Hot-swappable laptop batteries.
Laptop Power submitted by jmxz
May 31
I'd like to be able to swap the battery on my laptop without having to turn it off or hibernate it. It seems you could do this by putting a large capacitor or tiny internal battery that could provide power for the 30 seconds or so it takes to switch to a spare battery. Another way you might be able to do this is instead of having one big battery in each laptop, have 2 small ones instead; and you could swap them one at a time.
If it was really easy to swap them I'd probably buy more spare batteries; so I could go most of the day without plugging in the laptop (and then I'd want an external charger so I could charge them all overnight).
750
Please change the Mini-Dell keyboard layout.
Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptops submitted by vandutran
Jun 3
Hi,
See here: Mini-Dell keyboard layout: http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/dellmininsp/1001694713
There's a horde of new upcoming "Sub Notebooks" this summer, and Dell has one on its way. The current champion seems to be the MSI Wind, but one thing has refrained me from pre-ordering it: the keyboard layout.
I see two mistake with the keyboard:
1. The swapping location of the Fn and the Crtl key.
2. The directional keys/right shift key.
Dell, please use the Acer's keyboard layout, i find it to be the best layout, especially for small sized laptops. Actually, please look at your Dell Latitude D600, which i own and actually liked that one best.
Acer: 
Dell: 
Best regards,
Van Du
130
Let Home customers know it's OK to buy from the Business section and vice versa.
Advertising and Marketing, Sales Strategies, Small Business submitted by jmxz
May 7
From a conversation with Dell's robert_p, under a different Idea it seems that "Home" customers are welcome to buy from Dell's "Small & Medium Business" section, and Dell's "small and/or medium business" customers are welcome to buy from Dell's "Home & Home Office" section.
This is very useful since often computers in the "Small Business" section may be more appropriate for home use (the Latitude's light weight and reliability make it a great college computer); and often computers in the "Home" section may be more appropriate for office use (where the better graphics options in Home are valuable for graphical visualization). It's also useful because an identically-spec'd system may be cheaper the Home Section one week, and then be cheaper in the Small Business section the next.
I think many Dell Business and Home customers are missing out on the best deals and failing to find machines that meet their needs because the home user's are afraid of falsely claiming to be a business and because the business customers are afraid of falsely claiming to by buying systems for personal use.
So a few ideas:
1. Assuming robert_p's right in saying Home Customers are welcome to buy from Small Business - add links to the Home product pages saying "If you don't see what you need here, check out Dell's Small Business section. You're welcome to buy those for Home use too".
2. Assuming robert_p's right in saying Small Business are welcome to buy from the Home section - add links to the Small Business product pages saying "If you don't see what you need here, check out Dell's Home section. You're welcome to buy those for Business Use too".
3. Extrapolating - if it's also OK for Home an Small Biz customers to buy from Dell's "Large Business" and "Government, Education, Healthcare & Life Sciences" section, add those links too.
4. Make a price comparison engine that compares the prices of an identically spec'd system from each of Dell's sections so I don't have to manually dig through all of your painful to navigate website sections to compare Home vs Small Business myself.
700
Dell Small Business vs Dell Home
Sales Strategies submitted by jamesmoroni1
May 2
The split between Dell Small Business and Dell Home has been an endless source of confusion and frustration for price-sensitive customers. I don't see the need for the two separate divisions. I've purchased computers from both, and keeping track of where I bought which machine is very frustrating. It also makes it harder to be sure you're getting the best price.
Dell SB and Dell Home should go away -- it should be just Dell.com. There could be special options for people who want to purchase several machines at once, but there's no need to have separate storefronts -- the needs of small businesses and home users are very similar.
370
The "Patriot"! American Made
Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Laptops submitted by sa2008
Apr 30
We live in a global marketplace with a global economy; however, many of us are still very proud to be AMERICAN. I would very much like to see Dell produce a laptop called the "Patriot". This machine should be AMERICAN made, and it should have a couple of really cool and patriotic color options.
color option 1 - camo with the end users choice of military logos
color option 2 - the US FLAG
I realize that Dell has move a portion of its workforce to other countries; however, I still consider Dell an AMERICAN company.
I see this type of laptop as an opportunity for Dell to give back a little to the people and the country that made it possible to be DELL.
I would also like to see a portion of every patriot laptop sold dedicated to a charity that specifically supports wounded soldiers and their families!
It's time for Dell to be AMERICAN PROUD!!!!
