Step-by-step with Dell

[mark]

Right - I just ordered a new laptop from Dell. I thought it would be amusing to chronicle the process here.

Distressingly, even though I just placed the order, their "Order Status" page tells me I don't have any orders pending. I realize its early (way too early!) Saturday morning, but I just gave these people a Visa number - I would think some kind of acknowledgment would be in order...it's possible they use (gasp!) human people to process these things...

Oh, yes...I ordered the basic laptop, but upgraded to [a] the lowest-order Core 2 Duo CPU (Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5300 (2MB Cache/1.73GHz/533MHz FSB)), [b] 1 GB of 533 MHz RAM and [c] the lowest WXGA LCD upgrade (15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WXGA+ Display with TrueLife™ ). All things considered, should be a nice step up from my aging Sony VAIO PCG-GRZ610 with 256MB of RAM...

Speaking of my Sony, I'd like to donate it to a school/library/other worthy cause in the area. If anybody is out there is in the Woodstock, GA area, please contact me...

I'll be back as the story unfolds...

[mark]

Okay, just got an acknowledgment:

Item Description Unit Price Quantity Total Price
E1505N
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5300 (2MB Cache/1.73GHz/533MHz FSB), Ubuntu Edition version 7.04 $999.00 1 $999.00
Inspiron E1505 Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T5300 (2MB Cache/1.73GHz/533MHz FSB)
[223-0457]
LCD Panel 15.4 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WXGA+ Display with TrueLife™
[320-5155]
Memory 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz, 2 Dimm
[311-7351]
Video Card Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950
[320-5630]
Hard Drive 80GB 5400rpm SATA Hard Drive
[341-3108]
Operating System Ubuntu Edition version 7.04
[420-7153]
CD ROM/DVD ROM 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
[313-3958]
Sound Options Integrated Audio
[313-4217]
Wireless Networking Cards Intel PRO/Wireless 3945a/g
[430-1918]
Primary Battery 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
[312-0404]
Warranty and Service 1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service
[950-3337]
[950-9057]
[960-2780]
[980-2860]
[985-3578]
Processor Branding Intel Centrino Core Duo Processor
[310-8314]

Dell Home Customers: Save $200 off the Dell Inspiron E1505. - $200.00
Subtotal: $799.00
Shipping and Handling: $19.99
Shipping Discount: -$19.99
Sales Tax: $47.94
Total: $846.94

I keep forgetting that they're a time zone behind us here <g>.

[mark]

Damn! Now I gotta get a WiFi router! (I just thought of that,,,I've been wiired for years.) Anybody have anything bad to say about Netgear stuff? I've personally used their RP-614 for years, and we use their boxen at work...

[Derspankster]

I personally like the older Linksys Speedboost G models. I hear the newer ones are not as good though. Don't have anything bad to say about Netgear.

[Kuraudo]

Damn! Now I gotta get a WiFi router! (I just thought of that,,,I've been wiired for years.) Anybody have anything bad to say about Netgear stuff? I've personally used their RP-614 for years, and we use their boxen at work...

I have a rather old Netgear router here at home, a FWG114P. It's doing the job for wired connections but when it comes to wireless it'a litle bit unstable. They wireless system can go down some times but mostly it's working. But it's rather old and my guess is that the new ones are a bit better. But I would say Netgear do good stuff :)

And good luck with the Dell laptop.

[nescafe1001]

If you can scrounge up an older Linksys wrt54g, you can upgrade the firmware to something a bit more expert-friendly, like OpenWRT. It is amazing what those little boxes will do with an open firmware...

[ZenPirate]

I recommend the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. It's inexpensive, and you can use the DD-WRT firmware with it.

[ageilers]

Have been using Netgear for years and supported it for friends and family. Have never had a problem. I find it to be user friendly.

[derred]

I use the MSI 11b/g Wireless Kit. One piece of advice: Don't repeat my mistake.

[vanadium]

I have a Netgear DG834GT and it used to suck under Windows XP, with random dropouts and limited range. Currently, with Ubuntu Edgy and now Feisty, it works like a dream. Lighning fast connections even from the other end of the garden.

[mark]

Late news from the front...Dell has never heard of me.

After 3 days with nothing beyond the spiffy "Order Confirmation" email from Dell, I thought it best to call them. Unfortunately, Dell doesn't know from the order I placed on-line this past Saturday. Their CS people were at a loss to explain it, just that "it didn't go through". Sigh...

I worked with a nice lady (in Sales) from Nashville, forwarding her a copy of the confirmation email - she checked and came back with the same answer - "I don't know why, but the order never went through". She said it might have been because the order was placed on-line...

