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Direct2Dell Week in Review 6-8-08

Lionel_Menchaca — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Here are some items of interest from last week:

Dell started shipping Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to customers in the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. We'll ship it in more languages as it becomes available. We knew SP1 has different ramifications for different customers, and that's why Geoff Knox wrote two different posts—one for home users and a second for small business users. On the corporate side, while we didn't have a post, I think it's worth mentioning that over the last couple of weeks, Microsoft's recent hints about Windows 7 may be a good reason for more corporate customers to upgrade to Vista. If you're interested in reading a bit more about this, take a look at my last week in review and Michael's comments about Windows 7 from earlier in the week.
Jesse Leonard who's one of our OS and open source gurus, published a blog post about the Mozilla Foundation's upcoming browser, Firefox 3 I've been playing around with FF3 for a while now, and I tend to agree with Walt Mossberg's recent assessment: Firefox 3 features put it in front of Internet Explorer 7 and Apple's Safari 3.1. If you want to make that decision for yourself, click here to download the latest Firefox 3 release candidate.
Dell hosted a group of reporters representing China, India, Australia, Korea and Japan. These reporters met with several Dell executives while they were here. Anne B. Camden posted a recap of Alex Gruzen's session, and I posted my take on Michael's meeting on Direct2Dell.

It's also worth mentioning that late last week, we upgraded to Community Server 2008—the latest version of our blogging platform software. Right now, we're still working through some glitches. This upgrade will, however, lead to some improvements over time... some of which Direct2Dell readers have wanted for quite some time. Soon, I'll explain more.

Oh, and one more thing.. like Biz and the folks at Twitter, a few of us here will be watching to see what comes out of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Direct2Dell Week in Review 6-8-08

Lionel_Menchaca — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Here are some items of interest from last week:

Dell started shipping Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to customers in the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. We'll ship it in more languages as it becomes available. We knew SP1 has different ramifications for different customers, and that's why Geoff Knox wrote two different posts—one for home users and a second for small business users. On the corporate side, while we didn't have a post, I think it's worth mentioning that over the last couple of weeks, Microsoft's recent hints about Windows 7 may be a good reason for more corporate customers to upgrade to Vista. If you're interested in reading a bit more about this, take a look at my last week in review and Michael's comments about Windows 7 from earlier in the week.
Jesse Leonard who's one of our OS and open source gurus, published a blog post about the Mozilla Foundation's upcoming browser, Firefox 3 I've been playing around with FF3 for a while now, and I tend to agree with Walt Mossberg's recent assessment: Firefox 3 features put it in front of Internet Explorer 7 and Apple's Safari 3.1. If you want to make that decision for yourself, click here to download the latest Firefox 3 release candidate.
Dell hosted a group of reporters representing China, India, Australia, Korea and Japan. These reporters met with several Dell executives while they were here. Anne B. Camden posted a recap of Alex Gruzen's session, and I posted my take on Michael's meeting on Direct2Dell.

Oh, and one more thing.. like Biz and the folks at Twitter, a few of us here will be watching to see what comes out of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Michael Dell Discussion with Reporters from APJ

Lionel_Menchaca — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week, Dell hosted a group of thirteen reporters who represented several countries in Asia for two days at Dell's campus in Round Rock, Texas. During their time here, these reporters met with several Dell executives to discuss Dell's 5 key growth areas in more detail. This event culminated in a group discussion with Michael Dell.I wanted to take some time to recap that discussion.

One of the things Michael talked about was growth in Asia Pacific and Japan, but also other places outside the U.S. He made the point that Q1 was the first time in Dell's history that revenue from outside the United States surpassed revenue from the U.S. He also reiterated that global growth was led by Brazil, Russia, India and China where Dell saw a 73% year-over-year increase in terms of unit shipments. Dell grew 2x faster than the Lenovo in China and 6x HP in India. Because of that strong global growth outside the U.S., Michael said that we will continue to invest heavily in countries like China, India and other emerging markets to facilitate continued growth.

Michael also said that retail in the global consumer space is a huge opportunity moving forward—Dell currently offers products in 13,000 retail locations. The channel is another big growth opportunity: Dell currently has about 16,000 channel partners and that business is currently at a $12B run rate.

