Today we're rolling out two new laptops and desktops that are designed to meet the specific needs of small businesses, government and educational facilities operating on a limited budget in the worlds top emerging markets. Take a look at either Steve Felice's post or Kara Krautter's post on the Small Business blog for a bit more context on that front.

Note: Click on any of the images in these post to see larger versions of them. You can also see these photos and more by viewing this photo set at the main Dell Flickr page.

One thing of interest to a lot of our readers is that we will offer Ubuntu Linux as an option on all four of these machines worldwide. Regular readers of Direct2Dell know that we already support Ubuntu on select systems several countries.

These new Vostro systems will be introduced in more than 20 countries over the coming months—including Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America. They will be available primarily through authorized channel partners worldwide and also directly from Dell. Pricing for the products will vary by configuration, region and country. Additional Vostro products designed for emerging markets and high-growth economies will be introduced in the coming months.

Update: I apologize to Direct2Dell readers. I made some mistakes in some of the following tech details. In those cases below. I used strikethroughs with updated text to correct them. Again, my apologies for the errors.

Today, we're offering two pre-configured laptops--the Vostro A840 and A860, and two pre-configured desktops—the Vostro A100 and A180. Both the affordable notebooks feature a sturdy compact design. The A840 weighs in at 5 lbs 4.48 lbs while the A80 weighs just about 5.7 lbs 5.42 lbs. 

Both offer features like The A860 features an HD screen with an anti-glare coating and Intel Celeron or Core 2 Duo processors. Both offer all kind of connectivity features including wireless, Ethernet and modem capability. Bluetooth is an option as well. The 15.6" Vostro A860 notebook will eventually be available globally, including the United States.

On the desktop side, both the Vostro A100 and the A180 are meant to tackle everyday business needs. The entry-level Vostro A100 comes standard with Intel's Atom processor. The A180 supports Celeron and Core 2 Duo Pentium dua-core processors. Like the laptops, both of these systems tha Vostro A180 can be ordered with Ubuntu or Windows Vista Home Basic as well. The A100 will be offered with Ubuntu and supports up to 80GB hard drives and a 16x DVD drive. Both systems The A180 supports up to 160GB hard drives, and either DVD or DVD+/-RW optical drives.

If you're interested to learn more about these products, take a look at this vlog with Kirk Schell from Dell Commercial Products Team. Besides giving an overview of these systems, he provides some insight into why products like these play an important role in reaching these rapidly-expanding economies.

In the IT industry, much has been said about the importance of energy efficiency and power management in reducing your operating costs and carbon footprints.  Dell has been working hard to deliver the most efficient technologies and develop strong industry partnerships to help our company and industry put its best foot forward. We’ve also teamed up with organizations such as 1E to help save money with software that allows IT professionals to manage their systems' power remotely.   While we agree that power management can do a lot to increase the efficiency of your computer and reduce operating costs for energy and cooling, we think that it is only one part of the big energy-efficiency picture (check out ReGeneration.org for an interview with 1E’s CEO Sumir Karayi).

While power management can do a lot to reduce operating costs, design is equally important.  At Dell, energy-efficiency begins at the component level, from chip sets and power supplies to memory and the chassis - each plays a role in making the computer run cooler and more efficiently.  To give just one example, our Studio Hybrid is 70 percent more energy-efficient than a standard desktop.

When you bring energy efficient technologies and smart power management together, you've got a your machine running at top efficiency.  We've covered a few of these practices here, but want to get as many on the table as possible.  What are you doing to help improve the energy efficiency of your computer equipment and data centers?  Let us know in the comments section of this post, or let me know via Twitter (I'm ToddatDell).  It's thanks to input from our customers that we are well on our way to becoming the greenest technology company on the planet.  We've already received hundreds of great ideas on IdeaStorm, many of which have been implemented, and many more are currently being reviewed.  Our work is only getting started, so let's keep the dialogue going.

