April 2008 - Posts

• Small Business Tech Tip: Vista and Low-Battery Warning Adjustment

  Wed. Apr. 30, 2008
  by Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

   

  Windows continuously monitors the power level of your battery and warns you when the battery power reaches low and critical levels.   If you’re like me, there is never enough time to find an outlet before it is too late and the battery dies. Did you know that you can adjust when your low-battery light comes on, giving you more (or less) time to find a power outlet?

  The quickest way to adjust the low-battery warning in Windows XP:

  1. press the Windows key (the key that is typically in between your Ctrl key and Alt key) and the r key at the same time.
  2. From there, type cmd and hit enter. Then type powercfg.cpl,1 and hit enter.
  3. Level meters will pop up and you can adjust the settings from there.

  In Vista, it's a little different: 

  1. Click Start, Settings, then select Power Options.
  2. On the Select a power plan page, click Change plan settings under the selected plan. 
  3. On the Change settings for the plan page, click Change advanced power settings.
  4. On the Advanced settings tab, expand Battery, expand Low battery level and Critical battery level, and then choose the percentage that you want for each level. 
  5. Click OK, and then click Save changes.

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• Small Business Tech Tip: Sluggish PC – Try Disk Defragmentation

  Tue. Apr. 29, 2008
  by Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

  Over time, your PC can start to slow down. One regular practice to help pick up its pace is to defragment your hard drive. To do so, go to the Start Menu; Click on Accessories (Accessories may be found in your Programs folder); click on submenu System Tools, and then the Disk Defragmenter application. Once the program has opened, you are offered menu options that allow you to select a particular disk, analyze (which will recommend whether or not you need to defragment) and defragment.

  How often you defrag your computer depends on the size of your hard drive and the amount of time you use your computer. The typical 4 hour/day user should defrag four times a year but some say once a month is a good rule of thumb.

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• Have a Question? Our Community May Have an Answer!

  Mon. Apr. 28, 2008
  by Natalie Davis, Manager—Global Ops Community Team

  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.

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• Small Business Tech Tip: Create an Email and Delay Sending It

  Thu. Apr. 24, 2008
  by Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

  Our Vice President of Communications and Marketing, Andy Lark is full of good information (well, most of the time J) Below is a productivity tip he recently shared on his blog - The Daily Lark. I use this one and thought maybe you could benefit as well.

  A great way to follow-up on issues and ideas in the future is to create an email and delay the sending of it.  Unlike task reminders that appear in a long list, when this hits your Blackberry or Inbox you can move quickly to forward it.

  In Microsoft Outlook, to enable delay sending of emails at specified time and date later than current time, or postponing the delivery date and time, use following steps:

  1. In the Message window (where you type your email content), click the Options button. Alternatively, click on View -> Options.

  2. In the Message Options dialog window, select and tick the “Do Not Deliver Before” check box, under the Delivery Options. Then choose the desired send date and time to deliver the email by using the calendar and time drop down list.

  3. Click Close and then click OK 

  4. Send

  If you have similar tips to share, leave a comment - I’m sure our readers would love to hear about them to help get back a few precious minutes in the day.

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• Small Business VoIP Update

  Wed. Apr. 23, 2008
  by Mateo Alejandre, Sr. Marketing Manager

  As Lionel posted in January, small businesses are increasingly turning to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for more cost-effective, easy-to-manage phone systems, and Dell has partnered with Fonality and Nortel to bring VoIP solutions to our customers.

  We are hosting a webcast this Thursday, April, 24^th from 1:00-2:00 PM Central time in partnership with PCMagCast and Fonality focusing on the challenges small and medium businesses face, how today’s phone systems can address them, and some features of the Fonality offering.  Come armed with your questions as you will be able to ask them throughout the event.  

  Since January, we’ve built new functionality and options into our VoIP offerings and wanted to share our progress with you. Based on conversations with current customers, we learned about two primary issues we needed to address with our Fonality phone systems: provide a redundant solution and add installation services as an option. We’ve made those updates and a few others.

  New Form Factor:

  · In addition to being offered on the Dell OptiPlex 330 desktop, the three Fonality products (Small Office, Enterprise, and Call Center) are now available on the Dell PowerEdge 1950 server.  This is a 1U, rack mount server that offers hardware RAID for data backup and redundant power supplies to maintain operation in the event of power supply failure.  Because phone systems are critical to doing business and you can’t afford for them to go down, the redundancy is an important improvement to the line.