When asked what type products from Dell would serve the next billion people coming online, Michael made the point that these new users don't think in terms of the type of the device they will use—instead, they think about connecting to the Internet. We're focused on developing products in emerging countries like the Dell 500 laptop for China and India and beyond and the upcoming mini laptop. He also said that more products coming in the second half of the year.

When Michael was asked about the mobile phone space, he suggested that would be a better question for next year. Before then, Dell will focus on big growth opportunities like consumer and commercial laptop and desktop sales—both through retail and the channel. He also mentioned that there's opportunity for a range of smaller devices between 9-inch ones like the upcoming mini notebook, and smaller ones.

From a technology perspective, Michael was asked about progress in input devices. The multitouch functionality that Windows 7 will bring is good for some activities, though it will enhance what we're already used to with keyboard and mouse, instead of replacing them. Same goes for voice recognition.

And speaking of Windows 7, when asked if many corporate customers will wait for it before upgrading from Windows XP, Michael made the point that it's hard to say with certainty since there are lots of variables. Still, things like the recent availability of Vista SP1, the major progress that has been made with Vista driver compatibility and because Windows 7 will be based on the Vista driver framework, it seems like more companies will upgrade to Vista before Windows 7 comes out.

Michael Dell Discussion with Reporters from APJ

Lionel_Menchaca — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Updating an old Friend

Mark_Anderson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Internet browsing represents a significant amount of the time many of us spend on our computers. Whether it is searching out the latest stock quote, shopping or doing homework; Internet browsing has become a large part of our computing experience. Since the introduction of Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft has sought to improve various aspects of the browsing experience with each succeeding version (Now up to IE 7). IE 7 was a major change that introduced significant security changes (such as an Anti Phishing Filter, tabbed browsing (which allows you to have multiple web pages open without opening multiple instances of the browser), compatibility and toolbar enhancements. The toolbar enhancements expanded the ability of users to enhance their browsing experience by allowing users to utilize 3^rd party add-ins. Add-ins can be in the form of Toolbars or browser helper objects.

While toolbar add-ins can greatly enhance the browsing experience by allowing the user to do more and have more flexible access to information, they can also be the source of a number of problems including poor performance and browser crashes. A malicious, poorly written or behaving add-in can cause a host of problems. However, there are a few excellent add-ins out there and some simple rules to follow that not only enhance the user experience, but provide very helpful tools.

Security/Fraud Prevention:

IE7 has several industry-leading security and fraud-prevention features that offer added protection to users:

Support for Extended Validation Certificates (EV SSL) – first in the industry to implement EV certs in the browser. Recommended by PayPal.
Industry leading anti-phishing filter: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/09/463204.aspx; http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B4022C66-99BC-4A30-9ECC-8BDEFCF0501D&displaylang=en

Performance:

Often times the single biggest issue with respect to performance in IE7 is related to multiple toolbars. Users frequently install multiple toolbars in order to obtain enhanced flexibility. This impacts both performance and reliability/crashes in the browser. If a user wants to speed up IE7 they should first look to see if they have a number of different browser toolbars, then disable and/or uninstall unnecessary, redundant, or unused toolbars. This can be done within the manage addons console in IE (tools/manage addons). One addon that does improve IE7 performance is the free IE7 pro add-on available here: http://www.ie7pro.com/ . The user could also look for a more inclusive toolbar that has multiple functions that they would wan. Some of the more inclusive toolbars include Google, Yahoo and the MS Live toolbars.

Ease of use:

Popular helper addons that make IE7 easier to use:

Roboforms - simple password and form autofill tool: http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=2849307
Leech-Get – download manager: http://www.leechget.net/en/

Internet Explorer 8:

Finally, before the release of Win 7 Microsoft has made the beta of IE 8 available to users. I would encourage you to try it and see the enhancements MS will be making in its next version of IE: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx

Updating an old Friend

Mark_Anderson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Security/Fraud Prevention:

IE7 has several industry-leading security and fraud-prevention features that offer added protection to users:

Support for Extended Validation Certificates (EV SSL) – first in the industry to implement EV certs in the browser. Recommended by PayPal.
Industry leading anti-phishing filter: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/09/463204.aspx; http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B4022C66-99BC-4A30-9ECC-8BDEFCF0501D&displaylang=en

Performance:

Ease of use:

Popular helper addons that make IE7 easier to use:

Roboforms - simple password and form autofill tool: http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/details.aspx?view=info&itemid=2849307
Leech-Get – download manager: http://www.leechget.net/en/

Internet Explorer 8:

Direct2Dell Week in Review 6-1-08

Lionel_Menchaca — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Sorry for being late with this. Let me just jump right in.

