Direct2Dell Week in Review 6-1-08

Sorry for being late with this. Let me just jump right in.

  • D6: Last week,the D6: All Things Digital conference kicked off lots of conversations in the blogosphere.  That previous link highlights several of those discussions, but for those that don't want to click through, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates previewed some of the functionality that Windows 7 will bring to the masses. It was nice to see Microsoft showing off part of the multi-touch functionality on the Latitude XT Tablet. More on Windows 7 in a bit. I also noticed that Jeff Bezos  let folks know that Amazon soon has plans to offer a for-pay video streaming service. It's unclear at this point where it will fit among Amazon's Unbox service or in the broader digital streaming landscape of iTunes and the Apple TV, or the soon-to-be-released Roku $100 set top box that will let Netflix customers stream movies via their "Watch Now" service. Michael Dell was one of the speakers at D6. Here's a text summary of some of what Michael discussed, and here's the video highlight reel. I've just scratched the surface on everything that happened there. If you're interested in more of a deep dive with all the folks who took part in D6, take a look at the D6 Highlights section of the blog.
  • Dell's Secret Mini Laptop: Speaking of D6, a Gizmodo post about a forthcoming Dell mini notebook sparked hundreds of reactions in the blogosphere. Anne B. Camden reacted and shared a few more pictures in her post on Your Blog. Reaction was pretty positive. Seems like a lot of folks are interested in a small notebook at an affordable price. Still, others in the blogosphere want a sub-notebook that doesn't skimp on performance (take a look at the comment threads from Gizmodo and Engadget to see what I mean). When we can share more details on this product, we'll blog about it.
  • Dell's Service Partner Program: Katie MacDonald discussed this in her Direct2Dell post and FAQ. I know that folks still have questions… this will be a topic we'll blog about more in the future.
  • Windows 7, Vista and XP: Even before the Windows 7 buzz that was started at D6, there was Windows 7 talk from Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky in an interview he did with CNET. While lots of folks thought there wasn't a whole lot of news there, I tend to agree with Larry Dignan. In his post, I thought he outlined the key points that came out of that interview really well. He makes the case that since Windows 7 will use the Vista driver stack (among other things), there's not much of a reason for companies to wait to make the jump straight from XP to Windows 7. One thing I disagree with Larry on though is that businesses won't care about multi-touch. If it's implemented effectively, seems like multi-touch could be a benefit to business users as well as consumers. Speaking of Vista, we'll soon be shipping Service Pack 1 on Vista machines. More coming up on that topic very soon across several of our blogs. And before I leave the subject of operating systems, seems worth mentioning that over at our Small Business blog, Jenni Doane published a post that reiterated the deadline for ordering a small business system with Windows XP is June 18. After that date, customers who order a machine with either Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate have the option of ordering it with a downgrade option to Windows XP Professional. Click on the Windows Vista Downgrade Service link for more details.
  • Q1 Earnings Results: We released our Q1 earnings results after the market close on Thursday last week. At the same time, Rob Williams published a post at the DellShares Investor Relations blog that recapped some of the highlights and provided some insight into how we're now reporting four operating segments: Americas Commercial, EMEA Commercial, APJ Commercial, and Global Consumer. While it's good to see positive reactions like the one from New York Times, many folks know we have lots of work ahead of us to keep the momentum going.

Like I mentioned in the first D2D Week in Review post, I want to make this more useful to Direct2Dell readers. If you have ideas on how I can do that, please let me know. And if you're interested in getting these updates automatically via RSS, you can subscribe to the weekly feed here.

About the Author: Lionel Menchaca