  New Features:

  • Fonality Live Backup Server.  For companies that want even more protection in the event their phone system goes down, Live Backup Server is also available.  In essence, you purchase two identical phone systems that are synchronized so that if one goes down the other takes over.
  • We now offer fax capability on the Fonality OptiPlex solution. Now you can plug in a fax machine to one of the analog ports on the OptiPlex to send and receive faxes.
  • A new Fonality software revision is now available with added “FindMe” features.  For an updated product features matrix highlighting the new additions click here.

  New Service and Sales Options:

  • Fonality now offers onsite, professional installation and training.  So, while we boast that the Fonality solution is so intuitive that anyone could install it themselves, there is now an option if you would rather have someone else do it. 
  • We’ve also added a new quote tool to the VoIP site so you can determine the cost of a phone system from Dell before engaging a sales agent. You just answer a few simple questions and receive a Fonality quote via email.

  Please let us know what you think and what else you’d like to see Dell do in the area of VoIP.

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• Work From Home – It’s American!

  Mon. Apr. 21, 2008
  by Anita Benner

   

  I recently participated in a focus group where we visited Stubbs Legendary Kitchen, Inc to discuss their technology needs and challenges. One of the small business owner’s top goals was to implement one green day a week where people worked from home and took meetings by conference call in order to reduce his office’s carbon footprint. His challenge was budgeting for the transition from desktop to laptop which would enable this arrangement.

  Visiting this customer made me reflect on the whole “green day” concept. I love working from home, avoiding traffic and the frequent distractions that arise in a cubicle environment. It’s also nice to have the flexibility to throw in a load of laundry during lunch if needed. It turns out that working from home, or telecommuting, offers very real environmental & financial benefits too.

  When I think of global warming I picture gas guzzling SUV’s and cities whose sprawling growth without public transit forces more cars on the road than the infrastructure – and our environment - can support. While these are certainly major contributors to global warming, I didn’t realize that nearly half (48%) of all annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from buildings. In fact, the average U.S. house creates double the greenhouse gas emissions of the average car.

  Perhaps telecommuting is the answer to many of our global warming woes. According to a study released by the Consumer Electronics Association, the average telecommuter saves about 215 gallons of gas per year which is equal to 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide emission. Plus the country’s 3.9 million telecommuters save enough energy to power 1 million U.S. households for a year, as Kim Hart noted in her blog last September.

  Fortunately several companies are taking action, including Sun Microsystems who is saving millions of dollars on office-space costs - while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions - by encouraging employees to work from home, as noted in an interview with Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, an organization that addresses the world’s sustainability challenges. Dell is also doing its part by powering 100 percent of its 2.1 million square-foot global headquarters with green power, and has committed to making all company owned and leased facilities “carbon neutral” in 2008.

  There are numerous ways that companies and individuals can make a difference, and several fun blogs and books, like Hey Mr.Green, that you can read for inspiration. If you’re looking for advice on how to request permission to start telecommuting, or if you’re an employer evaluating this option, visit Telework for additional information. You can also calculate your telework savings on Telework Exchange.

  We’d love your thoughts on telecommuting and other ways small businesses can go green. Afterall, “Green is the new red, white and blue.”

   

  Anita Benner, Dell employee
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• Vostro Feedback

  Mon. Apr. 21, 2008
  by Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

  Last Tuesday, we announced a new lineup of Vostro laptops. Check out initial reviews on third party sites like PCMag, LaptopMag, and ComputerWorld. If there are other reviews that you have seen and think would be helpful for customers to read, feel free to comment below with a link to the site.

  We placed pre-production units with a few of our small and medium business customers. This allows us to capture first hand feedback in order to implement changes into future product decisions. We targeted a mix of industries and company sizes. Pre-production units are sent to customers who use the product for 60 days, tell us what they think and then return it to Dell.

  Kevin Jezewski, Assistant Director of Operations for Chicago Signature Service, tested the Vostro 1510 and gave us his initial feedback: “The new Vostro is equipped well and can handle almost all the applications in a small business. One of my biggest worries was how the Vista would hold up, but I have no problems with Vista. One problem I have is opening the laptop, very difficult.”