I blogged about Accepted Solutions a while back—it is a feature that we introduced in our community forums in February. For those that may not remember, Accepted Solutions allows a customer who originates a discussion thread to highlight a post within it that answered or solved their question. Here’s an example of what it looks like:

Original Post/Question:

Original Poster selects the post within the thread that answered their question and that post becomes the Accepted Solution:

Back when I blogged about it in April, we had just crossed the 5,000 mark. Things are still humming along over the last four months—last week we crossed the 10,000 mark for Accepted Solutions. So, why does this matter for the community? Two reasons: 1) our customers who use our products every day are the ones in best position to say what fixes their problem and 2) Connecting new customers with information that helps them with their product is one of the most important things we need to get better at across our community sites.

Taking a deeper dive into the 10,000, have a guess as to what the most viewed accepted solution is addressing? It’s instructions on how to downgrade from Vista to XP, with over 7,000 views and solved by community member mfinnan101. Choices in operating systems, whether it’s more systems available with XP or Linux, has been a hot topic and discssion for our community and one of the most popular topics on IdeaStorm.

The forum board with the most Accepted Solutions is XPS Desktops with 939, followed by XPS Laptops with 564. Both boards have a wide range of questions and answers about support, how-to’s, and what to buy. As for the community members who have contributed and created the most accepted solutions, the honor goes to ejn63 with a total of 683 and has posted over 57,000 times on our forum, followed by SR45 with 319 and has posted over 25,000 times.

If you are familiar with forum threads, you can probably attest . That finding an answer is not always easy. Accepted Solutions give other users an easier way to find the post within the thread that holds the answer, without having to read through the entire thread. Case in point, the average views of an Accepted Solution is increasing—right now, the average is about250 views per accepted solution, and 2.5 million views totalMoving forward, with some of the integration that Lionel hinted at is still being worked on. We hope to facilitate this process so that more customers who need answers can find them.

Hot on the heels of the recent announcement that our Latitude E6400 and E6500 laptops and Precision M2400 and M4400 Workstations received EPEAT Gold status, we just got word that our Studio Hybrid has achieved the same distinction.  This makes the Studio Hybrid the first and only consumer desktop to meet the Gold standard, beating Apple's Mac Mini and all of HP's consumer desktop offerings.

EPEAT (or the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) makes it easy to navigate environmentally-responsible systems through a set of publicly-available criteria (e.g.- recycled content, elimination of environmentally sensitive materials, corporate environmental policies, and Energy Star 4.0 standard specifications). Dell was first in the industry to achieve EPEAT Gold for a laptop in 2007. As a result of the great customer feedback and hard work of a number of our teams, we currently have more Gold listed laptops than any other provider.

A few key points on Studio Hybrid: It’s about 80 percent smaller than standard desktops and uses up to 70 percent less power. It also meets Energy Star 4.0 with an 87 percent efficient power supply, contains about 75 percent less printed documentation by weight when compared to typical tower desktops and its packaging is made from 95 percent recyclable materials. When you’re ready to send it back to us for free recycling (or recycling your existing computer), you can do so using a system-recycling kit that comes with the system.

While we are honored with this news, we won't be resting on our laurels. There is no finish line in this race and our work to provide greener options to our customers is only getting started. We encourage everyone to join with us in coming up with new ideas around energy efficiency and environmentally-responsible options. Power management is an important part of operating a system as efficiently as possible, but it is no substitute for the need to drive more energy-efficient technology. And at the end of the day, it’s not only about making green easier for our customers, but helping them drive cost savings while achieving their own environmental goals. Stay tuned to Direct2Dell and ReGeneration.org for more exciting news in the weeks and months ahead.  Recognition like this comes thanks to our customers' continued participation, so keep those great green ideas coming!

Last June, when I took part in the 2008 Social Commerce Summit, I blogged about the impact of customers talking about businesses they either like or don’t like. That trend continues to increase, and the only way to have a good sense for those conversations is to learn how to monitor them in social media realms.

Everyone says they listen to customers. But what does that mean from a social media standpoint? While the concept of listening is rather simple to describe, the actual execution is anything but. The challenge is similar to entering a large sports arena with 100,000 fans. And tens of thousands of conversations are occurring simultaneously. Now increase the number of conversations to millions across every language – that equals the daily web activity.

