After a three- hour drive yesterday, I pulled in to The Anatole Hilton in Dallas, the site of this year’s QuakeCon. After quickly checking in, I took a self-guided tour to get a handle on my surroundings. This hotel is absolutely huge, as it should be. After all, it would take a huge venue to house something as colossal as QuakeCon, billed as the world’s premier multiplayer gaming event.

When I found the exhibition hall, I also found the LINE. Gamers had been camping out for hours for a chance to register their own computers for the event, and they and their assorted electronic gadgetry had been queued up in a long twisting line that ran the full length of the entrance to the hall. The sheer amount of computing power represented in this line boggled my mind. Although the wait was long, most made the best of it, some playing poker on the carpet, while others spontaneously organized the crowd into performing a stadium-style “wave.” It was clear these gamers were in for the long haul.

When I arrived this morning, the line was still there and, unbelievably, it was even longer. I was told by several QuakeCon volunteers that although they expected around 3,700 registered participants, it was looking to be more than twice that. I didn’t ask if all of these gamers would be accommodated, and honestly don’t see how they could.

Then I saw the hall itself. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words:

Each of those glowing lights is one computer, and this quick snapshot only caught a small fraction of what was in the hall.

Back at the Intel - Dell Extreme Gaming Tour truck, things have been hopping. The crowd is invited to take on various members of the PMSClan at different games for prizes, and every couple of hours PMSClan co-leader Athena gets volunteers to do “silly human tricks” for bags of goodies (seen below).

All in all, everyone is cutting loose and just having a good old Texas good time. I’ll be here through Sunday morning and posting video as I am able. Check back here later for more tidbits.

The Dell Summer Rocks Tour kicked off this week with the highly successful Dell Towel Drop, and now it’s time for the first leg of festival runs as the Dell Lounge and Dell Dome hit the Lollapalooza 2008 music festival.

The festival itself runs from Aug. 1-3 at Grant Park in Chicago, and the Dell Dome has some incredible artists slated to play.  Check out the lineup for Friday, the first day of the event from the dome…

• The Go! Team
• Does It Offend You, Yeah?
• Tiny Masters of Today
• Bang Camaro
• The Terrible Twos
• Sofia Talvik

Outside of the featured musicians above, we will also have the incredibly talented Mike Ming on tour. His artistic work is showcased on our some of our Inspiron 1525 laptops.  So if you are going to Lollapalooza, please make sure to stop by and say hello.

Friday night after the festival winds down for the day, Spin Magazine and the Dell lounge will be hosting a fantastic Lollapalooza AfterParty.   The Gutter Twins are center stage along with feature guests Does It Offend You, Yeah? It’s not too late to RSVP, but make sure you do so now!

I’ve heard that space is filling up quickly and this is one event you certainly don’t want to miss, I know I won’t.

You can follow me as I Tweet live from the event from Twitter @ChrisBatDell

It may come as no surprise to regular Your Blog readers, but Dell is becoming even more involved in the gaming and digital life communities. Bloggers John Blain and Chris Byrd are the road and later today will be posting and tweeting from QuakeCon / Extreme Gaming Tour and the Lollapalooza music festival / Dell Summer Rocks tour, respectively.

I have no idea what they’ll turn up. But it should be a hoot!

I began fundraising for the March of Dimes when my twin boys were still in the NICU, after being born 13 weeks premature.  They are now 3 years old and I still fundraise every year.  Online and E-mail Fundraising has helped me to make a difference!

While I am very passionate about this cause, I am just an amateur fundraiser.  I have never coordinated a large event, and hadn’t fundraised since UIL as a child.  Fortunately, the ability to knock on doors is no longer a prerequisite for fundraising.

Fundraising software is available if you are starting from scratch.  If you are joining in with a large organization like I did, they probably already have all of the tools you need.  Just visit their Web site and get started.   The Top 10 Tips for Online Fundraising can help you make the most of your effort.

For me, fundraising has become a family effort, concluded with an annual walk together with those beautiful boys I mentioned.  Best of luck to you in helping whatever organization you care about!

