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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

For many fans, Formula 1 racing is a global phenomenon. Dell is an official partner of the BMW Sauber F1 Racing Team that is led by drivers Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld.

With the 2008 season still in the early stages, the BMW Sauber team is in second place overall. Take a look at the official Formula 1 site for all kinds of information and click here for more about all the driving teams in competition.

Over at the Inside IT blog, Brett McAnally blogged on this topic, and focused much of it on the Latitude D830 notebooks that the team uses in the pits. The reality is that the BMW Sauber team uses all kinds of Dell technology to drive their mobile pit system, including servers workstations, laptops and Dell flat panels. We'll be providing updates as the season progresses at www.dell.com/F1.

And besides the BMW Sauber team, it looks like some other F1 crews use Latitude notebooks in their pits as well.

Update: This time on the Direct2Dell homepage.

 If you're interested in the latest information on the XPS 730, see Anne's post on at Your Blog. If you are a gamer, there's probably some stuff you'll want to see.

It's got three videos: one that gives an overview of the system, a second all about overclocking and a third that highlights the new H2C cooling system.

Enough babbling from me... if gaming's your thing, hop on over.

Today, we're unveiling a new blog. This one's about personal technology. It's more focused on categories of interest rather than Dell-specific things.  We hope that it's a mashup that's a little bit Community + Lifehacker + ReadWriteWeb + Gamespy. Take a look at John Pope's intro post for more context.

It's clear to us that our customers don't think in terms of brand names or initiatives that are important to us. Instead, most folks tend to think in terms of what they want to use a machine for: surfing the Web, streaming HD content, sending e-mails, playing games, creating movies, etc. 

If you care to check out the blog, go to: www.direct2dell.com/yourblog

We will have blog posts from Dell employees who have something to say about certain topic areas, but the folks behind it really hope that you use it to shape discussions you want to have with us. That's why we featured the Idea Submission section at the top right corner of the page. Beyond that, we hope that some of you out there would like to author a blog post or two.

I expect there will be some overlap between Your Blog and Direct2Dell. You will see product details that apply to certain topic areas there. Blog posts about technical support will continue to reside here on Direct2Dell, since so much of its heritage is based on customer service.

You can find Your Blog here and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Next time you are over at the Dell Forums searching for answers, look for the image like the check mark on the left. It's telling you that there is an solution for that issue. It's part of something we launched in February called Accepted Solution.

The concept is based on a simple premise... that customers who create a forum thread about a specific issue are the best ones to tell the community which post fixed their problem. Said another way, an original poster of a thread can now select the specific post within their thread that answered their question.

Here's how it works:

• Login to the Dell Forum (if you don't register, you can still browse)
• Click on a thread that contains the kinds of details you're looking for (like Desktops and General Hardware)
• Look for the threads with a green check mark labeled Solved!

Note: Clicking on the picture above will take you to a larger version of it.

If you click on one of those threads, you will see the comment that started the thread.  When a customer identifies a post as a solution, the thread gets a special logo in the top right corner that looks like the logo below. Clicking on it will take you right to the solution post.

It also marks the specific comment that fixes the issue with an Accepted Solution icon and turns that comment green like this one below:

This provides a visual way to search through the millions of threads on our forums for an answer to a question, by allowing users with the same question to quickly identify answers already provided by other users. If you spend time on forums like we do, you know that threads can get quite long and quickly! From the usual conversation back and forth to the many steps it often takes to arrive at a good solution, this feature helps users help each other ‘cut to the chase’!

It's taken off faster than we expected: we recently reached over 5,000 accepted solutions, and are averaging about 60 new accepted solutions added each day. Over half a million views of accepted solutions, our database of questions and answers is growing! We are excited and pleased to see so many members of our community using this feature and helping not just the first user with the question they have, but potentially millions of other users who have the same question in the future.

So next time you have a question, whether it’s technical or you’re not sure what to buy, check out the forum. There may already be an accepted solution waiting for you. Starting there will probably save you some time and effort.

For more details on how the Accepted Solution functionality works, take a look at the FAQ.