-60
Introduce a "No Component" Option When Customizing
Environment, Service and Support submitted by fahdriyami
Apr 23
Intoduce an option to not choose a PC component especially for the XPS Desktop Range, most of Gaming Consumers have already built a PC before and have some of the essential components already, for example, i already have a compatible Intel processor and want my Dell shipped without a processor to save money. a "No Component" limit should also be applied, and not all components should have this option. Talking from a business point of view, this could reduce electronic waste in the long run, however it could also reduce sales of the components which could upset manufacturers...
BUT, the earth is more important.
330
Do not scale back build-to-order systems
Desktops and Laptops submitted by masterr
Apr 5 **ALREADY OFFERED**
Today in the news I read that Dell "is moving away from its build-to-order model to reduce costs. Dell is limiting the degree to which buyers can dictate specifications while expanding its line of prepackaged models". Please do not do this. The options build-to-order system is what sets Dell above some of the competition. By scaling this back and removing customization choices you remove some of the appeal of buying a Dell machine online. Please do not scale this back.
Please scroll down to see Dawn's comments below.
1690
Simplify, Simplify!!
Sales Strategies, Simplify IT submitted by beefman
02/23/07 **PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED**
Purchasing from Dell at present is immensely confusing. From home buyers to corporate purchases, simply purchasing a computer is a struggle when one is trying to achieve the best value. In the drive to serve every segment of the market, Dell has become balkanized and fragmented.
Dell made their name on ease of transaction and simplicity. Now, Dell's pricing structure is so complex it makes airline fares look simple! Then, when it comes time to order, finding the right person to speak to can be a chore as well. I have been able to make much better deals when talking to a sales rep than when ordering online. Why? Dell should be driving customers to the lowest cost method of order acceptance and making that process as easy and painless as possible.
The multilayered, multitiered pricing structure has to be the first thing to go. Get rid of the thousands of discount codes that are handed out on a by the minute basis. Make pricing simple, repeatable and logical. Discount by customer on an account basis. Why should you be extending discounts and rewarding a bottom-feeder who only waits for below-cost red-ink loss leaders and never buys otherwise? Reward good customers, and set pricing such that even without a discount, Dell products are an excellent value. All the segmentation DOES NOT result in better service to customers and only adds cost.
On that note: DON'T hand off accounts. My biggest frustration with Dell was building a relationship and then being handed off to someone else to work with. It seemed that this was done on a regular basis to stimulate business. Not smart. I have had the same rep at CDW for 8 years. They're my primary vendor and I won't go anywhere else. If they sold Dell, I'd buy it there. Why? My sales rep and the quality of service.
You NEVER want customers having buyers remorse or thinking they could've got a better deal. The sales/pricing structure in place pretty much assures that, in addition to making the purchase process more difficult than it should be. Sweep it away, get back to roots of offering rock solid leading edge technology at a rock bottom price.
We’re making every effort to simplify the purchase process for Dell products and services. The recent launch of Dell ProSupport was driven by feedback from customers like you, and it’s an important step in the right direction.
930
Dell, a global player with global service & solutions? Yes & No ...
Service and Support, Simplify IT submitted by xaerts
03/02/07 **PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED**
I work in a multinational with offices all around the globe. As IT Manager for the Europe region (15 offices) I am a bit dissapointed in the way that Dell cannot organise a better Global program or even a regional program.
And yes I know all about premier pages and we had meetings all over the globe with Dell and Dell International Business Consultants.
For the EMEA region it comes down to this:
Many countries have their own keyboard type and power plug types. Dell can deliver that straight from the factory, great, I love that! That's something you can't accomplish with IBM ThinkPads etc.
Now we order everything through an account manager in the UK who can ship our orders to the local offices all over Europe with the correct keyboard layouts etc. At least we accomplished that! Two years ago that was not even possible. (shipping to Poland is still not possible, but ok, at least the 14 other offices are sorted this way)
The problem is that we cannot have this setup through a corporate premier page, so all orders go by phone/e-mail. We have poor tracking and history reporting because of that.
An even bigger issue is that the UK can only accept orders in GBP and invoice to one address in the UK. And that's the big pain! All invoices go to our office in London who then need to rebill all the other offices throughout Europe and convert it to EUR, SEK, ...
I wish Dell could just get us an Premier Page where all orders are taken and the billing is done though Dell local branches to the office who requested the equipment. That would be a huge cost saver for us (time/resources).
It also is a little silly that for instance Brussels needs a printer toner, we need to go through the UK to order a toner, have it shipped from Ireland to Brussels. All the hassles for just a toner. Calling Dell locally does not help, as we only have a UK Dell account and we are considered to be NO client of Dell for the local offices.