This time, I worked with her to insure that the order was placed - and, sure enough, before we hung up the phone, I had a confirming email with customer and order numbers on it. Not only that, but I came out c. $20.00 cheaper - she did something with the memory upgrade I spec'd (512MB to 1GB) that worked out that way (and with faster memory than I'd called for, as well).

While we were on the phone, I asked about the file system structure Dell had chosen. She excused herself to contact Technical Support...and came back and said they didn't have the answer. She then went on to offer that I was the first customer she'd dealt with on the Ubuntu systems, and I (nicely) suggested that she and their TS people might want to find out if they're using EXT3 (as I suspect) or some other FS.

Bottom line is I don't know why my initial order got lost. I could speculate that it's early days for the Ubuntu systems and their order people just blew it. I will say, if you place an order on-line, please follow-up with a phone call within a couple of days. Now, my ETA is 6/19/07 - "3-5 days to build, 3-5 days to ship" - and I had hoped I would have had my new laptop this week...

Oh, well.

[nescafe1001]

Actually, this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=464446) probably explains why your order vanished -- there was a glitch in the online configuration tool over the weekend.

[mark]

Guess what showed up in my inbox yesterday afternoon? That's right - confirmation (with order number but no ship date) of my original order, placed online this past Saturday.

This is getting amusing, kinda...

Anyhoo, I called Dell and asked them to cancel the original order, explaining what had happened. They agreed. I also asked that an email confirming the cacellation be sent to me, to which the CS guy said he'd sent it right away, after confirming my email address.

I still haven't received it.

However, when I check my order status/history, the only pending order is the one I placed Tuesday evening - so that's encouraging. Now, if they get the initial hit on my debit card taken off hold pretty quick (I'm currently c. $1700.00 in the hole!), all will be right (well, better) with the world...

[haftan]

I have used most of them. I buy whatever is on sale at the store on the morning that I setting up another workspace, or I burn up the router. Really, I have never had a problem using any of them so I have NO brand loyalty whatsoever.

[mark]

Okay, things are looking better. I'm no longer having my checking account dinged for 2 computers - just the 1 that I actually ordered. But the real news is:

My Computer Has Shipped!!!

They managed to cut 10 days off of the estimated ship date (6/19) and actually handed it off to DHL very early this morning. Dell is giving me an ETA of Wednesday (6/13); DHL says Tuesday (6/12). Either way, I'm much happier with that than 6/25 or so. I hope for the best...

Now I must go to the grocery store for a few odds 'n ends - and then it's back to see how much trouble I can get into installing Tribe 1 <g>.

[camarojones]

The early shipping happened to me as well. MAKE SURE you check out the Dell/Linux Wiki and apply the terminal patch before you update it!!

http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_7.04

Enjoy it!!!

[recondo]

Everything I have ordered from Dell has exceeded my expectations. I received my 1505N, had a minor problem with documentation and had to call on one issue, fixed in less than a minute, been working with it off and on.
On the other end, Linux, or Unix, having been working with both for nearly 20 years (Linux less, since 1995), it has been my experience, that Unix or Linux (for that matter) is not for the faint of heart. Whereas I would and surely do avoid Windoze (I am a die hard Linux user and in absence of that I'll take Unix), small problems don't bother me, because I live in Bill's world of users, and only the guys in the 'cave' at dell are going to have any insight, definatly not someone on the phones and much less querying them about file systems, is pretty much asking to be referred to someone else. There is another support number for the dweebs (I mean that affectionately).
866.622.1947. Windoze is getting more complex by the day, and you have to have an extra processor just to run the antivirus software (I would rather have both at my disposal, not 1 for Symantec and one for me, I paid for both).

Now, anyone got a quick fix for mplayer on ubuntu? Works fine on my Core 4 desktop, I can't play my Bob Dylan dvd..... If you got a quick fix, thanks, in the mean time, I'll continue to debug it.... (sounds like an ubuntu problem from where I sit, it's a first for me on the Ubuntu Distro, ahhhh, for the days of ydrassil, or better yet Softlanding distro (SLS) circa 1996)

[recondo]

Found fix for mplayer.
1) I installed mplayer first, not xine.
2) There are no dependancies on xine for mplayer NOT!!!
3) Could not install xine without removing mplayer (and libraries).
4) Removed all mplayer goodies.
5) Installed xine and friends.
6) Re-installed mplayer, guess what? No dependancy warnings against xine!
7) Mplayer installed and both xine and mplayer work!

What is learned:

xine does not like some things that mplayer loads before xine.
mplayer does not mind that xine is already installed.
by installing in that order all seems well.

BTW, I have a maxed out 1505N ubuntu from dell. Received in good order.

If I in-advertantly highjacked this thread, I apologize. Anyway, if you encountered
this problem, that is what I did to fix it. The assupmtion being is that ubuntu would have
not included mplayer, if someone (or more) did not have it working.

