beaupre

Make Vista more cheaper by charging more from Linux users.

Linux, Operating Systems, Sales Strategies submitted by fabiods 04/05/07

Make Vista more cheaper by charging more from Linux users.

Or

Make an agreement with microsoft, one share exchange between the companies. Dell does not sell linux, but sells vista in a cheaper price. Dell and microsoft would be gaining market shares. 5 Comments »

Don't Sell Computers to Linux Users !

Sales Strategies submitted by johnyaus 04/10/07

Don't Sell Computers to Linux Users !
Let them use open source hardware with opensource software. 5 Comments »

Liquidate the Company

Dell submitted by caymanbrz 04/17/07

Liquidate the company and distribute the funds to the shareholders. Sound like familiar advice by one Michael Dell to Steve Jobs in 1998?

Dell is a dud. Dell has no innovation. Dell is done. Thank god. 10 Comments »

Dell should sponsor American Idol

Dell submitted by guardianxps 03/24/07

Hey Dell,

During the last show of American Idol they showed how some large fortune 100 companies were contributing to a good cause to help the poor.

Dell has already shown its ability to understand, recognize, and act on the enviornment. So, maybe it would be cool to see Dell work with a good cause and helping the poor both here in the US and in Africa.

Just a thought. 3 Comments »

Make batteries compatible

Laptop Power submitted by lysglimt 04/20/07

I have a Dell Latitude laptop where I have bought spare batteries for when I travel. I was about to buy a new Latitude, same model - just newer. But my spare batteries won't work! They are the same voltage but the design is slightly different. So I have to trash 3 perfectly fine working batteries and buy new ones. Please think long-term - think 5-10-20 years ahead. Make sure the batteries and other parts are standardized and always fit. 9 Comments »

Show the drivers/firmware updates I actually need

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Service and Support submitted by jgv999 04/20/07

In the drivers support section even when you enter your express service code, there are still a mess of drivers and firmware updates that do not apply to the machine as shipped.

Show a default view of the latest drivers and firmware updates that apply to the specific machine I have. You have the information so make my life easier :) 10 Comments »

Recovery Hard Drive partitions are not needed, other solutions are better

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Sales Strategies, Laptops submitted by carganegativa18 04/22/07

When I ordered my laptop, I selected the 120 HD, thinking it would be enough for my school work and photography. To my surprice when the laptop arrived, I only had 85 gigs available. I then took a look at "my computer" and wala, there it was

1. A ten gig partition for Recovery purpuses:
Althoug there are times when one really needs to have a computer back to its factory setting, I think its unfar that the user has to give up 10 GB of disk storage.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
1. Give the consumer a DVD of the recovery ISO,
2. Give the consumer the option, either have it installed or have a DVD for it, I rather pay for DVD, than pay for a larger HD.

2. There are tons of pre-installed software that takes up huge amounts of disk space. Some of that stuff we don't need it, and sometimes we dn't know how to get that software out of our systems.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
1. Ship installations CD's to consumers, and let the consumer deside which software they want to install. Hence allowing consumer enjoy more HD space.

2. Advice the consumer when they are buying the laptop/pc of how much "possible" available HD is going to be available upon arrival of laptop. Had I known I was only going to have 85 gigs left, I would have gotten a bigger HD.

I hope this gets promoted, and I hope that many people feel the same way, that we want what is adverticed (120 gigs, not 85 when the laptop arrives) 21 Comments »

Apply Thermal Grease At The Factory - Thermal Pads Are Terrible.

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Desktops and Laptops submitted by burner 04/19/07

The use of thermal grease instead of a thermal pad will cause better heat transfer between the CPU and heatsink. More heat will be removed by the heatsink as a result. This should increase the lifespan of several components and reduce fan speed/noise.

I dropped the idle temperature by 34 degrees celcius (from 84 to 50) on my Inspiron 1300 by replacing the Dell-supplied thermal pad with my own thermal grease. The fan is now barely audible and the case/exhaust is cool to the touch.