Dell first started to tackle this challenge back in April 2006 when we started looking for conversations about Dell in blogs. It’s something that I know Lionel has blogged about several times and he’s said we started from pretty humble beginnings. In those early days, I know we started tracking things with a customized Technorati search string and an Excel spreadsheet.

Fast forward to today and it’s even more complex, primarily because there are many more places where conversations are occurring. It’s not just blogs—they’re also happening on sites like Friendfeed, YouTube and Twitter. As an example, the Vostro keyboard issue started in a Flickr discussion thread.

Over the last couple of years, we looked at a lot of services to help monitor this growing amount of activity. Many of those services do specific pieces pretty well. But until recently, we’ve hadn’t found a good way to monitor all of them collectively—to get a good feel for both the individual voices and the bigger picture of what those voices are saying.

These days we’re using a web-based tool called Radian6, and it’s a big leap forward compared to our early days in monitoring. We’ve been working with the team at Radian6 and are pretty excited to be part of what’s happening next.  Radian6 and Dell share the same approach to social media.

• Listen to your customers
• Join your customers online wherever their conversations are taking place
• Help your customer tell their stories

In this video, their CEO Marcel LeBrun discusses how Radian6 sees brands participating online in new ways.

I've said in my past two posts (here's post #1 and here's post #2) and in the comment threads on this topic that I would share more details when I had them. Here's the deal:

Dell will offer a 12-month limited warranty enhancement specific to this issue. For all customers worldwide, we plan to add 12 months of coverage for this issue to the existing limited warranty up to 60 months from the date of purchase for the following systems:

Update: Over the last few days, customers like Steve Johnson, John and Robert have asked if their systems are affected. Throughout this process, Dell has undertaken a detailed assessment of this issue.  If your system is not listed in the table above, you do not need to do anything. If you have one of the systems listed above with an NVIDIA graphics card and are experiencing video-related issues I described in the bullet point section of my first post about NVIDIA GPUs, please contact Dell Technical Support.

Details of the service plan will be available in the next few weeks. When I have more details to share, I will do so.

In the meantime, thanks to all of our customers for your patience through this process. We appreciate your business and are committed to serving all of you who are impacted.  

Stereo mix record capability in sound cards and audio chips is the source of many discussions and much confusion in the blogosphere. A post from Chad Lakkis over at ripten.com a while back sparked some conversations on other sites like Gizmodo and Techdirt.

Truth is that there’s a lot of confusion about this issue. Part of the confusion is that stereo mix is also referred to as different things. People also call it things like "record what you hear" or "waveout mix." Desktop and notebooks equipped with sound cards (or with integrated sound components) generally have a few different ways to record audio:

• through a microphone
• from the line-in port
• stereo mix/ WAVE out

Before I get into the broader discussion about what’s going on, I want to be clear: Dell did not disable stereo mix functionality due to pressure from the Recording Industry Association of America. That speculation is simply not true.

Here’s what happened: there are two ways for stereo mix functionality can be enabled: at the hardware or software level. Long before Vista was here, we supported stereo mix at the hardware level for integrated audio and in desktops. Back during Vista's development, Dell made decisions to remove stereo mix functionality at the hardware level based on Microsoft's initial Vista software requirements. Those requirements were later changed by Microsoft, but too late for Dell to add that functionality back at a hardware level in products nearing launch.

Due to customer feedback, we’ve re-assessed things and have made the decision to enable stereo mix functionality in hardware on new notebooks starting with the Studio 15 and Studio 17 laptops. There will be many other notebooks coming in the future that will support stereo mix at the hardware level. Devices that support stereo mix functionality at hardware level will work with Vista and Windows XP. 

If you want to dig a litte depper into this topic, take a look at these threads on our community forums for more information.

With the launch of 10 new systems – the lightest, most powerful and most energy efficient in our company’s history – we wanted to highlight the Latitude E6400 and E6500 laptops and Precision M2400 and M4400 Workstations as the latest to achieve EPEAT Gold status (the E4200 and E4300 will be listed as EPEAT Gold in the coming weeks). The team has also achieved gold status for the T3400, T5400 and T7400, previously listed as silver.

EPEAT (or the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) helps customers in the public and private sectors compare laptops, desktops and monitors based on a set criteria of environmental attributes (recycled content, elimination of environmentally sensitive materials, corporate environmental policies, and ENERGY STAR standard specifications, among others). Dell was the first to achieve EPEAT Gold for a laptop in 2007 and currently lists 76 systems as Silver or Gold. The success of the tool itself is a reflection of the importance customers are placing on consistent and transparent environmental standards and yardsticks. EPEAT Gold means that the products meet all 23 required criteria plus at least 75 percent of the 28 optional criteria.

With our latest products, we are enabling “green-on-the-go” computing with a few firsts. The newly launched Latitude E4200 is our first ultra-portable laptop to contain halogen-free laminates, chassis plastics and fan housings. The packaging is 99 percent recyclable by weight with 25 percent post-consumer recycled cardboard. We’ve also made a point to incorporate LED backlit displays on several new models.

Additionally, most of our Precision Workstations are designed to meet or exceed Energy Star 4.0. These Precision Workstations are extremely powerful machines, proving that you needn't sacrifice performance for energy efficiency. 

Fifty percent of our laptop models and sixty three percent of our desktop models now meet or exceed Energy Star requirements, avoiding CO2 emissions and driving cost savings for our customers.   

Thanks for helping us shape our environmental efforts. We recognize how important it is to be able to navigate green technology and will continue to support EPEAT and other yardsticks to help simplify the process. As always, please share your thoughts and ideas. You can leave a comment here or visit IdeaStorm or ReGeneration.org. Together, let’s continue to make a world of difference!

As part of our launch of ten new laptops this week, we held an event on the Orient Express, largely to exemplify all the mobility features of the new range. Where better to do that than on a train? We were joined by around seventy journalists from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

As well as hearing from Dell spokespeople about the laptop breakthrough features, we got to enjoy a sumptuous lunch and take the opportunity to socialise and take in the countryside. I enjoyed meeting some familiar faces as well as making new friends and Twitter buddies.

I have been very impressed with the real-time journalism that I’ve seen over the past few days. Check out a great summary of the day here from LJ Rich, on her blog Geek Chic and from her good friend Annie Mole. I also posted a few photos from this event on our Dell Flickr site where you can see our journalist “digital nomads” in action.

I did some filming on the train, asking several of the Dell team what feedback they had received from the journalists so far. Watch the video below to get a summary of the day.

Sorry for the delay in getting this post up—it's been a busy couple of days. I wanted to take a few minutes to give some perspective now that this first one is behind us.

First off, Kudos to Chris Brogan and the folks at Radian 6 for coming up with the Twebinar concept. That's really where this idea came from. When we shared the news that we were going to use Twitter to  during the event, the blogosphere reacted: most of the initial reaction was positive, some was kind of mixed.

Overall, I think it's fair to say that Dell folks were pleased with how it turned out. More importantly though, non-Dell folks seemed to appreciate it as well. That said, there clearly are ways for us to do better next time. Neville Hobson raised two good points in his summary post:  1) to use #hashtags and most importantly, to 2) keep the Twitter conversation going during the Q&A session.

Item #2 was a sentiment that a lot of people who took part reiterated. Take a look at tweets like this one from @MelWebster or this one from @thornley, and there were lots more like those. It's clear we need to change that.

And about the hashtags thing—some of us had discussed the possibility before the event. We opted to tweet from @digital_nomads as a group because that tweets from it will be part of the DigitalNomads.com site and we wanted to get discussions going since @digital_nomads tweets are part of that site (on a side note, @davidcushman we will correct the follow-back issue you raised shortly). Some Dell folks said they would have been more comfortable tweeting as themselves instead of the group, which I take as a positive from a transparency perspective. All the more reason to do hashtags the next time around.

For me personally, responding to participants was a blast.  This was a learning experience for us. Next time we do this, it will be even better. Thanks to all of you who participated and thanks for your feedback.