Dell Inspiron 15n
notbob
in my price range. I've heard ugly rumors about Dell not offering the
1 yr replacement for this linux version or voiding warranty if OS
changed to a different linux distro. Are they true? Any other
gotchya's I should know about.
nb
Wanna-Be Sys Admin
Surely they mean the warranty regarding any software issues (or things
they can't verify on a non Windows install, such as drivers for CD/DVD,
etc.), and not voiding the warranty for things like harddrive, memory
and cpu issues, right? Anyway, I can't imagine anyone serious about
Linux would buy a system with a specific Linux dist installed on it
already without thinking they'll probably upgrade or potentially
install a different dist.
--
Not really a wanna-be, but I don't know everything.
Vegasbarracuda
Spot on. Didn't buy one for the Crapbuntu distro on it thats for sure.
I was going to install Slack 13 on it anyway, and did just that.
Everything works. If it were to die, I would probably buy another.
notbob
> I was going to install Slack 13 on it anyway, and did just that.
> Everything works. If it were to die, I would probably buy another.
How do you mean? I have no doubt slack will run on it (my choice).
You say if it was to die, you'd buy another. Would you elaborate.
nb
General Schvantzkoph
I was just about to post a question about this laptop. What wireless chip
does it use?, they don't seem to offer an Intel option so there is a good
chance that it's a Broadcom. Is the wireless chip supported in the
kernel? I'm not interested if it requires Ndiswrapper or uses a non-free
binary blob.
Vegasbarracuda
It does actually use the Broadcom chip, the BCM4312 to be exact. which
does present a challenge for some. To it's credit it worked fine with
Ubuntu, very well in fact. I'm just not a fan. I did follow the
instructions to get it working with Slack 13 and was trivial to get up
and running using WICD. YMMV however depending on your experience level.
http://beginlinux.com/appsm/wireless_m/1419-slackware-13-wireless/
So it worked with Ubuntu (32bit 8.10 is what Dell loaded), Sabayon 4.2
64 bit also worked, Slackware 13.0 64 bit also works for sure. I'm sure
other distros will work but might take some work to get it right.
As far as the hardware goes I am satisfied. Seems to be rugged enough
and I have had no problems so far. If I had one concern it would be
battery uptime. I haven't made an effort so far to implement some
scripts to increase it, it's next on my list.
General Schvantzkoph
Thanks. I'm not happy about the idea of a non-free driver for WiFI
because Intel chips are as good or better than anything else on the
market and they have kernel drivers. I've been willing to accept Nvidia's
binary driver because there is still a significant difference in
performance relative to Intel's graphics, however it's just a matter of
time before Intel closes the gap enough. How do you like the Intel 4500
graphics on that laptop? Can it play videos comfortably?
notbob
> It does actually use the Broadcom chip, the BCM4312 to be exact. which
> does present a challenge for some. To it's credit it worked fine with
> Ubuntu, very well in fact. I'm just not a fan. I did follow the
> instructions to get it working with Slack 13 and was trivial to get up
> and running using WICD. YMMV however depending on your experience level.
> http://beginlinux.com/appsm/wireless_m/1419-slackware-13-wireless/
> So it worked with Ubuntu (32bit 8.10 is what Dell loaded), Sabayon 4.2
> 64 bit also worked, Slackware 13.0 64 bit also works for sure. I'm sure
> other distros will work but might take some work to get it right.
> As far as the hardware goes I am satisfied. Seems to be rugged enough
> and I have had no problems so far. If I had one concern it would be
> battery uptime. I haven't made an effort so far to implement some
> scripts to increase it, it's next on my list.
Excellent! A very informative post, VB. Yet, I have some pointed
questions. What price did you pay? I've been reading 15n reviews and
many, dated as recently as June '09, are giving $299-$389 as the base
price. One also indicated a barely adequate webcam. When reading the
Dell website, I'm seeing $489 and no web cam, even as an option. It
appears the 15n Dell's current offering (vs Jun '09) has a larger SATA
drive (160G->250G) and one extra gig of DDR. Also, currently, the 15n
ships with a dell wireless 1397 802.11g half mini-card, whatever that
heck that is. Still trying to google that one down.
nb
Vegasbarracuda
I snagged one when the special first came out for $384. I have other
machines, including a mini 9 so this just added to my collection. It
came with 2Gig DDR mem, 160GB hardrive and no webcam, didn't see the
need for it on this one, I think I could have got it as an option I
don't remember. The build sheet shows Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half
Mini-Card, that's what Dell calls it, we now know the specific
underlying chipset to be the BCM4312. Is the extra hundred bucks for the
additional mem, bigger hd and maybe a webcam worth it? Perhaps for
someone that uses this as their primary machine, I don't. As far as the
graphics question on another post, the 4500 works fine. KDE 4.2 came
right up with defaults. I modified the xorg.conf to trim the cruft and
fine tune it. Haven't really pushed it that heavy though. It hasn't
crashed or had any quirky lockups so far. Even toggling from X to a
console and back poses no problems, have had problems with other
machines doing that but not this one.
--
Russell Perkins
If you understand, things are just as they are;
if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
- Zen Proverb -