As part of the Extreme Gaming Tour, I was excited to see a case mod contest was being held. Since the late 90s when LAN parties were beginning to become the rage, case modding and gaming have gone hand in hand. Gamers meticulously transformed their systems into works of art, always trying to strike that elusive balance between utility and beauty.

Gamers are an interesting breed, and are usually competitive almost to a fault. This helped fan on case modding as an art form, as modifications quickly became more extreme and outlandish as the modders perpetually outdid themselves and their peers. You don’t have to be a gamer to take case modding on as a hobby, but in the beginning, the two passions were almost always found together.

What is modding? The answer, like any form of artistic expression, is often left up to the audience, and tends to be rather subjective. My favorite answer comes from a skilled modder named linear1, who writes on his site that “Modding is the application of artistic ability and craftsmanship to solving technological problems.” A more thorough treatment of what modding is from his perspective as a modder can be found here. I think that sums it up nicely. BTW- his Web site gives thorough treatment to the basics of modding, and I recommend it highly to anyone wanting to give it a go.

Case mods come in many different forms, inhibited only by imagination, geometry and physics. Some look like PCs, like this beautiful case (source: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/crazy-case-mods-part-1) that makes your PC relaxing to look at:

To this crazy contraption by G-Gnome that may get your local bomb squad called out on a false alarm  (http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005/10/19/wmd_g-gnome/1):

Neither of the above is entered in the extreme gaming tour case mod contest, but the ones that have been entered so far are absolutely beautiful. Come by the Gaming Tour’s forum and check them out!

http://www.extremegamingtour.com/forum.aspx?forumid=12&scope=threads

If you’re a case modder, there’s still time to enter your creation. See how you can submit your baby here:

http://www.extremegamingtour.com/contest+registration.aspx

A good time was had by all.  As Jay Pinkert announced earlier, the Dell Summer Rocks tour kicked off Saturday with a highly successful towel drop in several locations throughout the U.S.  The bamboo towel giveaway highlighted Dell’s new Studio Laptop computer line which is currently available in a variety of vibrant color combinations.

Towel drop at CARLOS’N CHARLIE’S, Austin, Texas

Here in Austin, enthusiasm for the event was contagious as scores of families enjoying the lake for the day grabbed towels of their favorite color.  Children played and jumped from one color to another while enjoying the great Austin weather.  In Chicago, Miami, New York and Seattle, the drops were equally as successful.

At Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles, a time-lapse camera was set up to capture the drop and the crowd participation.  Check out the video below, which is set to the new Kira Willey track. It looks like a blast!

Each colorful towel included a hangtag announcing the Dell Summer Rocks Sweepstakes, in which *you* can win one of 10 trips for two, including round-trip airfare, two nights at a hotel and two 3-day passes to the 2008 Austin City Limits Music festival.  Take a minute to visit the site and enter for your chance to win!

I am loving the new Studio Dell line and the Designed for Dell accessories to match. The colors are so magnificent, they have inspired me to upgrade my personal computer. However, I am having serious color identity crisis. I like them all. The color I choose will be an expression of my personality and style, making it a big decision and one I must choose wisely.

So what does it mean about you when you have an affinity for a color?  Based on many studies I encountered in my cognitive neuroscience research days, here is my take on the meaning of colors in Western Culture. Note, these are not scientifically based. They’re merely my observations and conclusions: 

Spring Green: Green can mean life, nature and well being and is favored by well-balanced people. It is said that people who like green have a tremendous amount of self-respect. It can also imply healing, which is one of the reasons Egyptians wore green eye liner. 

Plum Purple: Associated with royalty, wealth, opulence, magic and mystery.  People who like purple are said to have good judgment. It can bring peace of mind when one is surrounded by it, which is why it is often times the color for spiritual fulfillment and a favorite among children.

Flamingo Pink: Pink provides feelings of caring, tenderness, self-worth and acceptance and most heavily symbolizes love and beauty. Pink can be so effective in neutralizing disorder and violence that some prisons use limited deep pink tones to diffuse aggressive behavior.

