Dell Direct for India - is it working?

I shopped around for a PC this summer when in India. The contenders were HP, Lenovo, Dell, Wipro and HCL. I went to a local VAR who obviously did not sell Dell. I easily narrowed down to HP or a Dell. I called the Dell sales number and following was their process for a sale. PS: I was in Kolkata (Calcutta) and Dell Sales based out of Bangalore.

1. Customer to pay due VAT taxes at local Municipal Corporation
2. Get a receipt of this payment and fax/mail to Dell
3. Dell will ship to residence - no shipping charges

While this did not seem overly unacceptable to me, I understand the concept of Direct model which is not true of an average consumer who are mortally scared of this alien machine. As a comparison, if I were to buy HP, the VAR would deliver and do all the needy paperwork. On the flip side, Dell PC was ~Rs. 4K cheaper to a similar HP model - so it was probably worth it for someone who understands Dell direct model.

But that was not the deal breaker. Dell PCs did not come with any of the much needed productivity software. Local VARs install pirated software copies that can save thousands and lower the TCO of a new purchase.

I decided to buy HP. Here's what I propose for Dell

1. Educate consumers of the benefits of Direct Model through advertisements on TV, newspapers etc
2. Work with software vendors to bundle key productivity software (albeit for limited periods) with new PCs - I know this one's tough especially with MSFT and this is precisely why web based productivity software will some day eat into MSFT's belly. Alternately, MSFT should look into a SAAS model for SMBs where one can pay per use.

Improvements to LinkedIn

I am an avid user of LinkedIn and love this product. It is clean and professional. Have following proposals for improvements

1. Answers: Provide a way for community to rank answers and automatically filter by rank vs. date modified.
   
2. Answers: Recommended Answers on home page can be personalized by intelligent analysis of the profile
3. Introduce a new property called "Reading" - idea here is to have the community contribute freely available and quality good reads on multiple professional topics. The categories should closely mirror the jobs or answers etc. And then have a Recommended Readings from the homepage
   
4. Other: There are rumors they are planning to go public. Here are some ways to elicit new product ideas.
   

Generating new product ideas

Here are three different ways following have implemented to get new product ideas from their customers.

1. Google Android Developer Contest where ~1800 applicants vied for the top positions.
   
2. GMail Labs where developers can implement new functionality using their 20% innovation time and get to test drive their feature with millions of GMail users.
   
3. Starbucks asking for direct input

It goes without saying that you need to be a popular brand to evoke the response above have.