  We are asking other previewers to blog about the systems in their own words so stay tuned!

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• Vostro Feedback: Product Review

  Mon. Apr. 21, 2008
  by Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

  Note from Kelly: The following is a post from Cynthia Ebrom, President, Cynthia’s Cakes, LLC. As I discussed earlier, we asked Vostro product previewers to blog about their systems in their own words.

  It's not everyday a huge corp like Dell looks to a small business like us for feedback on their products and services.  I am just elated!  So with that premise in mind I went on a mission to perform an unscientific experiment selling outside of my realm...away from my shop.

  Cynthia's Cakes sells couture wedding cakes and my customers are extremely visual when it comes to selecting their own wedding cake. They want to see photos of our actual work and lots of them before making up their mind. 

  

  As a test to see how my customer would relate to a computer versus paper photos, I took the Vostro 1510 loaded with cake photos along with an album and about twenty-five 13x19 glossy photos with me to meet my customer appointment.  I found it to be an eye opening experience for me.  Although my customer did look at the paper photos, they kept going back to the slideshow photos and photos on my website.   Maybe it was because at my shop there are photos everywhere...on the walls, in albums and in frames. 

  

  Being away from the shop, a customer doesn't have that stimuli around them so they look at the computer slideshow instead.  Whatever the reason, I can see that doing an appointment away from my shop has to definitely include a notebook as part of the visual effect to secure the sale.   It's a great selling tool! My only complaint is that the sound could go up higher.  I had it on maximum and when showing the slideshow along with a video, one of my customers had a hard time hearing the video.

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• Small Business Tech Tip: Battery Life

  Fri. Apr. 18, 2008
  by Robert Peek, SMB Liaison

   

  Kelly Curnow, Small Business Community Manager

  We all lead busy lives – both professionally and personally. In an effort to help make you more productive and your technology more efficient, I’ll be providing ongoing tech tips.

  Tip for increasing your laptop’s battery life: According to Tony Salinas, Dell senior systems engineer and consultant, the single largest consumer of your laptop’s power is the display lamp. The brighter the lamp, the more power is consumed by the system. At higher brightness settings, you only get up to 65 percent of the battery life when compared to reducing the brightness. Because the brightness setting has such a powerful impact on battery life, most laptops are already configured to automatically dim the display as the AC power is removed and to increase the brightness when plugged back into an AC outlet. To save even more power on Dell laptops (Vostro, Latitude, Precision mobile work stations), display brightness can be manually adjusted using the Fn (down) keys on the keyboard. For more tips from Tony, visit this article or video on SB360.

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• New Vostro Laptops: A 13.3" and More

  Tue. Apr. 15, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Today, we're introducing two new Vostro laptops for customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Small Business customers in North and South America will be able to order on May 1, and customers from Asia Pacific and Japan will be able to place orders on May 5. The new laptops include the 13.3" Vostro 1310, and the 15.4" Vostro 1510. The re-designed 1710 will be coming later in May... more on that when the time comes.

   

  A common request from small business customers worldwide (like this idea from user ojisan on IdeaStorm) was for us to introduce a 13,3" Vostro notebook. The Vostro 1310 (pictured above) offers almost the same screen real estate as the larger Vostro 1400 notebook, but weighs almost 20% less. For the 1310, pricing starts at $749.

  

  The 1510 (shown in the picture above) offers a large display in a form factor that's a bit thinner and lighter than the Vostro 1500. Like the 1310, it also features a slot-load optical drive. Pricing for it starts at $599. 

  Similar to the very first Vostro systems we launched in July last year, these systems do not come with trialware, they do, however, come with a 30-day return policy and can also be ordered with Dell's DataSafe online backup, the Network Assistant or our PC Tune-Up services. It's pretty clear that small business customers want notebooks with perfomance and reliability and they want this technology for an affordable price. With both of these laptops, we really aimed to balance those needs. We've also introduced more robust security features—like integrated fingerprint readers, cable locks and Trusted Platform Module 1.2 support to help prevent unauthorized network access.

  David Ruth from the Vostro team covers both the 1310 and the 1510 Vostro laptops in more detail. You can also go to www.dell.com/newvostro for more information.

  Format: flv Duration: 7:18

  Downloads WMV  MP4  OGG

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