Alternatively working with local Dell reps doesn't work either as we loose our volume discount agreements.
What we like about Dell is mostly the price/quality and the delivery lead times. Support is ok, but also here some improvement/remarks.
In the US it seems like you need to be Dell Certified to place a support call, in EU luckily not (yet).
Please Dell, make a better difference between professional customers and consumers. None of our offices have local IT staff! We have a centralised helpdesk. If a PC dies in Germany and we do the troubleshooting and we say it is a thermal event on the motherboard, it is a thermal event. Then the nightmare begins; the local office (mostly woman) need to call Dell Support in their local country and they start to ask to open up the PC and do this or that.
Our Helpdesk cannot place the call as we are not physically in front of the PC/laptop to do the requested things by Dell Support. Neither do we speak the local language of the Dell Support team in the country where we have an issue.
I would love to have an international number where IT people can contact Dell to report a fault on a machine in ANY location. Dell will need to trust the knowledge of the clients IT team and dispatch a local tech to fix the issue.
Who knows my posting gets on the desk of M. Dell !
Best regards
X.A.
Belgium
Check out our latest Idea in Action
100
Clearly Understandable English & Don't Treat all callers as "idiots"
Service and Support submitted by hipowerone
05/07/07 **PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED**
As a PC consultant, Dell Owner, and often user of Dell Support, I encourage Dell to require that "any" support personnel be able to demonstrate that they can speak and be clearly understood in English, or any other language, as a requirement for employment by either Dell or off site support facilities.
I am tired of having Dell customers give up on Dell when they try to call Dell Tech support. It is because they get techs who truly try to speak English, but their native tongue and dialect prevent what comes out from being recognized as English.
What took the cake for me in this matter was a customer who had paid for a business Latitude along with 4 year support. I was called in to handle a warranty issue (back light dead). I called Dell Support and got a "foreign" English student for support. Supposedly he was located somewhere in Canada(???). I spoke slowly and repeatedly enunciated what I wanted and repeatedly told him to slow down and repeat himself for each question he asked, just to understand what he said.
Secondly, get rid of the scripts. All callers are not idiots. I called clearly understanding the problem. No amount of talking could draw this tech away from the script or convince him that the screen was black, period. Anything he wanted me to do or try would not bring the back light back to life or make the screen bright enough so that I could answer questions about what the computer was doing or saying.
My customer sat nearby, listening on speaker phone, as I worked my way through to the final diagnosis that indeed the back light needed to be replaced under warranty. This customer stated that the call took twice as long as necessary and she clearly would not have had the patience to work with the Dell tech. She stated that she would think twice next time she needs to buy a new computer. She did not feel that she should need to have "paid tech support" to call and talk with Dell tech support.
Check out our latest Idea in Action!
520
IMPLEMENT the INTEL PENRYN 45nm Processor on Dell's Notebook and Desktop it require less power more performance NOW!!! Dell is behind from HP
Desktops and Laptops submitted by bryan14c
Jan 9
Dell should start to sell notebook with Penryn processor because it require less power more performance
T9500 6MB L2 2.60 GHz 800 MHz
T9300 6MB L2 2.50 GHz 800 MHz
T8300 3MB L2 2.40 GHz 800 MHz
T8100 3MB L2 2.10 GHz 800 MHz
specially on the XPS line etc... , well i hope DELL would not overcharge the consumers , dell can you sell this to us right now!!! for now it seems dell is falling behind again , well they have catchup with their design but somehow they fall behind with the power inside the laptop especially the penryn processors , dell hear us now implement the PENRYN processor , your behind from HP now , if you have gone to hp website and choose the dv9700t and dv6700t model you will see that HP is getting started about the Intel Penryn T9300 6MB L2 2.50 GHz as an option, , i dont know why DELL is Behind they should implement this now!!!
   
1430
Stop mounting substandard displays on high end notebooks please...
Monitors and Displays, Laptops submitted by sergioo
Jan 15
If I go to buy a cheap notebook, I can blame me or the reasons why I have no money to buy a better one.
But if I buy a GOOD notebook, as a Dell is expecting to be, even more if a Latitude or Precision, and you put a WSXGA+ Samsung like the SEC3350, or the other WXGA+ by Auo, and I paid a high end notebook to get a sandy, oily, dirty, yellowish display, with light leakage, whites not white, blacks not black, porr colors and bad viewing angles, may I get a bit angry?
