urbanvoyeur

Need better ways to get ideas reviewed and not get lost in the noise

IdeaStorm submitted by gerrygiese Jun 11

What I wonder is based on the volume of "ideas" coming in (many of which seem duplicative, inane, or noise-level non-ideas), how can a more valid topic get more traffic to see if it really withstands community review? I think some of the stuff comes in so fast that many ideas never really get reviewed unless somebody is willing to scroll through pages and pages of recent "ideas" to find them.

I'd like to see a new tab or tabs dedicated to items that got more positive votes than negative, maybe at least a 3:1 ratio?. But these ideas are still under a certain threshold, either something like less than 200, or that have not received X number of votes in the past week.

The "ideas in action" weekly recaps are one way for dell employees to promote certain ideas. Can dell employees vote for ideas? If they can, and I think they should, since it's their company, and their votes should be worth more (20? 50?). If we create an idea and a dell employee likes it, why shouldn't they be able to promote it? Dell employees can obviously help sort the wheat from the chaff, so I say let 'em do it.

I might draw the line at letting dell employees creating ideas -- they have their own process for that. But on the other hand, I've heard of plenty of times where an employee had an idea but their manager thought it was stupid, so the employee left, started a new company, and went gangbusters, making the manager look like the stupid one. If a dell employee has an idea and they want the community to review it, I suppose why not? 11 Comments »

Faster booting

Operating Systems submitted by ramaseshanr Jun 11

Booting process gets longer day by day, as the OSes are getting fatter, The power of the processors are neutralized by these fatter OSes and we have not seen any improvement in the boot time. I would love to use my computer as soon as I switch on the system. Can any one build susch machines? 22 Comments »

Get Splashtop available on most if not all computers.

Desktops, Linux submitted by he_the_great Jun 12

Splashtop is an integrated Linux desktop that lets you instantly boot your computer into an environment to browse the web and other tasks. I don't see any reason not to have it everywhere. 1 Comment »

E with OLED screen to save battery life

Monitors and Displays submitted by cazyray Jun 13

The new E could save a lot of battery life by using OLED this would make the computer lighter as well. 7 Comments »

Delivery Time - Please Reduce.

Service and Support submitted by pablohs Jun 13

I love the fact that with Dell I can customize my pc or laptop and get exactly what I want. When I do customize and pick what I want, I have no problem to wait for my unit. However, today as an experiment I pick a laptop and DID NOT CUSTOMIZE anything and just click on BUY NOW. The estimated shipping time was July 18 2008 – I think this is crazy – if I am buying a unit that you are showing in the website as your standard, I should be able to get it next week not in 5 weeks. Also consider the fact that I am paying you TODAY and you are not delivering the product for another 5 weeks. That is a loan to DELL with no interest, and DELL is not giving me a discount for waiting either. Any comments? 10 Comments »

Faceted Browsing model for IdeaStrom

IdeaStorm submitted by ramaseshanr Jun 13

Convert the IdeaStrom website to allow faceted browsing. It will make the navigational experience a lot smoother and it will democratize the insights on data posted here.
Example:
"Categories" contains several items.
It may be programmed to show the following:
all [9139]
Accessories (Keyboards, etc.) [124]
Advertising and Marketing [456]
Broadband and Mobility [327]
Dell [1034]
Dell Community [2467]
Dell Web Site [138]
...
...

Status
UNDER REVIEW [12]
REVIEWED IN PROGRESS [34]
COMING SOON [12]
IMPLEMENTED [56]
PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED [120]
...

The number in the square bracket refers to the number of ideas.
This is a very simple example. To appreciate the power of faceted browsing, please look at some of the examples of the following sites:
http://simile.mit.edu/exhibit/
http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/demos.html

If faceted browsing were in place in ideastrom, it will allow the user to move through this large space in an efficient manner without getting lost. It promotes infinite browsing without ever getting lost in the piles of data. 1 Comment »

Dell Computers with e-sata ports

Servers and Storage, Desktops and Laptops submitted by chasrome Jun 13

Dell needs to supply and announce the availability of desktop, notebook, and servers with e-sata ports to which the many available external drives can be attached. RAID (0 and 1) could be available especially for servers. The ports should support six foot cables (not just three foot). Comment »

Full keyboard for Workstation Notebook computers

Precision Workstations submitted by chasrome Jun 13

Would like to purchase a Precision Workstation with a full keyboard like those available on Vostro and Inspiron lines. 1 Comment »

Modify the Trackpad design clearing the buttons at the bottom

Laptops submitted by casiciaco Jun 14

Instead of the classical trackpad with the two buttons in the bottom, move the left button to the left and the right button to the right, clearing the bottom. In this way, the trackpad height is increased. It would also be necessary to expand the horizontal size of the trackpad in order to get bigger and more confortable trackpads. 3 Comments »

Fix Skype incompatibity with SP2008WFP webcam

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.), Monitors and Displays submitted by matts Jun 14

There seems to be a driver problem with the Creative webcam in the SP2008WFP monitor. Skype crashes fairly quickly when using it, though the webcam built into my XPS m1330 laptop has no such trouble.

The reason I think it's a driver issue is that another little custom webcam app struggles with the external monitor webcam (freezing, dropping frames) but has no issue with the one in the laptop.

Here's some background: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=101860 1 Comment »

Improve multi-monitor handling by disabling Transient Monitor Manager in Vista

Monitors and Displays, Operating Systems, Software submitted by matts Jun 14

I own an XPS m1330 (w/ Vista) hooked up to a Dell SP2008WFP monitor. I was consistently, amazingly frustrated at how it would not remember the monitor settings between sessions. It was seemingly random how my desktop would change every time I logged on or woke from sleep.

