Good idea kicks up a Storm

In a case of "credit where credit is due", I gotta hand it to the guys at Dell for bringing the world IdeaStorm.

Without going over the where's and the why's, and leaving aside the how's and who's for a minute, have you seen the what's?

If anyone's unfamiliar with IdeaStorm, it takes the Web 2.0 voting system made famous by Digg and applies it in a kind of online suggestion box. Shel Holtz gives a pretty good review on his blog.

The results must be making some people very very nervous indeed.

At time of writing, the suggestion "Offer the 3 top free Linux versions for free pre-installation on all Dell PCs" had received 92,806 votes (in 12 days) while "Provide OpenOffice.org for free pre-installation alongside Microsoft Works and Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org is more capable than Microsoft Works, and a serious competitor to Microsoft Office, at a fraction of the cost (it's free!)" had clocked up 60,300 votes (in 11 days).

Given the "weight" of bundled MS software on the final price of all Windows PCs, and the fact that a huge percentage of calls to customer support are software-related issues as opposed to hardware failures, it'll be interesting to see where this goes. After all if the public is ready, who's to blame Dell for putting pressure on MS?

I wonder how closely the boys from Redmond are following this.