Idea for laptop commercials:
use historical events in US history to show how mobile technology improves lives. There is no better time than the present to show a sense of Patriotism to sell a product, especially a good product. It could also work in other countries with their historical events.

Example:

Lewis and Clark

Scene - In black and white, 2 men with pack horses in front of a crowd, giving a speech on the journey they are about to embark on. They leave, followed with various scenes of hunting for food, climbing through mountains, running from bears, mountain lions, etc, forging rivers, various hardships that they might have endured.

At one point, they are seen on a river bank, tired, hungry, nearly defeated, then one has an idea that sparks his eyes, he pulls out a laptop out of his saddle bag, opens the screen, the camera zooms into the screen through a "mother board maze" and comes out in color, to a scene of the same two guys in shorts with two beautiful girls (in cutoff shorts of course, just my preference), in a jeep, 4 wheeling through the woods and along the river bank, then pulling up on a campsite with a group of people, tents, and cold beer. As the sun sets, beer in hand, people with laptops sending pix and vids to friends using mobile wireless internet, a voice, "If you think times haven't gotten better, think again, think Dell."

There are many historical events to choose from, this is just one example. Events around the Founding Fathers, American Revolution, and so on.

John

Someone once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”

If that is true then it is also true that anti-Patriotism is the first refuge of traitors.

Hi, Dell people,

I was looking for a right laptop for my (mostly professional) needs: As an architect and designer I work mainly on CAD applications, do renderings, some photo editing etc...Also some multimedia (blue-ray would be nice), but don't care about gaming.

After a long, frustrated search (this glossy screen trend is getting ridiculous already). I really don't know, whats wrong with those marketing people, to they ever do a proper market research?

They could at least use Google. This is third hit, when typing “glossy vs matte” in search: www.squidoo.com/matte-vs-glossy-screens.

Or check, what experts have to say: www.noteboocheck.net

I haven't red one serious expert review, where glossy screen wasn't declared as negative trend.

Laptop is made and meant to be carried around and light-conditions can't be controlled always.

So, glossy screen is actually against the same nature of notebook.

Besides, eyes have problems to focus because of reflections, what can couse eye strain. On long run, it can be eye damaging. I wouldn't wonder, if glare screen will be banned in few years due to health hazard.

So, I finally found a a proper laptop: VOSTRO 3700.

I like it for many reasons: It has a really good design. It has exactly that understated elegance I like.

It is lightweight (at 2.7kg 17,3”weights as most 15”), it has anti-glare screen. It has a aluminum body, it is rugged, it has split resistant under-lit keyboard At first glance: almost perfect. OK, I'd rather have rubberized surface on hard plastic parts (like some Asus models). But all together, it can be a real (more affordable) competition to MacbookPro. Actually, I like its design more than that of XPS. The later seems a bit posh and I wonder, how long this shiny surface will stay without a scratch and how fast leather part will look worn out, if carried around a lot. I guess, not more then a year. In any case, I prefer 17.3” and 2.7kg with Vostro than XPS with 2.9kg and 16”(and apparently it doesn't has even an split-resistant keyboard).

But real frustration just began. Vostro can be a real top seller, but it seems you want it to fail!

Since your marketing people obviously don't know, what are they doing, here is some advice:

MARKETING VOSTRO 3700: Who had the (not so) bright idea, to sell this notebook primary to SMEs? This product is interesting to ALL costumers! And visual professionals will love it. For them 15” is a joke (at presentations and field work screen size matters!), and still it must be portable. And what is with students (architectural, design, mechanical and civil engineering, you name it...): do they not need lightweight, robust notebook (they do have a strange habit of wandering from lecture to lecture and notebooks are not the only thing they carry) and anti glare-screen (the libraries and lecture rooms can be really bright and sometimes dark), with spill resistant keyboard (they do get slightly nervous before exams and like to party). Data protection is also extremely important to them: can you imagine, they loose their work close before exams? So, tell me: how do needs of students differ from needs of SMEs?

And you won't believe it, later in professional life a lot of people do need (the same!) laptops for work AND for private life. And: ever heard of home-working? What about freelancers?

When you look closer at market, consumer and business market is to great extend the same. Nowadays markets overlap. I see it all the time. Very often people use their personal notebooks for work and connect it to the network at biro. So drop this differentiation already, it's not real. You can make special tailored financing schemes to SME, but that's about it!

And that's not all. Finding that laptops was already hard enough, but where can I see it? I mean, it looks great on photos, but you don't order something worth 750-1000€ without seeing it “in flesh”! OK, some do, but majority of people don't. I have to see, how it is built, how good the screen is, etc...

So, I contacted local distributes here in Slovenia. I can nowhere see it yet and prices are, compared to rest of EU, higher...

So I phoned to Austria, Where can I see it close to border and buy it. The lady on the other side said, I can't: I couldn't believe my ears. Is Dell really such an arrogant company? Now I really started contemplating the possibility, never to have anything to do with Dell ever again. And to advice other colleges the same. Why do you differentiate the EU market at all? We have no customs for a long time. Wouldn't it be better (and cheaper) to have just local “Dell stores” (like Apple) or at least show rooms with service around the globe and let people order, as they please. And let them configure by themselves.