And why must I get angry and fax an angry letter to Escalation to have all solved, if it is my natural right to have a good to very good display out of the box?
Don't you realize yet how often people avoid Dell for:
1) bad displays
2) bad customer care
???
TO me it is a pity. I really like all the rest in Dell.
It is a pity...
980
Enough with the blue LED's already!
Monitors and Displays, Laptops submitted by chewd
Jan 15
A small, sharp, pinpoint of blue light is absolutely the worst thing you could possibly do to your night vision! Theres a reason the panel lights in aircraft are always red, red light does not leave retinal artifacts that impair night-vision.
I know blue LED's are trendy, everythings got them these days. And bluetooth has "blue" right in the freakin name. But those of us who use notebooks for work, and work at night, find blue LEDs very irritating.
Blue being a very short wavelength is very penetrating. You can light an entire room with one blue LED, whereas red being a long wavelength is ideal for indicators & such as it does not carry as much.
Give us the option of changing the color of the LED's either through BIOS, software, or even physically replacing them (or just replacing a colored lens). Maybe it would be possible to let us turn down the brightness a tad.
It would be nice not to have to cover my new laptop with little bits of tape.
520
switch to LED monitors
Monitors and Displays, Laptop Power submitted by yardsale
Jan 16
I dont know why dell hasnt done this yet. switch all monitors on desktops and notebooks to LED. did you know that you can run an LED screen at full brightniess and it uses less power than a LCD monitor at the lowest brighting level?!? its cheaper, its energy efficent, and it needs to be done! promote this, if you demote i wanna know why!
8420
Fix/Remove the new backdoor(s) from Vista SP1 before shipping it.
Operating Systems submitted by jmxz
12/17/07
Vista SP1 apparently has yet another new NSA backdoor; in addition to speculation of similar in XP and various other spyware features built in to Vista.
It seems that when Microsoft speaks of Vista "Security" - they're really talking about the RIAA / MPAA / Copyright laywers, and governments being secure from computer users (by giving both technical hooks as well as legalese in the EULA to let such groups go after users) rather than protecting the computer users themselves.
I imagine Dell would lose international sales if they were suspected of shipping software with government sponsored back doors; and US corporate spyware - so at least for your international sales, my Idea is that Dell should fix and/or remove these suspected backdoors before shipping.
130
Have a Fast Re-ordering Channel
Service and Support, XPS products submitted by dirtonth
12/18/07
I have just received my XPS 1330 after waiting for it for 12 Weeks.
When I orederred it the first time it came after 5 weeks as it was delayed because it seems that Laptop Displays had been out of stock at the mounting stage, and when I received it, the cover was Crimson Red, instead of Tuxedo Black as I had orderred it. The Service Tag also said that it should be Black even though it wasn't. This was definitely a case of a mistake in the production line, but Dell did not accept to make a Fast re-order.
On the next delivery, the product was stolen in transit, and since I purchased the Item from Dell's Local authorised reseller, Dell did not accept it as a corporate problem, but as the distributers problem, and here again, a new full order had to be placed.
I think Dell should have a channel to make fast re-orders in case of such happenings.
180
Don't totally disable editing ideas.
IdeaStorm submitted by jmxz
08/23/07
In some comment somewhere dell_admin1 suggested that editing of ideas would be disabled.
While I understand something is needed to prevent vandalism, editing of Ideas is very useful. In particular, soon after an idea is posted there are frequently questions in the comments and related ideas that are discussed that refine the Ideas in a very positive way.
There are a number of Ideas where I voted against them -- and in the comments explained why I voted against them -- and as a result the submitter edited-and-refined the Idea to make what was a problematic idea into a very positive one. The "include software disks" is one example - I think it's a great optional idea - but horrible for the environment if it's done by default(as the idea was originally posted where it said "always include").
By disallowing editing Ideas you would lose the benefits of having the community refine ideas and turning them from Good Ideas into Great Ideas.
Better solutions -- any one of: - Disable editing only after, say, 30-days after an Idea is posted.
- Allow editing - but make Editing clear the vote scores for an Idea.
- Allow editing as you do now - I only saw 1 instance of abuse of this feature and many instances of productive use of it.
[EDIT - As pointed out in the comments - there's another good solution - - Still allow edits but the edits need to be approved by moderators (dell_admins? trusted users?) before going into effect
Also, as pointed out in the comments - good thing I can still edit the Idea to get this good additional solution on the table.]
250
 track my votes
|
|
jackie_c
kara_k
dawn_l