This small change could result in cooler, quieter and longer lasting computers. 8 Comments »

Touchpads suck! A new internal mouse invention for Notebooks

Laptops submitted by liurical 02/16/07

Touchpads suck. I don't get why they've been around for so long. None of the big companies offer a good alternative besides us having to buy and carry around an external mouse.

I came across this invention that is effective like a normal mouse, but can be contained within a notebook computer. It can definitely remove the issues I face with the touchpad .

I characterize it as the trackball of an optical mouse, but would actually work well if designed properly.

I came across this invention after stumbling on the inventor's site. http://www.nextintuit.com He has a prototype simulation of the simple invention in flash.

The Wii and iPod were both hits, the way they input data had a lot to do with that success. I want to see something different from Dell for a change. 32 Comments »

Support for OGG VORBIS codec

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.) submitted by yesmathew 02/21/07

Vorbis is an open source, lossy audio codec project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and intended to serve as a replacement for MP3. It is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is then called Ogg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_vorbis 5 Comments »

Let customers choose what trialware/demoware to pre-install to subsidize their machine.

Sales Strategies, Software submitted by jmxz 04/19/07

Many people understandably complain about third party software on Dells (it's one of the top rated items on ideastorm).

Many people also respond by defending this software pointing out that it subsidizes the cost of the machines.

And perhaps show it in a "optional trial / reduced functionality software" section like this:

on your purchase pages.

That would give people who don't want the hassle of the third party windows software ways to avoid it; and it would give power users who don't mind it and know how to uninstall/avoid it the benefit of the cheaper subsidized machine.

Personally I would get them all -- yes, including Norton and Macafee and any other antivirus programs - because the first thing I'd do is remove Windows from the machine anyway. But it would be interesting to see if I can get a machine sufficiently cheaper that my savings would offset the time it would take to install Linux vs the presumably higher cost of buying a less subsidized pre-installed Linux machine. 9 Comments »

Remove: "Dell recommends Windows Vista™..." from any publication

Advertising and Marketing submitted by tho.meier 02/21/07

It would be nice to see advertising without any Micro$oft, from Dell. I think there is enough advertising for MS from MS it self.

Somthing linke: "Dell supports muli-OS" would look good! Od: "Dell gives you the real choice" 61 Comments »

A Line of Linux Only Computers for Old People

Linux, Desktops and Laptops submitted by aoeui 02/17/07

The main advantage of Windows over Linux is it's running of certain third party applications such as games, none of which as a general principle old people actually have a use for. The advantage of Linux over Windows is it's stability, security, and cheapness, all of which old people love in a computer. Thus, selling said old people a line of computers with the Linux OS only makes sense. 15 Comments »

BloatWare Uninstall- single click software remove

Software submitted by raymc 02/19/07

I understand the importance to Dell of the additional revenue stream collected from the suppliers of 'free' bundled software. So to shift the decision making process onto the customer, can Dell make the removal of such bundled software a single click choice 'remove bloatware' on first power-up of new products? Ergo Revenue stream retained and customer choice satisfied! 6 Comments »

Don't Make Me Go Straight to Crucial after ordering

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Sales Strategies submitted by pepitoe 02/19/07

Memory prices are still ridiculous, and it is common knowledge that if you want more than the standard memory in a dell, you buy it elsewhere. If you priced it more competitively you might actually sell more. At the moment to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB in an Inspiron 9400 costs £211.50, the same from Crucial is £119.94 and you will have 1GB of Dells memory left to sell or whatever. 5 Comments »

Let us choose a delivery date

Dell Web Site, Sales Strategies submitted by bitoclass 02/17/07

There's apparently no way to specify or choose a delivery date for computers or monitors from your site.

Given that most people are out of their house most days at work, and may need to arrange time off to take in a delivery, it would be much better if you could choose a convenient date for delivery when placing an order on the web site.

It would also give you some competitive advantage because I know from asking that (for instance) HP can't even do this by phone, let alone on their site.

Obviously the date would need to be after the product was ready but you could give a range of, say, a week after the product was due to be ready to ship, during the checkout process, for the buyer to select the delivery date from. 7 Comments »

Laptop & Desktop Boot in seconds from Flash Drives

Broadband and Mobility, Desktops and Laptops submitted by reg 02/19/07

Have laptops and PCs that boot quickly & quietly from fast internal flash drives,
and run the whole OS and application programs in RAM.
The New Dell PC will boot from internal Fast USB 2.0 flash drives in just a few seconds.
The Hard drive can stay powered down, completely off, unless the user needs to store some extra large files (video, photos).

