I'm trying to wrap my head around the purpose of Dell Client Device Manager (DCDM). It seems like it just installs Dell Command | Update and Dell Trusted Device as modules instead of keeping them as standalone apps. However, the versions that come with DCDM are actually older than what's available elsewhere. It's especially confusing when you're using Intune through the Dell Management Portal because DCDM keeps things out of sync: DCU is up-to-date but DTD isn't. If I let DCDM update itself, it will install the standalone version of DTD, which just overwrites the Security module from DCDM but doesn't update the version details in the registry. It feels like a complicated mess! I'm curious, is there something I'm missing that explains why this tool exists?
5 Answers
I've stuck to version 5.4 of Dell Command Update for a while now. Things just get so much more confusing and resource-heavy if you keep up with the newer ones.
As someone who's just started using Dell's suite, I find it super confusing. Glad to hear I'm not alone in this!
I'm not familiar with Dell Client Device Manager either. Are you working with custom images or OEM? We only install Dell Command Update, which also comes with the OS Recovery tool. Everything else feels like too much.
We decided to ditch all the Dell management apps from our machines because they were really dragging down startup times and hogging resources during update scans. Windows 11 is already a handful, adding these tools just made it worse. Seems like they've gone overboard with the telemetry recently too.
Same here, we cut out all that OEM bloat from our setup!
Honestly, why does so much of Dell's software even exist? It feels unnecessary half the time.
Neither. Just a clean Windows 11 image from UUP dump, set up through Windows Autopilot. I use the Dell Management Portal to publish DCU updates to Intune without the hassle of manual repackaging. But DCDM just seems like a marketing gimmick to replace DCU and DTD with something that lags behind.