Enhancements to the Drivers & Downloads Tool

Thu. Mar. 22, 2007

Many of you have asked for updates to the Drivers & Downloads tool on Support.Dell.Com website. In an effort to implement some of the changes you asked for, we recently completed a global launch of a re-designed Drivers & Downloads tool that addresses many of the issues you’ve highlighted.

 

The enhancements to the new tool include:

  • Drivers now displayed using an easy to navigate grid structure
  • Download Now option made readily available for quick access to files
  • My Downloads option provides user with ability to save files for future use
  • Ability to change or filter search results (by OS, driver category or driver importance) from top of page
  • Files can be easily sorted by Category, File Title, Importance, Release Date and Size
  • User is no longer required to select language (defaults to the language of the country website the user is on)
  • Release date and file size clearly displayed within the grid

While these improvements should make downloading drivers a simpler and more efficient process, it is just the first step in our overhaul of this frequently used tool. We plan to address other frequent customer requests like only displaying drivers applicable to a specific service tag and batch downloading for multiple drivers. For now though, I’m confident that these recent changes will make a difference. We’ll continue our commitment to make support.dell.com easy to use as possible for our customers.

I look forward to your feedback. If you have ideas on how we can enhance future iterations of the Drivers & Downloads section, please let me know by responding to this post.

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Only published comments... Thursday, March 22, 2007 11:30 PM
by Todd Penner, Director - Global eSupport
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Dan Warne said:
How about my Ideastorm idea regarding improving the driver system for Dell... I reckon Apple could crush you if Dell doesn't catch up. http://www.apcstart.com/5359/how_apple_could_crush_dell_better_windows_pcs
March 23, 2007 5:40 AM
Al said:

I for one much preffered the last version. Each driver was broken down by section allowing you to easily see what drivers were available for each section.

 

I think the new list of every driver by default may be a little overwhelming for customers and more inexperienced users. I appreciate it can be narrowed down by using the menus but it isnt quite as elegant 

March 23, 2007 6:05 AM
Majestic said:

The new changes in the Dell File Library only add confusion as to what downloads to select.  The old system had all the files contained in catagories which allow the user to just select the catagory of interest.  The new way throws them all at once in your face so you have to then sift through the whole list to find what you want. 

This is definately a case of..... if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

March 23, 2007 3:40 PM
Colin Diponio said:

I agree with AL. It's way harder to find what you are looking for.

Colin

March 23, 2007 5:00 PM
Michael said:

Majestic: You dont have to manually browse through the list, just use the category pulldown menu.

The new version saves you the trouble of drilldowns as well.

There is however a need for the version number to be shown on the page without having to open a specific update to see what version is it.

March 24, 2007 10:46 AM
Ben Stephens said:

I like the new layout for ease of finding all the relevant drivers for a system - particulary useful when wiping the OS and upgrading (say a clean install of Vista over the top of XP).

One improvement I'd love to see is a link to updates for the third party software that comes with each system, eg. Targus webcam software, updates for PowerDVD, and McAfee since we're no longer shipping a reinstallation disc.

The PowerDVD disc that was shipped with my Inspiron 6400 doesn't work with Vista, and their website is very difficult to trawl through to find updates.

March 27, 2007 4:02 PM
Stan Slate said:

The new layout is works to find the correct driver,   An improvement would be to have the most up todate drivers.  For example, I purchased an XPS 700 in December.  The video driver that was installed on the computer is more current that the video driver on the driver and download page.  Also, there is a new version of the video driver on Nvida web site.

 

 

March 28, 2007 10:16 AM
Mike Drechsler said:

Now, wouldn't it be cool if you could make a script on the website that would link to a download that includes all the drivers required to reinstall the OS but filter out devices you don't have in your particular configuration of the PC and stuff you wouldn't need for a reinstall like documentation, bios updates, storage firmware, etc.


 

April 6, 2007 3:18 AM
Dwayne said:
As my current OS (Ubuntu 7.04) isn't listed, I can't tell if there is anything available.  I tried using EL3, but that gave me Win items as well.   *sigh*
July 9, 2007 7:59 PM
LUIs said:

Im not a super computer geek but I can tell you that the drivers for my Inspiron have been very hard to find, I wish that from now on as this website can detect the configuration it will also be able to tell you what drivers you will need for each hardware module installed, I think that would save everybody alot of time in downloading drivers that I dont even need thus making my hard drive work more by installing everything in sight because I hope to find the right one!!! soo get the detector asap because I reformated my laptop and I need a couple of drivers that are not present in the xp version that dell gave me!!!

 thank you!!!

November 2, 2007 12:09 AM

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