May 2008 - Posts

• Latest on the Graphics Card Upgrade for XPS M1730 Customers

  Tue. May. 13, 2008
  by John Blain, Consumer & Gaming Liaison

  A few months ago, Lionel blogged that Dell had added the NVIDIA Dual 8800M GTX to the XPS M1730. This raised a lot of questions from existing M1730 owners, as you can see from the comments to the post, mostly regarding the possibility of an upgrade program. Given how absolutely amazing this card is, I’m surprised it didn’t generate more churn than it did.

  As the gaming/consumer liaison for the Dell community, I was able to take some of these questions to those in the know and get a few answers.

  First thing’s first: an upgrade solution is in the works, and will hopefully be released later this month. From what I’ve seen, there will be two options, one with an installation package, and one do-it-yourself kit for those die-hard techies. Considering the number of screws holding this beast together, most people will probably want the installation, but the do-it-yourself kit will be appealing to people like me that like playing with computer innards. The price of these upgrades is yet to be determined.

  So what’s taking so long? The core issue is that MediaDirect 3.3 is not compatible with the driver for the NVIDIA card. This incompatibility means that the Media Direct software needs to be upgraded. Unfortunately, the upgrade will require a reformat and reinstallation. Beyond that, it will also require you to repartition the hard disk to make room for the new version of MediaDirect, which is a bit larger. Data loss has been a major concern for the engineers working on a solution. At this point, it would appear that there’s really no way around wiping the drive to make the upgrade work with every feature.

  Since this card is obviously “the r0x0r”, I would think people’s inner gamer would be perfectly fine with a reinstallation in order to make this card work. This card is just that cool.

  I know this upgrade has been long in coming, and I know it's caused some frustration. We're sorry this is taking so long, and are working to get this card into your hands as quickly as possible.

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• Konnichiwa: Dell Enters the Blogosphere in Japanese

  Sun. May. 11, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Folks who keep up with this blog have heard me mention it a couple of times. Today, we're launching Direct2Dell in Japanese. I think it's worth noting, not only because it is the fifth language that we've added to the Direct2Dell family, but because it's one of the most important ones: according to Technorati, Japanese is the most common language in the blogosphere.

  Japan leads the world in Internet download speeds (check out the report from speedmatters.org—note that Japan's average broadband speed is 30 times faster that of the United States). And that kind of leadership also extends to the mobile phone space thanks to technology like NTT DoCoMo's i-mode service and competing technologies. That translates into millions of users who routinely use text messaging, access video and other multimedia content on mobile phones. That's one reason I think that services like Twitter—despite the fact that they just launched service in Japan—are really taking off there.

  Today, Michael Dell will mention the Direct2Dell Japanese blog in a speech to students and media at the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, part of  Hitotsubashi University.

  So why is this important to Dell? Because we want to enable more direct conversations around the world. We understand that social media is global. Other recent studies like this one from Universal McCann show just how global it is. Click here for the PDF of that report.

  If you are interested in following our Japanese blog, go here: http://japanese.direct2dell.com

   

  Konnichiwa - こんにちは。 デルが、日本語のブログワールドに参入します。

  過去の私のブログでも、他言語の追加について言及したことがあります。本日、日本語のDirect2Dellがオープンします。Direct2Dellに5番目の言語として追加されるということはさておき、もっと重要なのは、Technoratiによると、日本語は、ブログワールドで最も多く利用されている言語だということです。

  日本は、インターネットのダウンロード速度 においても世界をリードしています。（speedmatters.orgのレポートによると、日本のブロードバンド速度の平均値はアメリカの30倍に匹敵するそうです） NTTドコモのi-modeのようなテクノロジーに代表される携帯電話の世界でも、日本の先進性を見ることができます。何百万人もの人が日常的に携帯電話でメールをし、携帯電話から動画などのマルチメディアコンテンツにアクセスしているのです。Twitterのようなサービスが、日本語でのサービスを立ち上げたばかりにもかかわらず、非常に人気が高いのも、こういった理由によるものでしょう。

