Bardissi Enterprises Blog

Notice from Dell Sonicwall

Posted Apr 03 2008, 04:18 PM by Kim Peterson

Customization is a big business these days. Starbucks says it can customize 87,000 drink combinations for its patrons. Whether it be clothes, cars or gadgets, allowing customers to order a unique version is becoming a successful business model.

Not so for Dell, a company who made a name for itself on its build-your-own-PC policy. This week, the company said it will focus less on the build-to-order model and more on selling pre-built versions. The switch is part of the company’s mission to bring down costs.

When it comes to computers, people don’t need an extreme level of customization anymore, executives told analysts this week. Customers are giving up the luxury of picking their own computer features and opting for cheaper, pre-made PCs from other companies. Dell’s share of the worldwide PC market has slipped to under 13% from 19% in 2006, and it has lost the title of top computer maker to Hewlett-Packard. Its growth has slowed to a trickle, while HP’s 2007 growth could hit 30%.

In late May last year, we launched the XPS 700. Many customers purchased it, anticipating strong performance along with an upgrade path to future technology.

At Dell, our number one goal is to delight our customers with our products and services. As anyone who reads Direct2Dell knows, we did not do that for some of our XPS 700 customers.  On behalf of Dell, I want to apologize for that. We have taken steps to improve your experience.

So what have we learned from this? First, where the chipset is concerned, XPS 7xx-class customers want more information on what features we do and do not support in our implementation. Take a look at the chipset section of the XPS 710 Tech Specs page. Second, if we do experience significant delays, it’s important for us to give customers more detailed insight as to the causes where we can.  So, what’s next? We want to show XPS 700 customers our appreciation for sticking with us throughout this process—we appreciate your business.

BIOS Update Coming Soon

The current version of the XPS 700 BIOS added  Windows XP 64 support and enabled Intel’s Virtualization Technology (VT). To build on that, we will publish an update to the XPS 700 BIOS in the next few weeks. After applying the BIOS update, your XPS 700 will support the following features: