Now Dell has become a legend in his own mind.  Is making such a clip what is needed to get ahead inside the company these days?  Very, very juvenile.

So the propietary dragon slayer clip is a bit lame, it was meant to be an opening piece.  Dell is a standards based company.  I doubt that anyone is doing this to "get ahead inside the company" since these guyts are already at the top.  I think, along with many others inside, that we have waited far too long to use AMD.  Now we have both and this should satisfy a larger range of customers.

Actually, I hope this clip is only used for the announcement speech.  The Dell for you ads are far better.  BTW, you should have noticed that Dell was the first to do a battery recall.  This shows their commitment to customers.  They are getting better after going off course for awhile.

There is a reason that Dell is a global leader in the industry. It is because the company is based on good customer service, whether it be in providing top support or bottom prices. It's a difficult task to provide both and Dell has been doing a sufficient job in balancing the two, unlike other companies.

The battery recall is a prime example of excellent customer support. The company was the first to come forward and, unfortunately, received the majority of the criticism while the latter companies have had their recalls printed on the back pages as if an afterthought.

An afterthought, yes.. Because they are. This is what happens when you follow the leader. 

Dell recieved most of the publicity because they had the most units affected, which says a lot about how large our customer base REALLY is, and our passionate commitment to increase their experience with Dell on a daily basis.

True, Dell was the first to announce the battery recall. Even after Lenovo said they would NOT recall any batteries, they ended up doing it. Nobody's saying Lenovo is a liar or questioning their credibility. HP has a scandal at the top of the company, it's being federally investigated. Nobody's worrying about the ethics of HP or questioning their credibility. The battery recall was caused by batteries manufactured by Sony. Nobody is upset with Sony because their notebook is now a risk.

Despite all the claims about Dell's service, the company has remained #1 overall in service and support. You don't have to deal with any middlemen, you don't have to deal with any resellers, you go straight to dell.com or call in and get what you want--if you spend enough, you get an account team.  People complain too much. The company is trying to show on this post, if nothing else, that it has a sense of humor. What do they get? Nothing but complaints. Nothing is ever good enough.  How does one move forward when the ghosts of past growth continue to attempt to hold them back?

It must be lonely at the top. Keep up the good work.

Boy, there are some real haters out there.  Regardless of whether or not I'm a Dell fan (and for the most part, I am) I think this is one of the single best pieces of marketing that I've seen in a long time.  I was one of the first to applaud Apple for it's inginuity with the young "bed head" guy standing next to the old dumpy pocket-protector PC guy.  Also, HP had a good run with the "stil frame" picture sequences.  Seems like turn-around is fair play for Dell.

I've had PCs from all the major mfgs - nothing special, just run of the mill home computers.  Dell has by far been the most reliable, and with my Dell On Call support, their tech support has been the best too!  Don't even get me started on the hours I spent on the phone with ignorant HP techs in Singapore who were pretending like they were in Palo Alto!!!  Simply getting to a tech (who informed me that I'd have to pay my $50 tech support fee before he could even talk with me) took 2 days!

Good point CacheSyntax! Dell wouldn't know non-proprietory if it hit them on the head. The XPS 700 was sold as an upgradeable full featured machine. Nice marketing lines but they are completely misleading. The XPS 700 motherboard is crippled and does not have the same features as the nVidia reference board they advertised it to be. Anyone who is thinking of buying a Dell XPS 700 should go and read through the aprox 10,000 post Dell forum on this subject. Despite the user's continued requests and "face to face" meetings with Dell management, they have yet to respond.

Another fine example of how Dell is out of touch with reality.

This was an embarrasing clip.  I'd love to know who came up with the idea.

As each day goes by Dell loses any 'cool points' they had in the bank.  Lets face it - their balance was low to start with.

Martin Ferris,

I would not abandon Dell as your x86 vendor for Solaris product. This video was delivered at Oracle Openworld, so consider the audience.

Dell is, from what I can tell, without a Unix and so Linux is its "Unix".

Solaris will be supported on Dell systems as long as Sun wants to support it. In some cases Solaris is supported by Dell, specifically when attaching EMC SAN storage equipment, even if it were to a non-Dell box. Dell | EMC attachments are supported for many Unixes, btw..

Dell will obviously prefer to promote Linux in place of Solaris though. I would encourage you to still source your Solaris x86 boxes from Dell, but long term take a look at Linux. Test bed it. Write applications with possible migration in mind. You might like it. :).

BTW, Dell has many systems listed here and I would wager that 9G and AMD systems will be added in the future, pending PERC 5 and SAS drivers from LSI:

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/systems/views/all_servers_all_results.mfg.page1.html

--Jim

I just couldn't get past the video to watch Michael Dell's message.  There's a reason why most commercials aren't longer than one minute but this one was over four minutes!  Juvenile and boring...please, if you want to see Spamalot, go see it on Broadway.  Michael, give us the message without all the zaniness.  Let's keep it professional, shall we?

Brilliant.  You must not have a sense of humor if you cannot enjoy this clip.  I have been a Dell user since the beginning and have been instrumental in the past of making sure Dell was the standard in our Corporate environment. We have always had great support and value for our investment. In these turbulent times it is refreshing to see a Corporate Giant being able to express in humor its story. I hope we see of more of this type of marketing because the world needs more laughs.