Laptop Battery life is measured in days, not hours.


Have 2 Recessed USB 2.0 Slots.
Two USB Flash Drives would fit neatly into the laptop.
In this way the whole OS and Apps run in RAM, and stores data files on an 8 GB flash drive.

The 8GB is used transparently as the 'On Line' Storage, with a hard drive acting as secondary storage.
This gives desktops and laptops much greater speed and power savings.

<font> On-Line/Near-Line Storage Model for Laptops</font>
1. OS and App all run from RAM (so the machine should have 2GB+ of RAM)
2. Modified files are worked on in RAM, and stored on the Flash Drive
3. Older (non-system) files, that are 'inactive', get pushed down to the hard drive,

Hard Drive files are stored with on-the-fly hardware compression / decompression (back to RAM), with the flash drive file replaced with a pointer to the hard drive file.
Data is always safely copied down to the hard drive on shut down.



The flash drive is removeable and upgradeable, so later if someone wants to upgrade to a 32GB flash drive, just unplug and plug in the new one.

On-line / Near-Line storage works great on very large data servers, where data is mostly write once, read infrequently.
(Also known as Write Once, Read Mostly - WORM drives.)

It's time such ideas are put into practice for desktops and laptops.


You can run your Dell Laptop TODAY from 100% Flash Drive - Pen Drive using Puppy Linux.



www.puppylinux.org delivers a complete, small, fast Linux Distribution including all major tools in under 90MB. You can add Open Office, GIMP, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc and they all fit right in a USB Flash Drive.
Pupply Linux Applications.
Download Puppy Linux so you Can Try Flash Drive Dell Notebooks Today. 21 Comments »

Universal power adapter (power supply) for all Dell products

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptop Power submitted by rguptaos-dyndns 02/19/07

How many of us have to buy multiple “AC / DC Adapter or power bricks” for each of electronic devices and laptops? I have power supply adapter for home, office and travel bag… about 2-3 of these for my laptop, cell phone and external hard disk or other devices I use.

I have background in electrical engineering and I know technically it is possible to use the same power supply / adapter unit with some intelligence built in to power up cell phones, hard-disk, laptops, speakers, mp3 players etc. I also understand that the accessories are one of the most profitable business aspects for electronic companies like Sony and Dell.

Dell wants to be the leader and differentiator? Well...

>> How about a smart universal power adaptor for all DELL products that intelligently recognizes the product and supplies the appropriate power.
One power supply and connector for all products!!!

I know technically it is possible – I did design this and did work on the patent application but, did not file because I got focused on some other activities. I am pretty sure there are enough smart engineers at Dell to design this. If you want a head start contact me for details. 9 Comments »

New Dell Retail Store! Death to Mall Kiosks!

Advertising and Marketing, Sales Strategies submitted by evilspell 02/16/07

Dell should open a retail store very similar to the Apple store. I know that they have small kiosks inside malls that they try to sell Plasma TV's and a couple laptops next to a guy selling knock off sunglasses and verizon cell phone sales sharks! Very unprofessional. Open a classy Dell Store and offer Tech support right in the store just like the Genius Bar in the Apple Store. 144 Comments »

Set up an independent business unit for GNU/Linux systems

Dell, Linux submitted by glynmoody 03/02/07

Clearly, there is a huge pent-up demand for pre-installed GNU/Linux systems from Dell. But equally clearly, it would be difficult for Dell to make, sell and support such systems with its current business model.

Why doesn't Dell adopt the solution outlined by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator's Dilemma? That is, to set up a completely autonomous division, dedicated solely to meeting the demand for such systems - one that is not obliged to follow any of Dell's traditional practices.

Unconstrained by Dell's current methods or cost structures, it will be able to explore, devise and adopt innovative solutions to serve this very different market profitably. Dell makes money, people get their pre-installed systems. 44 Comments »