  本日、マイケル・デルが、一橋大学大学院国際企業戦略研究科の学生へのスピーチの中で、日本語のDirect2Dellについて言及することになります。

  ところで、なぜ、このことがデルにとって重要なのでしょう？それは、デルが、今まで以上に、ダイレクトな会話をグローバルでできるようになるからです。ソーシャルメディアは、グローバル規模のものです。ユニバーサルマッキャンの最近のレポートでも、ソーシャルメディアが如何にグローバルであるかが示されています。このレポートのPDFフォーマットは、こちらからどうぞ。

  日本語のDirect2Dellに興味のある方は右記URLにアクセスしてみてください：  http://japanese.direct2dell.com

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• Environmental Recognition

  Fri. May. 09, 2008
  by Tod Arbogast, Director—Sustainable Business

  We don’t believe that environmental leadership is defined by how many awards we win.  And when we are recognized we know it doesn’t mean our journey to sustainability is complete. Occasionally, when we are awarded, we do like to celebrate the Dell teams that make it possible.

  Last week we were honored to receive the Commendation for Reporting on Product Stewardship for our 2007 Sustainability Report from Ceres and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).  Our Sustainability team was on hand at the Ceres annual conference to receive the award and we also hosted our latest stakeholder feedback forum with 40 non-governmental (NGO) and socially responsible investor participants.  We expect the 2008 Sustainability Report will be ready in mid-June.  You can see details about our recycling programs which underscore our product stewardship efforts here.

  A few months ago, Working Mother magazine recognized Dell as one of the Best Green Companies for America’s Children.  Earlier this week, Mark Newton is presenting on Dell’s environmental programs to a virtual conference organized by Working Mother media.  It’s one more way we are partnering with customers, stakeholders and members of the Regeneration in sharing what we’ve learned from our own efforts to be environmentally responsible.

  We are thankful for the recognition, and thankful for a customer base that pushes us to do more.

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• Issue Fix: XPS M1330 CD Eject Freezes System

  Thu. May. 08, 2008
  by Bill Bivin, Laptop Liaison

  Thanks to Notebook Review user nexas for pointing out an issue with the XPS M1330. When a user presses the eject button on the optical drive, the system may hang for a few seconds.

  Dell Community Forum users like Vishnu M. issue reported this issue. We've identified the issue and corrected it with the latest BIOS revision posted yesterday, version A10, which will correct the symptoms.

  Again, users that have encountered this issue can click here to download the BIOS.

  There have also been reports of this issue on the XPS M1530. The next BIOS revision is being tested now, and will also correct the symptoms. That revision is slated for web posting in June.

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• Weekly Recap 5-7-08

  Thu. May. 08, 2008
  by Dawn Lacallade, Idea Gal

  It has been a busy week for us around Ideastorm!  Here are a couple of the "usual" updates and a couple of new components thanks to Jervis' wonderful suggestions.

  The Usual- The happenings of the week.

  As you scroll down you will see the more detailed review of the Ideastorm contributions to the newly announced XPS 730.  Man, you guys are great designers!  In the continued pursuit of cleaning up old ideas, we updated webcams and graphics cards.  Robert_P has been joining the discussion for several weeks as the Small Business Liaison and this week he chimed in on the debate about Dell Small Business Vs Dell Home.  The past several weeks have shown us in both Dell sites as well as broadly across the blogosphere that the desire to keep XP is as hot as ever.  Dell has responded with an update on how we will continue to offer XP.  Last but probably most intriguing is the launch of Dell's newest blog last week.  Yourblog is a place where you can drive the agenda and even author blogs for Dell.  We would love to have you contribute! 

  How about some introductions to the Community team at Dell?  This week we launched the beginning phase of a bio page on the all of the usual suspects. 

  In the outside world, we have been watching a growing debate about the uses of Ideastorm like sites for various business uses for several weeks in this update.  Most recently there has been a growing list of companies getting involved in creating new platforms to host these sites and a hot debate about the merit of these companies.  

  Welcome to new users!

  The Ideastorm would like to welcome all of the 200+ new users we saw last week!  We noticed a couple of new users who jumped in head first like sa2008 who had 1 idea, 11 comments, 8 votes and jamesmoroni1 who had 3 ideas, 7 votes!  We had more than 75 new ideas last week and had several ideas that gained much momentum. 

