November, 2007

We've seen a lot of interest from customers in solid state disk (SSD) technology. Ryan at Engadget does a pretty good job of summarizing why someone would want an SSD drive in their recent post about Samsung's new 64GB product . Not long after IdeaStorm user tablet205 submitted the Solid State Drives as option in Notebooks , we started offering them in a couple of Latitude notebooks in May. Since then, we've expanded the option to more Latitude notebooks , all of our mobile workstations , and...

Well, the numbers are in from our most recent beta test of a new dell.com home page design, and they're not as I'd hoped. While one researcher recently found our web site to be " quite easy to navigate only after several visits ," our beta metrics indicated that changing the home page actually made it harder for returning visitors to find what they were seeking. So, we theorized that if we ran the beta test for a longer period, the return visitors would have time to become more comfortable with...

Some of you have been asking me about the Inquirer's recent story that we were dumping support for Ubuntu in the U.K. Let me just get this out of the way—the Inquirer was wrong. Now to be fair, the Inquirer did publish an update story after speaking with Dell—more on that in just a bit. What really happened? For a short time yesterday, the link to the Inspiron 6400n was broken on the Dell UK Ubuntu page . That broken link was fixed early this morning, so UK customers can go here to order an Inspiron...

There are many ideas on IdeaStorm calling for more choice in operating systems. Among them is an idea from IdeaStorm community member braininajar that suggests Dell add an option to install and support Solaris on our server product line. Today at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, Dell and Sun Microsystems are announcing an agreement for Dell to make the Solaris Operating System and Solaris support services available directly to customers for select Dell PowerEdge servers. This agreement assures...

Our customers will be dealing with an enormous increase in data over the next few years. To put this in perspective, the world generated about 161 exabytes of data last year and we expect this to go up six-fold in the next four years. This increases the importance of providing our customers with the best range of storage solutions, which is why we announced today that Dell has entered into an agreement to acquire EqualLogic , a leading provider of high-performance iSCSI storage area network (SAN...

I have blogged pretty extensively about allowing customers to share ratings and reviews with other folks. Recently, we've added some more languages to the mix. Last week, we launched ratings and reviews functionality in Danish, Dutch, Swedish and Portuguese. And while I'm on the topic, I wanted to mention that we recently launched Dell Forums in Korea . Like our other forums, it's a place where users can go to ask questions and provide answers to support-related issues, and other topics of interest...

Today Dell Shares , our Investor Relations blog, went live. Since we launched Direct2Dell in July last year I've gotten requests from individual investors to talk about financial topics more often on Direct2Dell, and apart from blogging about our preliminary Q2 earnings release , I steered clear of financial discussion because I'm a product guy. That's where Dell Shares comes in. It will feature content beyond earnings and regulatory filings. The goal is to open conversation between Dell's...

Like Brian mentioned in his recent blog post Governor Bill Richardson (D) addressed a standing-room-only crowd on the Dell campus. Relaxed and engaging, he made brief opening remarks and promptly opened the floor to the Dell employees and their questions. Dell employees proved that they're not shy! They eagerly lined up to hear his Governor Richardson addressed every question that came his way. He covered his proposed solutions to Immigration ("a wall won't work"). He would take a tough stand...