Have you visited Dell's new IdeaStorm?

About a month ago, Dell launched a brand new, leading edge, daring experiment called IdeaStorm. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, Dell has started an open suggestion/discussion forum with its customers using many of the concepts from Digg. The software was developed by Crisp Ideas and private branded by Salesforce.com.

Their IdeaStorm site allows users to suggest improvements to product and services offered by Dell. All users can then "vote" acceptance for the ideas they like. In this way Dell begins to directly solicit product and service improvements from their customers.

I think this is a very novel idea and an exciting one, but it's a double edged sword. By allowing customers (and I may be making an assumption here - users need not register using real names, nor do they have to be customers) to register suggestions, Dell is obliged to respond to the most popular.

Early on, the process was a free-for-all, with many duplicate posts, accusations of censorship (Dell was actually merging similar ideas and votes to help reduce the suggestion clutter). The process seems to be stabilizing somewhat now.

Interesting enough, the top ranked suggestion was for Dell to offer (free) Linux O/S instead of shipping all PCs and laptops with Microsoft Vista. The second most popular suggestion? Install OpenOffice2.0. Clearly the IdeaStorm has attracted many Linux fans.

What this has shown me (and Microsoft?) is that consumers want choice in their operating systems, directly from the hardware supplier. Obviously anyone can download their version of Linux, post hardware purchase, but the fact remains that they had to buy MS software they didn't want in the first place! As the price of computer hardware declines, the pre-bundled software is becoming an ever increasing portion of the purchase price.

The fascinating thing about IdeaStorm, is that Dell's competitors (like any participant) can see the suggestions and voting. If Dell doesn't act, their competitors might!

And it makes one wonder what the folks in Redmond are talking about this week.