Jet Black: Black is one of the most misinterpreted colors. Some scientists do not consider black an actual color, rather black is a lack of all color. Black can mean stability, elegance, death and mystery. People who like black can be said to carry a sense of potential and possibility.

Midnight Blue: Symbolizes youth, truth and peace. Blue can bring about inspiration and sincerity. It can provide a calming effect, making it a great color to use in the home around babies. It is thought to open communication and broaden one’s perspective in learning new information.

Ruby Red: Red is associated with action, confidence and courage. It is most chosen by extroverts and can mean a high degree of passion and zest for life. On the flipside, red can also mean temper or anger and can be associated with danger.

Graphite Grey: Grey symbolizes security, maturity and dependability. People who favor grey are often times the lone wolves of the pack and are effective in neutralizing situations. It is a stabilizing and non-invasive color, especially when put next to other more vibrant colors.

Tangerine Orange: Symbolizing vitality and endurance, orange is a power and healing color.  Known to stimulate creativity and enthusiasm, people who like orange are usually thoughtful and sincere.

There is an abundance of fascinating research on the meaning, symbolism and sensory responses to color. From the colors we choose to the colors we see, there is not doubt that they play a big role in how we are perceived and our mood. Hopefully this guide will help you with your decision as it has helped me.

I’m think I’m going to go with Orange! How about you? What color best represents you?

Today we announced Dell’s smallest and greenest PC - the Studio Hybrid. This has been a fun product to watch develop. The Dell teams associated with it are wide and varied, and all PASSIONATE.

When Michael Dell previewed it on Earth Day,  the online response to the concept was  pretty upbeat and I am confident that once this PC finds its way to homes around the world, that first impression will be just as positive.

Design, style, fun are not words necessarily associated with “desktop” PCs … but in this case it’s absolutely the primary goal. This little beauty was designed to “put the desktop back on the desktop” versus “under the desk with the Cheetos and dust bunnies,” as Brian Leonard, the Studio Hybrid’s lead industrial designer in Dell’s Experience Design Group, eloquently puts it. This is a product designed for those of you who want to know what time it is, not how to build the watch - just pull it out of the box, plug it in and go.

Whether it’s used as a kitchen PC or living room command center (HDMI port makes it easy to connect your HDTV, and the wireless keyboard and mouse mean freedom to move from the recliner, to the couch, to the throw pillows on the floor), the Studio Hybrid will fit into just about any environment.

If you’re looking for more traditional desktop PC that you might modify or update down the road then I recommend you look at the new Inspiron 518 desktop. In contrast to it’s supermodel sibling, the Inspiron 518 is the nice looking, full-featured multimedia PC that will appeal to all family members.

In its own geeky way it has some nifty features and technologies that just make life easier. At top of the system is a “Gear tray” -  the place where you put your cell phone, your music player, your Bluetooth headset, etc. Two top-mounted USB ports make for easy access charging / syncing (currently about 2 feet of counter space in MY kitchen are dedicated to the multiple devices we all carry). From a performance perspective, the Inspiron 518 offers some pretty compelling price/performance ratios … optional performance boosters include Intel quad core processors, discrete graphics, and 500GB hard drive capacity.

Something new is coming. Very soon. Here’s a preview of the Studio Hybrid:

• 80% smaller than a typical desktop PC
• 70% less energy consumed
• Available in seven colors

Update: The preview video is temporarily unavailable.  Apologies for the inconvenience. Lots of details forthcoming tomorrow when we formally launch!

In our society, the pace of technological advancement has never been faster. I’ll skip the history lesson on Microsoft’s tremendous significance on the unbelievably explosive PC industry.   If it is one thing we can all agree on, is that we should use the right tool for the right job. As an XBOX loving, .NET coding, Microsoft admirer let me just jump right into my tale of installing Linux Ubuntu.

First off, a bit of a disclaimer. This is just an introductory post I’m doing on Linux, and I’m just dipping my toe in the water. I won’t be touching any Linux source code.   I won’t use anything other than the GNOME desktop. Also, I don’t plan to port any data from my Windows machine.   I plan to wipe Windows, and use it anew like a typical user buying a new PC would. The only difference being, I’ll do the installation of the OS (operating system) myself.

