November 2007 - Posts

• Notebook AC Adapter Survey

  Thu. Nov. 29, 2007
  by John Blain, Consumer & Gaming Liaison

  If I've learned anything from surfing customers' blogs over the last year and a half, I've learned one thing: customers do have a voice at Dell.

  When you meet people for the first time, usually the conversation drifts towards what each of you "do for a living". When it does for me, I am never surprised to see a "knowing look" when I tell people I work at Dell. Being the kind of guy I am, I hit that look head-on more often than not. I explain that rather than working at a "big, faceless corporation" as a "drone", my job is proof that the customer has a voice. When people find out I surf and respond to blogs for a living, that "knowing look" usually melts right off of their faces. "Dell actually pays people to do that?"

  In my day to day experience, I am constantly getting feedback from customers, and forwarding that feedback along to the appropriate groups. Customers are always telling me "wouldn't it be great if Dell would do <yoursuggestionhere>". I usually refer people to IdeaStorm, unless their suggestion is break/fix related. IdeaStorm is a great place to share your ideas, but sometimes our product engineers could use some specific feedback while putting together a new product design. Now is one of those times.

  We have used the same AC adapters for all Dell notebook lines since 2003. In that time, notebooks have undergone some fairly significant changes, and also during this time, virtually no changes were made to the AC adapters being shipped with our notebooks. Four years is a lifetime in the computer industry, so it's safe to say these adapters are quickly becoming yesterday's technology. They have worked well, but there's always room for improvements.

  There is at least one AC adapter in circulation for every notebook we sell, so not only is it the most common piece of Dell equipment, it is also probably one of the products we receive the most feedback about. Given these facts, our engineers have decided to focus on the AC adapter to try and determine the best ways to improve its design. This gives us a golden opportunity to give feedback at a critical time in a product's life:

  AC Adapter Survey

  Our engineers want to know how you use the AC adapters with your notebooks so they can take these scenarios into consideration during design. Being that this is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of Dell equipment, this is a chance for us as customers to tell the designers themselves how we collectively use their product, so that they can improve the design and make an AC adapter designed to meet our needs. The survey is yet another way the customer has a voice at Dell.

  I've already filled it out, and I hope you'll join me.

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• New PowerEdge Servers and OpenManage Unveiled at Oracle Open World

  Wed. Nov. 14, 2007
  by Marco Pena, Simplify IT Blog Manager

  Some of you may have already heard of the Dell server announcements coming out of Oracle Open World this week. I thought I would take a minute to share some of the details with you. On Monday Dell announced the new PowerEdge R900, R200 and T105 servers as well as updates to its existing PowerEdge 1950, 2950 and 2900 servers. Dell also recently announced OpenManage 5.3, the latest version of Dell's system management tools answering the call to simplify systems management (more on that later). And finally today Michael Dell and CTO Kevin Kettler gave a teaser of Dell's next generation blades and virtualization-optimized server during his keynote speech. Stay tuned for an upcoming post with more details on the next-gen servers and Michael's keynote. 

  On to the new servers. First off the PowerEdge R900. It's Dell's most powerful server and is packed with the latest in server technology. The R900 is a four-socket, 4U rack server running the new Intel Xeon 7300 series quad-core processors know as Tigerton. It has redundant power and fans, 4 embedded Gigabit Ethernet ports, 7 open PCIe slots, up to 1.5TB's of internal storage and can scale to 128GB of memory (32 slots). We've heard that security is a major concern for our customers so we've added the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and locked-down internal USB features for added security. The R900's expansion, security and performance capabilities make it ideal for databases, virtualized environments and mission-critical applications and services.

  The PowerEdge R200 is a single-socket, 1U Intel-based rack server. It supports up to 8GB of memory, up to 1.5TBs of internal storage and has dual embedded Gigabit Ethernet ports. The R200 is designed for customer who need enterprise-class performance and management at a low cost of entry. It's ideal for web-hosting, file/print services, gateway/firewall, DNS/DHCP or HPC compute nodes.

  The PowerEdge T105 is a single-socket AMD-based tower server with a small footprint designed for small to medium sized businesses or workgroup environments requiring a dedicated application server, email server or file/print server.  The T105 supports up to 8GB of memory and has an embedded Gigabit Ethernet port and a maximum internal storage capacity of 1.5TB's.