[motin]

I recommend the Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. It's inexpensive, and you can use the DD-WRT firmware with it.

I second that. WHR-HP-G54 has a great range and throughput as well compared to other Linux-powered routers.

[mark]

I got it!!!

Dell actually got my new laptop to me today, 6/11. So I'm now happily getting stuff figured out - gimme a day or two with it and I'll post some thoughts on the out-of-the-box experience, fit & finish, etc.

[mark]

I promised I'd come back with my thoughts on my new Dell Inspiron E1505N after a few days of actually using it. The short version is that I love it. The (slightly) longer version...

This being my first real exposure to a "modern" laptop, I was impressed by the performance levels. Even though I only opted for the entry-level Core 2 Duo CPU (T5300, 1.73GHz with 2MB cache) and part of the 1GB RAM is used for the Intel 950GM graphics, it feels just about as quick as my desktop. Everything included just works. Well, I haven't tested the faxmodem yet - I don't have a landline. Also, I haven't picked up a wireless router yet, so all i can say is that wireless shows up in Network Settings and, the day I received the computer at my office, it "saw" the wireless networks present there.

So the hardware and software side of things is good. Relations with Dell? Once the initial order snafu got straightened out, not bad - but not all i had hoped for.

Example - as other folks have noted, there are a couple of FAT partitions present, OS and DellUtility. The OS partition allows system "recovery" - you can restore the machine to its from-the-factory software state. DellUtility contains what appear to be fairly comprehensive diagnostics. Other than that, there are a small (c. 200MB) /boot and a large (the rest of the 80GB HDD) / partition - both EXT3. This all works fine, but I prefer separate /boot, /, /usr and /home partitions - with the last 3 using the XFS filesystem. Normally, no problem - I'd do a clean install and set things up to my liking. But, I don't want to lose the OS and DellUtility functionality.

So I contact Dell, via their chat support option, inquiring about the availability of (a) ISOs for download or (b) ordering/purchasing CDs. Nope, sorry, neither one is available. Hmm. Okay, I then ask about upgrading the installed Intel 3945 802.11a/g mini card (referenced on the order acknowledgement, the packing slip and in the user's guide) to 802.11n when it becomes available. After a 4 minute delay, the response was:

"Your laptop is built on Express card slot. We don't have any details regarding external cards."

Definite hmm. Seeing where this was going, I thanked the person and logged off. Please note that my second question had absolutely nothing to do with Linux, it was about Dell's hardware, which their representative seemed to know less about than I do - after 3 days of owning the computer. In the post-chat "tell us how we're doing" survey, I suggested that a higher level of product knowledge would be helpful.

This is not a slam at Dell, by the way, just relating the facts of what happened. I will be making suggestions relating to disk images, ISO availability, etc. probably on the Direct2Dell site or one of their forums. Hopefully, they'll be responsive...

Bottom line: The hardware/software package and value recieved? So far, excellent. Product support? Not terrible, but less good than I had hoped for. Overall, I'm satisfied and I would buy another one today.

[whistle]

You seem like you know what you're doing... I know I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux... I have a few questions about the partitions. I hope I'm not hijacking your thread or anything - just tell me if you'd prefer I started my own.

- is there any difference between the Dell-installed Feisty and a normal install of Feisty? Because if there isn't I wouldn't feel so bad about wiping the whole drive.
- I ordered the laptop with 512 memory, and I'm upgrading it myself to 2 GB... do you know if restoring the computer with Dell's restore partition would also restore the smaller-than-it-should-be swap partition, or if it just restores data in the / partition?

Thanks!

[mark]

You seem like you know what you're doing... I know I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to Linux... I have a few questions about the partitions. I hope I'm not hijacking your thread or anything - just tell me if you'd prefer I started my own.

- is there any difference between the Dell-installed Feisty and a normal install of Feisty? Because if there isn't I wouldn't feel so bad about wiping the whole drive.
- I ordered the laptop with 512 memory, and I'm upgrading it myself to 2 GB... do you know if restoring the computer with Dell's restore partition would also restore the smaller-than-it-should-be swap partition, or if it just restores data in the / partition?

Thanks!

I'm certainly no guru - I've just been fiddlin' with Linux for awhile now.

My understanding is that the Dell factory install is "stock" Ubuntu 7.04, with the addition of the proprietary driver for the Conexant modem. This driver, BTW, is not currently available for download from Dell, although comments on their Linux forum indicate it should be available Real Soon Now...

Not having used the Restore partition myself, I'm not sure about the size of the swap partition. If they set things up dynamically, it should "see" the change in memory size and adjust. If it's hard-coded, you would get the standard swap size. I think the idea is to recreate all of the Linux environment - /boot, /swap and / - just as it came out of the box.

Mark