Linux has had a good reputation of working well on older hardware, with some trouble running on newer hardware. Therefore, I dusted off an old Dell Latitude C400 I had recently put Vista on.   This once well-rated notebook could now best be described as a doorstop.  This notebook always ran Windows XP Professional well, and I had previously put Vista on it.   In fact, for a computer over six years old, it ran Vista very well. I’ve generally had a good experience with running Vista on older hardware.

Installing Linux has always had a bad rap. It is definitely improved, but it could stand to be a bit more user friendly for all the grandparents out there. There was a fair amount of technical onscreen mumbo-jumbo, which hiding would make for a better experience. In general, it was fairly easy, and the prompts are minimal.  I’m not sure that anyone who has never done this before would feel entirely confident installing a dual-boot configuration. The entire process took about half an hour, generally the same amount of time as the Vista installation.

Here are a few technical gems. I like the fact it fits just under the standard 700 MB CD size.   This is great for older computers. For whatever reason, my DVD drives tend to go bad over time, whereas CD drives always live. Windows lacks one installation feature that is very nice, the Live CD boot capability. This allows you to boot with the CD and run Linux as if it was installed, all the while it doesn’t change anything on your hard drive. Very slick.  It is perfect for evaluating Linux. Similarly, you can boot a Linux installation off a USB thumb drive, save your work and shut down without ever changing the physical computer. This is a great alternative to carrying your entire computer or relying on Remote Desktop on another computer.

So, here I go, I’m logging in. Video? Check. Sound?  Check?   What about my ancient PCMCIA wireless 802.11b card?  Yes, this notebook has no built in Wi-Fi support, and I’m using the ancient wireless 802.11b standard. Like Vista, it works — no problem. I can pull the card in and out; it redetects the wireless network and reconnects with no problem. So far, so good.  Even the sole, pathetic USB 1.1 port works. My travel USB drive and mouse work with it free and clear.

Surely, I can find a problem. Nay, I will find a problem!  I click the “Network” icon. It appears to have found my NAS and every Windows computer on my home network. I click on an MP3 file. Hmmm, no codec is installed. I understand the legality why. However, it does offer a simple pop-up dialog offering some suggestions. After a quick unattended download, it works!  Now to play a video, surely it won’t play this proprietary Microsoft MWV file. Lo and behold, it does.

This is just my opinion, but one thing strikes me as unusual. It’s fairly clear that Vista and Ubuntu share a lot of similar cosmetics. Ubuntu has a “Recent Documents,” much like the “Start” menu has always had.  The icons for documents have a thumbnail that represents the information inside the document, much like Vista.  The taskbar of running applications looks very similar as well. Right clicking on the desktop gives a lot of the same options as Windows.   I’m not trying to turn this into a he-said she-said, “they stole this” argument.  I’m just a bit surprised it acts as much like Windows as it does. Come to think of it, I’m not surprised. It is in “Linux’s” best interest to make a transition from Windows as seamless as possible.

Doing that, might not be so hard. This Linux distribution I selected has some of the most practical applications. It includes Firefox for Internet browsing, which is a strong rival and superior to Internet Explorer in many ways. It contains OpenOffice for basic word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.  It appears capable, although definitely not as full featured as Microsoft Office. I was able to edit documents between the two office suites with no problem.

Over the course of a few days, I did encounter the occasional lockup. Every now and then, an application would hang. I did peruse the help file, to determine how to customize the panels to my liking. The help file, hmmm, not always so helpful. So Linux did seem like Windows in more ways than one.

Having said that, I like free. I could see me using this for free. I could see me setting up this for every computer in my parent’s small business. For just about any software challenge, a FOSS (free and open source software) solution exists. I typically check SourceForge first when I need something. Linux is a more than capable OS, which wasn’t always the case in the past.

Bill Gates once famously said that Windows 90%+ market share wasn’t a monopoly, at least not in the traditional sense.  One thing is certain, Microsoft does have some strong competition.   That is a good thing. With that comes more innovation. Whichever operating system I ultimately choose to use down the road, it is clear the personal computer is only going to get better.