  Gaining Momentum-  Ideas on the up and up

  Did you catch the recent news that Dell is moving away from our build to order infinite configuration model?  Ideastorm users continued to find this idea was of much concern.  I am sure no one missed the patriotic streak we had on Ideastorm last week.  It began and quickly spread to showed that patriotic colors take many forms.  We also saw an idea that shared the need for less gain some speed. 

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• Europe Vostro 1310 and 1510 Keyboard Update

  Thu. May. 08, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  You may have read about a Vostro 1310 and 1510 keyboard issue that's affecting some customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa. See Bill Bivin's post over at the Small Business blog for more details.

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• There’s Still Life in Second Life

  Wed. May. 07, 2008
  by Laura P. Thomas, Global eCommerce

  On April 26, I had the privilege to speak at the vBusiness Expo in Second Life. The goal of the event was to provide a forum for discussion of virtual business and education issues actually within a virtual environment. No travel necessary. No hotel expenses or per diems. Just easy access to experts for anyone interested in using virtual environments as a platform for business.

  I use the term experts not really to refer to myself, but to all the Ph.D.s, analysts and corporate directors that filled the list of speakers. Corporate representatives included: Senior Director of eBusiness for Kelley Services David Fenech; IBM’s Global Director for 3D Internet and Virtual Business Sandra Kearney; and, Fiona Gallagher who works in the global brand and advertising group of Sun Microsystems. I found myself sandwiched in the program listing of speakers between Larry Johnson, Ph.D. who is chief executive officer of the New Media Consortium and Mark Bell a Ph.D. student in the Indiana University Telecommunications department. These great academic minds were joined by Chris Collins an IT Analyst at the UCit Instructional & Research Computing department at the University of Cincinnati (better known to many of us in Second Life as Fleep Tuque) and Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins a Ph.D. candidate at Ball State University, Muncie Indiana. There were also representatives from the non-profit sector like Barry Joseph of Global Kids, and a bevy of lawyers to talk about legal issues involving virtual worlds such as intellectual property.

  I tout the diverse group of speakers and panelist because I think it illustrates the breadth of opportunities that exist in virtual world environments. From business to education to philanthropy, everyone can benefit from the ability to cross geographies and bring people together in an immersive environment. This type of conference is a great way to illustrate that.

  Virtual TV magazine "LIFE 4-U" reported on the event (including a couple of shots of myself/Pyrrha Dell during my talk). And, here’s a still shot to give you an idea of what the event looked like:

  

  If you’re interested in my own presentation about what Dell has done in Second Life, what we’ve learned and where we are looking to go, you can view the slides online. In addition, Caleb Booker is working to post audio recordings and slides from all the presenters online soon. I’ll update this post with a link as soon as I get it.

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• Congratulations to Facebook Graffiti Winners

  Wed. May. 07, 2008
  by Todd Dwyer, Community Liaison - Environment

  Those of you who have been following the Facebook/ReGeneration Graffiti contest should be interested to know that out of the almost 4,900 entries that were submitted, five very talented artists and one writer have been chosen as the winners.  After more than a half a million votes were entered by the Facebook community for their favorite entries, whittling the total number of entries down to just 150 incredible submissions, our judges had the arduous task of picking the winners, and from the looks of the top 150, they had some very tough decisions to make. 

  Here are the winners for each category in the graffiti competition.  The Best Overall winner will be receiving a green Inspiron laptop, and the winners in the remaining categories each will get Dell 22' Ultrasharp Widescreen Flat Panel Monitors:

  Best Overall:
  
  Nick Tustin (USA)

  Show Us How You Can Improve the Environment Now:
  
  John Calder (Canada)

  Creative Vision of a Green Future:
  
  Anna Leychenko (USA)

  Most Inventive Green Technology:
  
  Benjamin Rennich (Canada)

  Sustainable Arhitecture:
  
  Craig Nolin (Canada)

  The artists were also encouraged to submit text entries expounding upon themes from their art entries.  Another green Inspiron was thrown in for the best text entry to sweeten the pot, and we got some insightful, imaginative and inspiring pieces as a result.  The winner was no exception with his interpretation of a classic Japanese haiku that encapsulated the spirit of the ReGeneration movement beautifully.

