 7 Pre-Order Offer that allows customers running Vista to purchase retail versions of the upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional for a discounted price. See more details about the dates and countries that can take advantage of the Windows 7 pre-order at the bottom of this post from the Windows Team Blog.

By the way, according to CNET's Ina Fried, the Windows 7 preorder has proved to be a pretty popular item on Amazon.com.

Win an Alienware M17x in 140 characters or less

DELL-John B — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week Alienware started a new and exciting venture in social media including a series of giveaways on Twitter. All through this week we’re giving away a series of prizes such as Alienware watches, Alienware briefcases, and Alienware acrylic tumblers. So far are we’ve given away a lot of small prizes but the grand prizes, two Alienware M17x laptops, are still up for grabs. There’s still time to throw your name in the hat!

How do you enter, you ask? It’s actually pretty easy.

Simply follow @Alienware on twitter and watch for instructions. Many of the prize giveaways involve answering a quick trivia question, and being a tad quicker with your answer than everyone else. To qualify you must be a United States resident at least 18 years old, and you have to play to win! Contests will continue only until Friday, so what are you waiting for?

For complete rules, check out the terms and conditions of the contests here.

Come on, you know you want one of these:

Want more incentive? Check out these photos of the M17x on Alienware's official Flickr pages.

Good luck! I’ll see you on Twitter.

Dell Launches Treat Yourself Campaign

DELL-Chris B — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Launched June 20th, Dell's latest TV commercial entitled "Treats" invites consumers to Treat Yourself to one of Dell's colorful Inspiron laptops. The 30-second spot, created by Mother New York, highlights Dell's ability to deliver computers that reflect the personalities, attitudes, and desires of its consumers by focusing on its strategic platform of "Yours is Here."

"Treats" is the first spot in the campaign to be released. Set inside an imaginary factory, the spot focuses on a team of four workers who sing and stroll throughout the space as dream-like machines shape an array of colorful substances into Dell's candy-like line of Inspiron computers. Musically, we've revived and re-recorded the 1958 hit "Lollipop", originally performed by Ronald & Ruby.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

"Treat Yourself is all about a more relaxed and everyday relationship to technology. It's more colorful than technical and about fun more than facts," commented Paul Malmstrom and Linus Karlsson, CD's and Partners of Mother New York. "We created a magical factory for the TV spots; a place where imaginary machines and singing workers kick out a rainbow of candy wrapped computers. What's not to like?"

The TV spot will run on network and national cable throughout the summer; additional TV, print and online components will be released concurrently.