From an end-user's perspective, this sort of malfunction is absurd, especially since both the monitor and laptop are made by Dell. It really shouldn't happen like this -- something so visible to the end-user.

Turns out this is all due to a piece of software in Vista called Transient Monitor Manager. I disabled it, and everything is lovely and predicatable now.

Here are some details:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1867469&SiteID=17&pa... 1 Comment »

Touch screen on laptops, with Microsoft Origami

Laptops submitted by matts Jun 14

If the iPhone can have a touch screen, why not a laptop? :)

Seriously, a small (or large!) XPS laptop with a touch screen would open up a lot of possibilities. Microsoft just came out with a new version of its Origami interface, which Dell could customize very nicely: http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsexperience/archive/2008/06/13/origam... 2 Comments »

Start selling 3D screens (autostereoscopic)

Monitors and Displays submitted by simon_n Jun 15

Glasses free 3D LCD screens (aka Autostereoscopic) are now good quality.
(e.g. Philips WOWvx, with no headaches, bright high res displays at convenient 20 and 42 inch sizes and the option to switch between 2D and 3D at the users behest)

Why not start selling your own ones to the mainstream?

With hollywood making 3D films again and cinemas going 3D there is no shortage of content for these screens.

The games industry would go crazy of these went mainstream.

And with Microsofts WPF now using DirectX to produce its graphics, the stage is being set for all apps to move to 3D.

There is definetly a mass market there. If Dell started selling these (beginning with the higher end of their customer base) the prices would slowly come down and would gradually become entirely mainstream (just like widescreen TVs).

The time is right. The hardware and software exist. Who wouldn't want it? 5 Comments »

Idea for more visible windows using 'depth'

Desktops, Operating Systems submitted by grannybuttons Jun 15

I'd like to see an OS desktop which uses sharpness/fuzziness to increase the sense of depth.

The idea is that while a window on top is perfectly sharp, the further 'behind' it is in the 'Z-order' (i.e. further down), the fuzzier/ more blurred it gets. ~

This would immediately allow people to see which was the window which currently had our focus.

The Desktop, being right at the bottom, would be very fuzzy. But it would come into focus once clicked on.

Why has no one thought of this before?

I wanted to pitch this to Microsoft, but they have nothing like Dell's Idea Storm, so you can have it for free. I don't want money, I simply want a more usable OS. 6 Comments »

Monochrome mode display for laptops

Monitors and Displays, Laptops submitted by viat0r Jun 15

It would be great to have a dual mode laptop display that had a monochrome mode.
What good is having wifi or a 3g mobile broadband card when you can not read your display outdoors. It could be similar to what the OLPC project uses on their device.
Specs for it are here
http://laptop.org/laptop/hardware/specs.shtml
and here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO-1#Display

This should also reduce energy consumption and increase battery life! 6 Comments »

Customize Ubuntu for Dell

Linux submitted by zmjjmz Jun 15

Seeing as Ubuntu is open source and you can edit the kernel, it would be great if Dell customized it to better fit their computers, much like the way Apple customized DarwinBSD. (Ok, not _that_ much, but you get the idea.)
Some ideas for it: Customized look (GTK2+ theme, Emerald theme, wallpaper, GDM theme, etc.) to fit Dell products (You could use the GDM theme from here: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Dell+XPS+GDM+Theme?content=78092 for the M1330n and use the underlying wallpaper too), customized kernel (this will help speed it up) per machine, customized applications, you could even eschew GNOME and use a highly customized E17 or FVWM setup, and so on.
It ends where your imagination ends (and budget).
One important part: Every modification you make must be Open Source!
While it'd be great to have the integration that Apple has, it'd also be great _not_ to have the same lockin and proprietariness of Apple. 7 Comments »

Offer Nextday Delivery

Sales Strategies submitted by aikiwolfie Jun 15

Please for the love of God offer next day delivery of pre-configured PCs. I've just had to buy a new M1530 at short notice. Which meant I had to go to Tesco. Which meant I had to buy a Vista machine. Which means I'm now mentally traumatized and scarred for life!

Seriosuly getting Vista up and running for the first time is just a barrage of pop-ups. All one after the other. Some at the same time. If I could have ordered a Ubuntu system directly from Dell, I could have avoided that whole mind destroying experience. 3 Comments »

Laptop Hard Drive slide out (removable) tray

Laptops submitted by toyota_supra Jun 15

I would really like to see some sort of a slide out tray with a hard drive. It would be so convenient to slide in a hard drive with different operating system (XP, Vista, Linux), without going through the hustle of multi boot, confusing partitioning and last but not least, in case of a hard drive failure (even on multi boot systems) there would a quick and easy way to get up and running on a previously set up operating system(s).

I know that some 17 inch laptops offer optional second hard drive, but this idea is for a removable HD on any size laptop.

Regards,
T.S. 4 Comments »

WAMP Stack

Software submitted by ramaseshanr Jun 16

Provide well tested WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL,PHP/Python/Perl) stack during customization of desktop/Laptop 2 Comments »

Shutdown/Hibernate key on the keyboard

Accessories (Keyboards, etc.) submitted by ramaseshanr Jun 16

Provide a shutdown/hybernate key part of the keyboard.
Similar to camera button. Half pressed and released - hybernate
Keep pressing - shutdown the system 7 Comments »