D6: Last week,the D6: All Things Digital conference kicked off lots of conversations in the blogosphere. That previous link highlights several of those discussions, but for those that don't want to click through, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates previewed some of the functionality that Windows 7 will bring to the masses. It was nice to see Microsoft showing off part of the multi-touch functionality on the Latitude XT Tablet. More on Windows 7 in a bit. I also noticed that Jeff Bezos let folks know that Amazon soon has plans to offer a for-pay video streaming service. It's unclear at this point where it will fit among Amazon's Unbox service or in the broader digital streaming landscape of iTunes and the Apple TV, or the soon-to-be-released Roku $100 set top box that will let Netflix customers stream movies via their "Watch Now" service. Michael Dell was one of the speakers at D6. Here's a text summary of some of what Michael discussed, and here's the video highlight reel. I've just scratched the surface on everything that happened there. If you're interested in more of a deep dive with all the folks who took part in D6, take a look at the D6 Highlights section of the blog.
Dell's Secret Mini Laptop: Speaking of D6, a Gizmodo post about a forthcoming Dell mini notebook sparked hundreds of reactions in the blogosphere. Anne B. Camden reacted and shared a few more pictures in her post on Your Blog. Reaction was pretty positive. Seems like a lot of folks are interested in a small notebook at an affordable price. Still, others in the blogosphere want a sub-notebook that doesn't skimp on performance (take a look at the comment threads from Gizmodo and Engadget to see what I mean). When we can share more details on this product, we'll blog about it.
Dell's Service Partner Program: Katie MacDonald discussed this in her Direct2Dell post and FAQ. I know that folks still have questions... this will be a topic we'll blog about more in the future.
Windows 7, Vista and XP: Even before the Windows 7 buzz that was started at D6, there was Windows 7 talk from Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky in an interview he did with CNET. While lots of folks thought there wasn't a whole lot of news there, I tend to agree with Larry Dignan. In his post, I thought he outlined the key points that came out of that interview really well. He makes the case that since Windows 7 will use the Vista driver stack (among other things), there's not much of a reason for companies to wait to make the jump straight from XP to Windows 7. One thing I disagree with Larry on though is that businesses won't care about multi-touch. If it's implemented effectively, seems like multi-touch could be a benefit to business users as well as consumers. Speaking of Vista, we'll soon be shipping Service Pack 1 on Vista machines. More coming up on that topic very soon across several of our blogs. And before I leave the subject of operating systems, seems worth mentioning that over at our Small Business blog, Jenni Doane published a post that reiterated the deadline for ordering a small business system with Windows XP is June 18. After that date, customers who order a machine with either Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate have the option of ordering it with a downgrade option to Windows XP Professional. Click on the Windows Vista Downgrade Service link for more details.
Q1 Earnings Results: We released our Q1 earnings results after the market close on Thursday last week. At the same time, Rob Williams published a post at the DellShares Investor Relations blog that recapped some of the highlights and provided some insight into how we're now reporting four operating segments: Americas Commercial, EMEA Commercial, APJ Commercial, and Global Consumer. While it's good to see positive reactions like the one from New York Times, many folks know we have lots of work ahead of us to keep the momentum going.

Like I mentioned in the first D2D Week in Review post, I want to make this more useful to Direct2Dell readers. If you have ideas on how I can do that, please let me know. And if you're interested in getting these updates automatically via RSS, you can subscribe to the weekly feed here.

Direct2Dell Week in Review 6-1-08

Lionel_Menchaca — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:00:00 GMT

Sorry for being late with this. Let me just jump right in.

