Dell Hell no more?

Once plagued with problems, Dell turned to its customers to help solve them, according to one-time ultra-critical Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, who calls Dell's move not crowdsourcing but crowdmanaging.

"Things began to turn around when Dell opened a company blog, which was off to a puffy start until Lionel, the chief blogger, entered, speaking with customers in an honest, direct, humble, and human voice. Next they put together a team to reach out to bloggers who had problems. They started a social-y site called IdeaStorm so customers could tell Dell what to do. And when the company realized how much of a turnaround it needed, Michael Dell took charge again," writes Jarvis.

The company announced that because of IdeaStorm it had decided to offer Linux now not just in servers and workstations but also in desktops and laptops. The participants at IdeaStorm apparently pushed hard for the move.

Dell came back worried about how many flavors of Linux it would need to ship and support, so it asked the community through an online survey. More than 100,000 people took that survey, leading to Dell's announcement.

The discussion continues on the Dell blog.