Direct2Dell – Direct2Dell – DELL COMMUNITY

You may have seen Engadget’s recent post about a new red color coming to the Dell the Studio XPS 16. They got part of it right. In reality, Merlot Red is coming to both the Studio XPS 13 and Studio XPS 16 laptops.

Here’s what it looks like.

Dell is doing a lot to make its laptop look beautiful.
Will this lift Dell sales and help it beat Acer ?

I buy Dell because of its customization choices and reliable next business day service.
I won’t buy a notebook for its looks.

Then again, great looks and great customization choices and great service is a great idea.

This used to be the Dell difference –

We cut out the middle-man so you don’t have to cut corners.

Nowadays, Dell units are sold at retail centers and so it can no longer claim to sell direct only.

What could Dell do to differentiate itself ?

More importantly, what can Dell differentiate in ways that are meaningful to customers like me, now that Acer is surpassing Dell in notebook sales ?

Personally, I choose Dell and have been using Dell since 1999 because :

1. Dell offers next business day on-site service

    This means I don’t have to lose time in taking my notebook to a service center. I wait for the service man to come to my door in the comfort of my office or home or even vacation location. This kind of service, I find is the best in the industry. And I have friends who use other brands’ on-site service who would agree with me.

2. Dell has the widest range of customization choices

    When I bought my last notebook, I could decide on my hard disk size, operating system version, monitor type and resolution, warranty duration, color, commonly used software to install, speaker. It’s almost certain I can find the notebook with the exact specs that I want.

    And the greatest deal of all, no matter how high I customize it, the warranty cost for the laptop stays the same. That is to say, the warranty does not increase even though I piled on a lot more features on the basic offering. Dell will stand by its warranty at the same price !! I only pay more for warranty if I want a longer duration or want some extra service. It is not dependent on whether I customize it or not. The warranty even covers the free gift !! I once received a USB pen drive as a free gift. When that gave trouble, Dell kindly sent a technician to send me a new one (a better one in fact, my free gift was a USB 1.0 drive, they gave me a USB 2.0 drive as a replacement).

I am planning to buy another Dell come October (when Windows 7 launches).

I do these with my notebook:

1. use it at the office – Microsoft Office applications, python programming, Oracle programming

2. use it at home – processing raw digital photographs

I will be looking for these not too common features:

1. 7200rpm (or faster) hard disks

There are too many times on my Inspiron 640m when nothing happens for a while after I click on something. Instead I see the 5400rpm hard disk light blinking rapidly. A 5400rpm hard disk is a time-waster.

2. 500GB hard disk

I am outgrowing my 160GB hard disk already. My photos will only continue to grow and so will my work files. An external hard disk is an option but I prefer it all in one compact notebook.

3. 2 partitions

I currently have 2 partitions on my 160GB hard disk:

80GB for the operating system and work files

80GB for downloads, photographs and back up

Having 2 partitions is essential for disk management – I can defragment them, run check disk, make disk image copy separately.

With a bigger capacity hard disk, partitioning is even more important. Sadly, Dell does not offer many partitioning choices in the past and seem to have stopped offering them at all lately.

I am planning to buy a new notebook. Mine is going to be 3 years old by January 2010.
There are several reasons why I want to get a new notebook:

1. My 160GB hard disk is filling up. Nowadays, I have to periodically archive some older stuff to an external hard disk
2. I am doing more post-processing on photography and my T5500 with Integrated Graphics is chip is slow.
3. Windows 7 is shipping soon (see below news). I installed Windows XP on my Inspiron 640m. Windows 7 is getting a lot of good reviews and I am excited to move to a new OS.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 will be ready by holiday 2009 – Ars Technica

At Microsoft TechEd North America 2009, Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will both be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season