jhonhood

Built-in camera in notebook lid

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptops submitted by filipzahradnik 05/06/07

I'd love to see a small camera built into the lid of the notebook - just above the display. Some notebooks (like Asus) already have it and it works great for video calling. This would save people having to lug a web cam around... 4 Comments »

Make all parts optional

Sales Strategies submitted by yank 05/20/07

Plenty of people spend a LOT of time shopping around on Dell's site for a great deal. They trust the brand and haven't the time or interest to build there own PC so when they see a good deal they try and buy that new Dell PC with as few options as they can manage.
Let them!
Allow them to remove:
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Hard Drive
Video Card
Etc.
Keep just the minimum basics and allow them to pick and choose what they want! 12 Comments »

Region free DVD drive option for laptops/notebooks.

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Service and Support, Laptops submitted by benjesuit 05/22/07

For those of us who travel and have overseas friends and family, the option to have a region free DVD drive would be a great plus when it comes to renting or borrowing DVD's from other regions. 15 Comments »

Shipping Costs

Sales Strategies, Service and Support submitted by ohitschko 05/22/07

I think the price of a PC or a Notebook should be seenable at the main page with included shipping costs because so you can see how much the PC costs really. 1 Comment »

Use NERO as your pre-installed Burning software instead of Roxio

Software submitted by cashcar1979 05/14/07

Roxio seems to drain many resources and is not as robust a software as Nero. Or at least give customers the choice of getting Nero installed instead of Roxio. 2 Comments »

Flag ideas as Duplicates

IdeaStorm submitted by peyre 05/18/07

Several people have commented that this site needs to be cleaned up. How about if users could flag an entry as a duplicate? That would make it much easier for someone moderating the site to catch dupes and eliminate or consolidate them.

Someone please let me know if this suggestion itself is a duplicate. 5 Comments »

Improve Web Site Photos of Products

Dell Web Site submitted by kenjennings 05/16/07

The product photos on the Dell web site are dismal, boring, and dull to the point of detracting from the products. My wife's Inspiron laptop arrived yesterday and it looks magnificent in real life -- nothing like web site pictures. I actually looked up the laptop on the web site again to make sure she wasn't mistakenly shipped the wrong model.

Whoever does this -- marketing,PR, IT -- needs to get a better camera or maybe some photography and art design courses. The real life Inspiron looks slick, pearly, and lustrous while the web site's photos look like flat, grey, plastic. 4 Comments »

What Dell Needs to do to be # 1 again ..

Dell submitted by lindahewitt 02/17/07

Dell used to be #1 when it came to hardware configuration, engineering, customer support and documentation. In fact for years, Dell's technical documentation won national awards in every category that it entered in. I am not a hardware geek, but the documentation was so good that it make me want to get a Dell and do the hardware work. Now that is real marketing.

Dell's customer support was out of Round Rock and it was A+. As a result of Dell excellence in hardware, engineering, customer support and documentation, I never had a problem recommending Dell to family, friends, associates and clients. But that was in 1994-1999.

Dell needs to return to its high quality roots, if it wants to be #1 again.

It also needs to eliminate some of its deceptive advertising, where customers pay for a premium tech support warranty for "next business day" support, only to discover that the term "next business day support" is defined completely differently by Dell. BTW, my BSOD problem occurred on a 5 month old brand new computer.

Let the customer control what software is loaded on their new computer, so that it could be no OS, OS only or OS & Microsoft Office.

Set up the C partition to only contain the operating system and nothing else. Redirect all data files to the D partition for data files and set up the e partition for programs.

Then if the user gets a BSOD or Dell's tech support says that the OS needs to be re-installed, the OS can be re-installed without affecting anything else. Yes, I know that the programs will need to be re-installed but the user will not have lost any data. In this regard, all customers should receive a CD (or DVD) with their operating system on it, just in case they have to re-install it for some reason. In fact, I think that every computer should come with 2 hard drives, so that data files and programs are completely separate from the OS hard drive. In short, make the process as easy and simple for the customer as possible.

In the case of BSODs, why not develop some prepared documentation, which explains that a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) can be caused by malfunctioning hardware, the operating system or software applications, which is what makes trouble shooting so very difficult. Based on my experience and substantial research, most of the time the cause of BSODs are poorly written software. So, why not emphasize the importance of backing up before installing new hardware or software. Backup restoration should ALWAYS be tested.

If Dell wants to be # 1 and I know that Dell does, then why not deal with only those vendors that have the best products instead of putting Norton AV on the computer.

Companies that I would recommend that Dell consider developing a business relationship with are

Acronis for their True Image (backup) and Disk Director (partition) software

Kaspersky for their AV and Internet Security products

Raxco for their PerfectDisk defragmentation product

FYI ... I do not have a business relationship with any of these companies.

When Dell includes software or add-on hardware, it should always be top of the line quality. In a sense, they are endorsing or recommending this vendor, so the reputation of the vendor gets tied to Dell's reputation as well.

Make it easy, simple and a quality experience to do business with Dell. In 1994-1995, this was the reputation of Dell and it carried you to the # 1 spot. Now it is time to return to your roots.

Pet Peeve:

Every quarter, when your financial reports came out that said that Dell had increased its net profits 27% over the same quarter last year, it only served to remind me that Dell was focused on maximum profits and that they didn't care that they were short-changing their customers to get those maximum profits.

Your customers understand what is really going on and have made their purchasing decisions based on Dell's past actions.