  Best Text Entry:
  “The old pond;
  a frog jumps in -
  the sound of water.
  - Matsuo Basho
  
  For me, it is not just going green, it is going back to green. This famous Japanese haiku has a zen peace that is in essence the color green. An overgrown mossy pond, an olive green frog, and even the splashy sound of green. Now if we can truly regain the reverence and respect the ancients had for our world, we can then move forward and actually go green.”
   
  Kevin Todd (USA)

  Congratulations to all the winners, and big thanks to everyone who participated and helped make this contest a success.  The ReGeneration team has a lot of exciting stuff planned for the future, but we'd also like to hear your thoughts on what we should do next.  Stop by Cafe RE when you have a spare moment and share your green thoughts and ideas.  This movement belongs to all of us, after all. 

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• More on Upcoming Premium Services for Dell Consumers

  Wed. May. 07, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Since I blogged about some of what’s coming from a customer service perspective, I’ve received inquiries and questions from folks. And last week, I saw Ben Worthen’s post questioning the strategy behind our forthcoming premium services for home users. In a nutshell, I agree with the comment that Dell's Harjit Kaur left on Ben’s post.

  It’s not about where folks are located. The point of the forthcoming service is that it’s a dedicated team of people who will provide support to all family members and the Dell products they own which are still under warranty. For families that call in for support more than average, having a centralized support team that can handle a variety of issues generally means less explanation of the issue and less transfers to other departments. The fact is that it is a different (and more expensive) service model than we’ve ever offered to all customers. That’s one of the reasons why we piloted it in New York first. It’s  a new way of providing support that has proven to be effective.  For many customers though, this service may be overkill. That’s why we’re making it an optional one. 

  In the future, we'll also have some new retail integration services for consumers. Those services will cover both Dell and other-branded components and devices.  It will encompass things like TV installation, home theater setup, technology integration and more. In other words, making Dell systems work with all kinds of digital home devices. Maybe that means I won't have to program my Dad's all-in-one remote after all.

  It's also worth noting that any customer worldwide can reach out to us on our sites like the Dell Community Forum, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm, or they can also reach out to us in their own blogs, or other social media tools they use. In terms of social media, we make an effort to support customers based on where they are located. Lots more to talk about there soon.

  Bottom line, as all of these services (and new service models) evolve, I'll make sure we share more information here and on other Dell blogs in the growing Direct2Dell family.

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• Dell Customers Help Improve Packaging

  Tue. May. 06, 2008
  by Todd Dwyer, Community Liaison - Environment

  It's no secret that Dell aims to be the greenest technology company in the world. But on Earth Day last week, sites like The Consumerist, Gizmodo, and other blogs showed us that there's still more work for us to do.

  Shortly after we read those posts, we had a team on the road to Dallas to meet with the vendor that shipped this flash drive to see how we can improve the process. End result, there's some easy fixes and some longer-term issues for us to address. Here's an outline:

  • Immediate: Directive to use envelopes for small items such as these.
  • Short term: Use of smaller boxes. We have requested an optimization analysis of product volume to box size.
  • Short term: Implementation of Dell-defined volumetric metrics on void space in the package to be incorporated into our periodic vendor business reviews.

  While third party items such as these make up a very small portion of our overall shipping volume, folks here know we need to fix it. Our sincere gratitude goes out to everyone who pointed this irregularity out to us. We hope that all of you will continue to provide feedback like this on any of our green-focused Direct2Dell posts, or if you have ideas about ways we can make improvements, please share them in the Environment section on IdeaStorm.

  To do that:

  1. Go to www.ideastorm.com
  2. Login or Register
  3. Click this button near the top right corner of the site (or click this button to the right) 
  4. Enter your idea, then choose Environment from the category list, plus whatever other categories that apply.
     

  We still have a lot of work to do, but with your help we can make Dell the greenest technology company in the world.
  
  Stay tuned for more updates.

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