Keep it coming Dell and I know you will continue to surprise us with new and improved offerings. Kudos to Michael Dell who I have followed your success since your college days.  You are a great hero to young entrepenuers who have a great idea and need the example you have continually exhibited in your successful company. 

I find it quite amusing that anyone could get flustered over watching a video like this. 

A two year old could deduce the video was for entertainment purposes.

I don't believe "cool points" have ever made their way onto a line item in an IT budget.

The video certainly caught all of your attention.

The video was funny.  I'm old enough to remember Monty Python...the first time around.  Of course that means I predate the PC. :)

It's marketing.  It's meant to be funny -- not reality.  Kind of like campaign ads or those cute Mac ads that say Mac's don't crash. HA!  Now THAT'S funny.

I am biased.  But as a premier Dell reseller, we appreciate the solid business class solutions Dell has brought to market.  They have great servers at an affordable prices that meet the specific needs of our clients.  The Latitude & Optiplex lines (both supported domestically) are wonderful.  Granted support for the Inspiron and Dimension lines leaves a lot to be desired.  That's why we don't sell them. 

But Dell is simply responding to the existing market for a dirt cheap disposable computer.  All the Tier I players have their throw away models.  Most are slid into the market at places likeWally World and Worst Buy.  At least Dell has the kahoonas to sell them direct.

Some posters on this blog don't seem to understand that this is not a commercial or music video. It was a multimedia opening to a speech Mr. Dell was giving at Oracle World. It wasn't meant to entertain the masses, it was simply intended to lighten up a group of people who had been sitting for some time waiting for Mr. Dells speech. It also gave a preview of some of the ideas to be covered. I am told that the video was well received and the speech went very well. Mission accomplished. It would do some of the sour pusses on this blog to try not to take life so seriously. Have some fun!

Roberta: "Let's keep it professional, shall we??"

Loosen up... I bet she's a hoot on a dinner date.

It was just animation, and funny, although I did think of Dell's proprietary hardware going back to the PC's Limited days, when I watched it. All in all it was good entertainment whether you think it's factual or not. Kudos to Michael for keeping it real!

And what exactly are "cool points"? How do you get them? Is it like the Marlboro points where you can ttrade them for jackets and pocketknives and stuff?

Obviously you guys have not been to major IT conferences.

"Spoof" videos like this are common and are usually meant to embarass the keynote speaker they are announcing, so this was appropriate for Oracle OpenWorld.

Another example would be a WinHec conference I went to a few years ago. One of the big commercials on TV was the VW bug "Da Da Da" commercial.

Mickeysoft spoofed it to where the guys in the commercial were Bill Gates and Steve Balmer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrwnJDQy0ic

Lighten up, peeps!

I see the humor and the entertainment reasons behind this video and I think it is great that as a business leader, Mr. Dell felt comfortable using this as an ice breaker. But I think something better could have been done rather than a South Park like cut out of him and others running around singing some song about moving forward. I'm sure it served its purpose and was a great ice breaker for a speech that Mr. Dell had to make. I don't agree that this is too relaxed - but I also disagree that this was a great idea. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and kudos to all for sharing it. My opinion is Dell needs to remain relaxed, but at the same time, still keep the professionalism that has helped get us where we are. So far, Michael and Kevin have done a good job getting us where we are. Yes, there were a few bumps in the road, but other than that, kudos to them. Keep up the great work and continue to focus on what's most important.

The launch of Microsofts latest OS, and the unjustified pressure on businesses to comply with a force-fed upgrade cycle, offering no commercial advantage, presents DELL with a real and a marketing opportunity...

SELL LINUX or at least have a 'No-OS' as a valid option when I buy a dell. 

You dont have to support the 250 distros out there - but you could easily bundle Ubuntu with OpenOffice, Firefox as aq solution for desktops and especially small business.   You can bundle third party support or just say 'unsupported'.   I suspect its not that hard to choose from a list of the popular ones - Redhat commercial, Novell Suse, Fedora, Ubuntu - as your just burning the hard drive from a predefined image.

Micheal Dell..the future awaits.  Your systems are good, your support is good [in Australia] ..  and bundling Linux is the right-thing-to-do from a technical and an ethical point of view, and will only sell you MORE pcs, not less.   Saying there are too many distros is a cop-out.


I think most users who watch the Apple MAC vs PC personality ads have no illusion that the PC really refers to buggy software not buggy hardware - whens the last time anyone you know had a bad disk? Whens the last time anyone you know spent days killing spyware?

You will have the moral authority on your side.

Bone to pick. Linux is not UNIX98/UNIX03 compliant, yet Solaris is.

And Dell has been reticent for years about supporting Solaris. I've been told by reps its not supported because its not a standard!

Dell has changed for the worse and has had noticeable quality drops, selects poor integrated hardware, does not support legacy systems (Supermicro has better legacy support for their old product than Dell), and simply support Windows on servers. All other support is sad. Dell does not pass through upstream firmware updates and drivers very well for such a large company.

 I'm not angry or anti-Dell, I buy them, but its like children run the "Running Dell with Serious Operating Systems" department.

Also, EMC is terrible. Should have picked NetApp.