Congratulations on IdeaStorm. This is a great idea and I think that it can work to everyone's benefit. 28 Comments »

Help create Open Source drivers - employ or hire a few developers

Linux, Operating Systems submitted by tingo 02/21/07

The Open Source market is growing - fast.
Dell should invest a small amount in this, in order to gain a huge market share and sales.
Employ or hire a few Open Source developers to create drivers for your products (for Open source operating systems).
Make sure that
- you support as many of the Open Source OS's as you can (Linux, *BSD, others)
- the drivers are completely open sourced (no binary blobs)
- that you take a long time view on this and support the drivers for as many years as you can
- you create open source drivers for ALL new products
- there are no strings attached to the use or further development of those drivers (ie. use an acceptable FOSS license)

This idea is completely free - the first company to use it wins. 15 Comments »

AND THIS...MAKE IT!

New Product Ideas, Laptops submitted by badblood 05/17/07

22 Comments »

Notebook Shells Are Plastic - Offer Metal Casings Too

Laptops submitted by googideas 02/17/07

Notebooks get carried everywhere. Shouldn't Dell offer an aluminum or otherwise metal casing/construction as an option?

If I am going to drop two grand on a laptop, which I just did, I sure as heck want it as rugged as possible. I don't care about weight or additional cost. I want it to last.

Plastic is brittle. A dent in the metal is better than a crack in the plastic. It's also easier to recycle.

What do you think? 32 Comments »

Add some colors!

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Desktops and Laptops submitted by bajtalan.hunor 02/24/07 **PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED**

In my opinion nowadays colors like gray or black are getting too old. Why Dell does not follow other companies like Sony or Apple or the tiny Flybook. People like colors because it expresses their personality, not everybody is a businessman or businesswoman, we like colors. For example white is getting more and more popular but there are other trendy colors out there.

So PLEASE ADD SOME COLOR TO YOUR NOTEBOOK AND DESKTOP LINES and make them look like jewelry and not like a piece of plastic, do some cool design.

We like to show a laptop to which people say WOW. So the "WOW STARTS NOW"!



The new Inspiron and XPS notebooks do come in colors now, but stay tuned for more ways to customize the look of your PC.

21 Comments »

Numberpad on 17" Notebooks

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptops submitted by lorjav 05/22/07

Hi,

I would like to see the numberpad attached on your 17" notebooks. I do a lot of accounting work and would find this very convenient. 3 Comments »

A Site for the Computer Literate, and a Site for the Computer Illiterate

Dell Web Site submitted by hotuan87 05/18/07

The way the ordering interface is now, it's easy to confuse the computer illiterate with the glut of computer lingo out there (How many market brands has Intel released over the past 2 years!?), but also, you can annoy the computer literate by not giving enough detailed information.

It's hard to straddle the middle road...

The ordering pages should adjust to the type of customer.

If the customer is not well versed in computer lingo, you should give them a very simplified ordering interface designed to cut the excess and tell simply what they need (i.e. do what Apple does).

If the customer is computer literate, then give them a sophisticated ordering interface that gives them all the information and specific options they want and desire in all its gory detail. 1 Comment »

Interchangable battery, DVD, HDD, or FDD in the same slot.

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptop Power submitted by chewd 05/18/07

Have a look at the old compaq LTE series of laptops. They had a battery in the back, and on either side a slot about the size of a slimline optical drive in which you could put either a slimline drive, a floppy drive, a hard drive, or (with a special adapter) another battery.

This layout gave you extreme flexibility. You could put a hard disk in each side, and in addition to the integrated drive youd have 3 hard disks. Or you could have 2 hdds & 1 cdrom. Or no cdrom & 3 batteries.... a floppy in one side a cdrom in the other, 2 cdrom drives, the combinations are limitless (well not really, but you get my drift)

This would give users the ability to reconfigure their machine to fit their needs in minutes.

Additionally, you could have an option to get a port replicator with 1 or more of these same slots, so you could put the dvd drive in the port replicator most of the time,or pull it out & put it in the machine itself if you think youll need it on the road. 5 Comments »

No discounts, just low prices! (consumer products)

Sales Strategies submitted by mistern 05/19/07

Warning first: I'm talking about the consumer segment only.

Don't provide any discounts at all. Just low prices. Discounts are a source of frustration when they don't apply, and if they apply to everybody, they're a lie. 2 Comments »

remove mcafee 30 days trial software

Software submitted by robertobiggio 05/03/07

its a pain to remove mcafee, u have to go into msconfig to remove this antivirus.

to much trouble, pls, who wants mcafee,
consumer is more important than a little software bundle fees, isnt it? 4 Comments »

Laptop Web Cam and Microphone

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptops submitted by terrymain 02/16/07 **PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED**

All new laptops should have a built in web cam and quality voice recorder/microphone.


Webcams are standard on all XPS laptops and an option on all Inspiron laptops.




134 Comments »

light up keyboards

Dell submitted by theonlyho 05/13/07

Maybe I'm not up to date, but since Apple has lighted up keyboards, it'd be awesome if laptops have lighted up keyboards also. It might be out on Dell now or not, lighted up keyboards are handy either way. 5 Comments »

List Rejected Ideas

IdeaStorm submitted by jorge 05/17/07

Besides having "Ideas in Action" a category for "Rejected Ideas" so people don't continue to try and add rejected ideas. And the posters of those ideas don't get bent out of shape for losing their idea from the site, they can still see it in the "Rejected Idea" bin, it can hopefully drive them to produce better ideas or push them over the edge (good or bad, hopefully good). I guess keeping the history of the IdeaStorm alive. Just lock the comments or the mocking might get out of hand.

Starting Jul. 2nd provided by florida web site design . 18 Comments »