  I talked earlier about answering the call to simplify systems management. We've heard from our customers that they would like to see systems management simplified by reducing the number of tools and consoles to manage from. With the new OpenManage 5.3 we've done that and more. Besides being able to manage Dell servers from a single console, you can now also manage virtual machines, power and thermals.

  Admins can now perform in-line hard drive firmware upgrades allowing for hard drive firmware upgrades from the management console without taking the server or drives off-line. This means less trips to your servers and no downtime required to perform upgrades. Dell has also partnered with Altiris, BMC Software, Dorado Software, LANDesk, Microsoft and  Novell by embedding and certifying OpenManage components into their systems management applications allowing customers to manage their infrastructure from the applications of their choice.

  In this vlog, Zelinda Yanez from the PowerEdge server team gives Lionel Menchaca a quick tour of some of the PowerEdge R900 features that I mentioned earlier. 

  [video]

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• Share Your Stories About IT Complexity

  Tue. Nov. 13, 2007
  by Jeff Johnson, Enterprise Strategist

  Everyone in technology knows that IT is too complex.  By announcing its Simplify IT initiatives, Dell has certainly gone on record saying we're doing something about it. 

  While IT complexity is a serious subject, actual stories are often pretty funny.  I don't know about you, but I've seen plenty of examples that are so tragic they are actually hilarious.  Like unclear and acronym-filled user's manuals, stupid things end-users day and do, idiotic management decisions, and bizarre stories.  Here is one I heard recently.  One company needed to update their server image, but didn't have any automated tools to do so.  They spent weeks updating one server at a time - with a CD.  The IT people actually TRIED to get sick, by eating pizza that was a couple days old, just so they could go home.  There are a lot more like this.

  The conversations need to happen, but people can have a little fun doing it.  (Who says IT people don't have a sense of humor?)  So that is why Dell has become the charter sponsor of The IT Room (http://www.theitroom.com/), sort of a "Digital Dilbert for the IT Crowd" and a place to share horror stories and rant and rave.   This gives people a place to join the fight against IT complexity. 

  We were approached by a company, MotivFilms, to participate with other technology companies in this project and immediately jumped at the chance to participate. Dell doesn't own this project—we're just one voice in this conversation. But since we do have a thing or two to say about simplifying IT, we'll participate in the discussion.

  Dell will continue to support the dialogue around IT complexity, and will continue to sponsor The IT Room along with the other advertisers.  We're wholeheartedly supporting the idea because it generates the right kind of conversations. So join us the fight against IT complexity!  Start by mocking it.

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• Seth Godin Was Right

  Fri. Nov. 09, 2007
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  You may have seen Seth Godin's recent post about a Dell Small Business e-mail update that caused some discussion in the blogosphere. Kami Huyse asked us about it when she was here for the Social Media Club workshop that happened earlier this week.

  While many of our customers do like to be up to speed on the latest deals, Seth makes a good point. To better serve our customers, we're changing the process so customers who want the e-mail can choose to subscribe, instead of that process being automatic. Also, if a small business customer decides they no longer want the e-mail, they can go to the Subscription Center to unsubscribe.

  I can't take you directly to the page, because you'll need to enter an e-mail address and then click on the Edit My Subscription or Unsubscribe link to complete the process.

  Clicking on the image below will take you there:

  

  We're currently changing the language used in the e-mail to reflect this new development. I'll share those changes when they are finalized.

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• No New Home Page This Year

  Thu. Nov. 08, 2007
  by Laura P. Thomas, Global eCommerce

  Well, the numbers are in from our most recent beta test of a new dell.com home page design, and they're not as I'd hoped. While one researcher recently found our web site to be "quite easy to navigate only after several visits," our beta metrics indicated that changing the home page actually made it harder for returning visitors to find what they were seeking.   

  So, we theorized that if we ran the beta test for a longer period, the return visitors would have time to become more comfortable with the new navigation. Thus, a longer beta run would show return visitor results beginning to level out with new visitor results in both the beta and control groups. However, after re-running the beta for twice as long, control continued to outperform the beta group. 

  We want to make sure that our customers know how to find what they are looking for on dell.com as we head into the holiday shopping season, and these results seem to indicate that the new page does not improve findability. Something  Peter Morville dubbed "one of the most thorny problems in web design." So, we will not launch a new home page until after the end of this year. 

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