D6: Last week,the D6: All Things Digital conference kicked off lots of conversations in the blogosphere. That previous link highlights several of those discussions, but for those that don't want to click through, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates previewed some of the functionality that Windows 7 will bring to the masses. It was nice to see Microsoft showing off part of the multi-touch functionality on the Latitude XT Tablet. More on Windows 7 in a bit. I also noticed that Jeff Bezos let folks know that Amazon soon has plans to offer a for-pay video streaming service. It's unclear at this point where it will fit among Amazon's Unbox service or in the broader digital streaming landscape of iTunes and the Apple TV, or the soon-to-be-released Roku $100 set top box that will let Netflix customers stream movies via their "Watch Now" service. Michael Dell was one of the speakers at D6. Here's a text summary of some of what Michael discussed, and here's the video highlight reel. I've just scratched the surface on everything that happened there. If you're interested in more of a deep dive with all the folks who took part in D6, take a look at the D6 Highlights section of the blog.
Dell's Secret Mini Laptop: Speaking of D6, a Gizmodo post about a forthcoming Dell mini notebook sparked hundreds of reactions in the blogosphere. Anne B. Camden reacted and shared a few more pictures in her post on Your Blog. Reaction was pretty positive. Seems like a lot of folks are interested in a small notebook at an affordable price. Still, others in the blogosphere want a sub-notebook that doesn't skimp on performance (take a look at the comment threads from Gizmodo and Engadget to see what I mean). When we can share more details on this product, we'll blog about it.
Dell's Service Partner Program: Katie MacDonald discussed this in her Direct2Dell post and FAQ. I know that folks still have questions... this will be a topic we'll blog about more in the future.
Windows 7, Vista and XP: Even before the Windows 7 buzz that was started at D6, there was Windows 7 talk from Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky in an interview he did with CNET. While lots of folks thought there wasn't a whole lot of news there, I tend to agree with Larry Dignan. In his post, I thought he outlined the key points that came out of that interview really well. He makes the case that since Windows 7 will use the Vista driver stack (among other things), there's not much of a reason for companies to wait to make the jump straight from XP to Windows 7. One thing I disagree with Larry on though is that businesses won't care about multi-touch. If it's implemented effectively, seems like multi-touch could be a benefit to business users as well as consumers. Speaking of Vista, we'll soon be shipping Service Pack 1 on Vista machines. More coming up on that topic very soon across several of our blogs. And before I leave the subject of operating systems, seems worth mentioning that over at our Small Business blog, Jenni Doane published a post that reiterated the deadline for ordering a small business system with Windows XP is June 18. After that date, customers who order a machine with either Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate have the option of ordering it with a downgrade option to Windows XP Professional. Click on the Windows Vista Downgrade Service link for more details.
Q1 Earnings Results: We released our Q1 earnings results after the market close on Thursday last week. At the same time, Rob Williams published a post at the DellShares Investor Relations blog that recapped some of the highlights and provided some insight into how we're now reporting four operating segments: Americas Commercial, EMEA Commercial, APJ Commercial, and Global Consumer. While it's good to see positive reactions like the one from New York Times, many folks know we have lots of work ahead of us to keep the momentum going.

Microsoft Releases Vista SP1

Mark_Anderson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Last week, Microsoft released Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to manufacturing. Mike Nash from the Windows Vista Blog team shared the news last week, and followed up with a second post that explains a bit more how Microsoft plans to make it available to customers.

SP1 introduces several improvements that customers will see, especially to battery life, performance, reliability and applications compatibility. In order to provide the best customer experience for our customers, Dell has already incorporated many of the most important fixes in our current OS load. Dell customers will begin seeing the entire service pack 1 on new systems ordered from Dell later in May this year. Additionally, customers should soon be able to download it from the Microsoft Windows Update. More information from Microsoft on testing and deploying Service Pack 1 is available here.

Dell recommends that users of Vista migrate to SP1 as quickly as possible. More details on this topic to come in the future.

Microsoft Releases Vista SP1

Mark_Anderson — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:00:00 GMT

Dell recommends that users of Vista migrate to SP1 as quickly as possible. More details on this topic to come in the future.