[Nottingham] query on new laptop

[Frederic Vagner]

Hi,

Regarding the DELL issue, there is a slight difference. I didn't ask for
the laptop with Linux, but I asked for a Laptop without Windows.
What she offered me was not a refund of the difference, but a free
upgrade. It was more a commercial approach, than a query or a
complaint ;-)

So to be honest, I got an upgrade on the processor, i7-820 instead of
i7-620, a backlight keyboard and a better graphic card, for the same
price, which I can estimate worth approximately £150-£200 (worth
asking).

For the install, I ran into 2 difficulties :
- the nVidia drivers would only work randomly, not their fault though,
as a kernel option (vmalloc=256MB) solved this.
- as with the wifi, I must have rebooted the laptop at least 20 times
yesterday while finetuning everything (especially Compiz) and after a
"yum update", I don't know if it was that upgrade or my reboot or
something about a good karma, but the wifi works perfectly well, even
the switch and the light works, as with my old laptop.

I tested the webcam with aMSN and another software to take a picture and
it looks really nice (the software and the webcam, not me ;-)).

The last thing that I have to look into is the smart card reader. It
actually works, I suppose, because the driver is loaded (pcsc) but I
have no idea what I can do with it, without having to develop a software
dedicated to it. If you have any idea ...

BTW, I tried to call HP while shopping for my laptop, and they didn't
want to finetune my laptop and include what I wanted, so I didn't ask
for the Windows/Linux OS as they were not even able to listen to what I
wanted !

Thanks

Fred


On Thu, 2010-07-15 at 13:18 +0100, stripes wrote:
> Thanks folks your replies.
> 
> Just chatted with Dell online and was told that they do not sell
> laptops with linux .  Below is the transcript of the chat:
> 
> Dell:  I am afraid we do not have any laptops with Linux operating system
> me:  According to your website you do. And I did buy one a couple of
> years ago, it was an XPS M1330 with Ubuntu on it.
> Dell:  yes it is mentioned on the web site
> Dell: but we do not have any
> me: What a pity! Windoze is a nightmare, will have to look for another
> make. OR, do you refund the Windows tax before we go the small claims
> court or afterwards?
> Dell: We do not have such options
> me: OK then. Will go for HP. cheers
> 
> Seems very odd.  I suggest that you too ask them the same and see what
> they do!  Maybe after enough questions they will straighten up and see
> sense.
> 
> cheers
>