As far as I can see and can read on your forum, pre-configuring is not a good policy for all costumers.

Some costumers, don't know what they want, some now exactly, what they want. And to those pushing not adequate configuration is an insult! In those cases, you should let people do it!

Perhaps, it would be a good idea, to sale barebone notebooks directly at those stores, as well as all other components and let costumer put them together. Or let employed people at store do it for a small fee. Or to do it in regional centers and ship them to final costumers. Of course in case of assembly by end users, all should be designed so user friendly, that everybody could do it.

That would save a lot of stress and money also to Dell, because the final assembly line would be eliminated and parts (RAM, HDD or SSD, CPU, GPU) could be shipped only once to final destination and not twice, like now. It would also save energy for transportation. So it would be “green policy.

Perhaps there is time to design kind of modular notebook. As a designer, I have already contemplated that, but that's another subject. If you are interested in such concept, we can talk more in detail about it.

But let's see, what can be done now:

CONFIGURING VOSTRO and price policy:

-CPU: i3-i5 configurations are properly priced. But i7 configuration is just outrages. It's a regular reap off! I checked a pricing a bit-and it should cost aprox. 120€ more than i5-520. And not 400$(300€)! Till now I could see this possibility only on US site. What is with EU? When looking price difference between configurations of Studio 17 at German site however, I see much smaller price difference. So why could you do it with Studio 17 and not Vostro 3700. Where is the catch?

Let's see, what will be pricing for that configuration in EU, but considering, what I got from one Slovenian reseller so far, it doesn't look promising . The i7 configuration is very important to your success on the market (fast rendering time), and can be extremely successful specially with visual professionals, but not at that price!

-GPU: NVIDIA GT330M is a good choice. Perhaps an option of GT360 or GT335 could be worth considering. Those of us, who work a lot on OpenGL applications, prefer NVIDIA to ATI due to better drivers support. ATI is getting better, but is still not fully trusted. If you built in GT330M, why not considering option of NVIDIA Quadro FX800M? It is essentially the same chip. Or even FX 1800M.

Yeah, I know, they are officially meant for 15” screen, but that's not really true. If GT330M works fine in 17” MacbookPro (1920 by 1200) why shouldn't Quadro FX 880M?. Again, it's the same chip.

So, Dell could finally have an attractive workstation. And don't tell me, you have a Precision. At 4kg for 17” it is not a laptop, it's a real estate. It's a big, bulky, clumsy, ugly, overpriced beast and I don't want it. Period. Perhaps you could keep it for those, who by all means want (essentially outdated 55nm chip) power hungry Quadro FX 2800M. But in this case I'd rather buy HP elitebook. On the other hand, with proper graphic card and screen Vostro (3700) could blow in some cases HP Elitbook out of the water.

-SCREEN: One of main reasons, why Vostro is interesting, is anti-glare screen. But what is it's contrast, light intensity, color gamut? Why not offering an RGB LED LCD with Vostro?

1600x900 is OK, but why not offer 1920 x 1080?

The one you use on XPS was really good at reviews. And what is with FHD (1920 x 1080) WLED (B+RG LED) used on Studio 17? Why not use it as anti-glare version on Vostro. As far as I could see in reviews, it's pretty good. Black should be a bit deeper, but otherwise OK. By the way: what does B+RG LED mean? I know what RGB is and WLED is. But this?

So, you are building in cheap laptop, like Studio 17 better screen then in Vostro, that should be better quality. And worse still, you offer that (superior) screen only in glossy version, but not in anti-glare, where good contrast really matters. It really doesn't make any sense!

And besides: Is RGB LED LCD really so much more expansive than WLED LCD?

I seriously doubt! It has probably something to do with economy of scale. If RGB LED LCD would offered more often, price would drop.

And it would be really a good practice, if DELL (and other manufacturers) would publish some data in this regard (contrast, light intensity, black, color GAMUT).

• And why Vostro 3700 shouldn't have UMTS (like its smaller brothers), Blue ray and USB 3.0?

First, you built a good notebook with record low weight and than you play down it's portability.

WARRANTY: How come, Asus gives by default two years warranty an Dell only one. It seems, like Asus has more trust in their products then Dell. Is Dell lower quality then Asus?

So, get your marketing department in order and do something with your website. Right now it is really a mess.

And last advice: Don't underestimate you costumers: Not all of us are ignorant crowd. Some of us are reading reviews, compare prices and are well informed. Just look at your forum and how many visitors have experts web sides. Or reading computer magazines. And they are many more of those, who you don't know about, who just take advice from that well informed people. And suddenly, market is not at all, us you thought it is.

And by the way: Integrity goes a long way. And the way to start with it, is to show full information.

It time of crises people are looking for trust!
I am sorry, if I've been a bit long and sarcastic sometimes, but some had to be said...
I hope, Michael Dell is going to read this...
Rather disappointed - not yet Dell costumer:
Rok Pernuš

The XT2 XFR is close to being a rival to the panasonic CF19 but construction and utility companies will need a device that comes with a camera, GPS, 3G capability and a pen before it is considered a potential contender. IF Dell produce this with a 2K price tag then you will sell tens of thousands in the UK alone.

If you managed to get a GPS device built into a latop that was within 1 or 2 meters of accuracy then you could expect to sell this for £5K.