Tag Archive for 'Dell'

Ubuntu 8.04

Published
by
Cody
on April 16, 2008
in Personal and Technology
. 0 Comments

Following my computer problems of a few days ago, I decided to go ahead and make room to install a distro of Linux on my laptop alongside XP and Vista. I have to say, it was a lot easier than the last time I triple-booted. I installed XP first, then Vista, and finally Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu’s bootloader to it’s own partition, which allowed me to use Vista’s bootloader to load up everything (configured with EasyBCD). It all works perfectly.

I took the chance to try out the latest beta version of Ubuntu, which is due to be released in about 8 days (as you can see by the nifty counter in the sidebar). Compared to past versions of Ubuntu I’ve used, 8.04 is amazing. Sure, the actual interface doesn’t look or act much different (it’s a little shinier, perhaps, and the new search function is pretty cool), but the main difference I noticed is that I didn’t get a debilitating error upon start up. See, with older versions of Ubuntu installed on my Dell laptop, the wireless and graphics cards would not work, and the alternate drivers Ubuntu tried to use would break the system, forcing me to drop into a command line interface to install a special script. But with 8.04, everything actually worked upon start up, displayed in my native resolution of 1280×800 (instead of a rather blurry 1024×768). I had to do some minor configuration to enable the non-free graphics and wireless drivers so I could use my graphics and wireless cards to their full extent, but it was much less work than before.

I’m definitely pleased with this version of Ubuntu. I still doubt that I’ll like it enough to abandon Windows, but at least I haven’t needed to wrestle with it just to make it work right. Hopefully it’ll just get better once it’s out of beta next week.

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Curse you Dell!

Published
by
Cody
on November 12, 2007
in Rant and Technology
. 1 Comment

I swear, I have the most incompatible laptop ever. For some strange and inexplicable reason, my (not-so) unique combination of hardware makes it a very big pain to install anything other than Windows on my computer. Linux? Doesn’t like my video card or my wireless. Mac OS X (not that I’d ever try to install a hacked version of OS X on my computer)? Doesn’t like my video card, my sound, and my ethernet connection. Heck, even in Windows, nothing likes my video card. Damn Radeon Mobility. ATI refuses to provide support for my model, so I have to rely on Dell to provide timely driver updates…which they don’t.

I honestly don’t know why this laptop in particular is such a pain. I mean, it was only one of the most popular Inspiron laptop models Dell put out before the newest wave. I still think you can get it through their business store under the guise of 6400 (the home version was labeled E1505). The graphics card is all right, but it’s been the biggest thorn in my side when trying to install a) Windows games, or b) non-Windows operating systems. Ubuntu Linux was my arch-nemesis for a while, until I found out some guy actually modified an Ubuntu installation CD to work specifically on Dell E1505 systems with no tweaking or special knowledge of terminal commands required (the custom CD/DVD for the latest release of Ubuntu, 7.10, is still in beta, but the old disks for 7.04 are still perfectly workable). He’s got the right idea. Other developers don’t.

The thing is that people don’t make concessions for hardware like mine. The majority of hardware configurations work so they don’t take the time to fix things up for the small amount of incompatible configurations. It just bugs me that an entire laptop line gets thrown out the window for this. Okay, that’s not completely true. The big problems only show up if you have an ATI Radeon Mobility x1400 video card. I don’t know what it is about this particular card, but it can cause you major grief if you like Linux, hacked Mac OS X, or newer games. The most recent problem I encountered came when I tried playing Gears of War. I figured I’d be able to enjoy it at fairly low graphics settings, but the game crashed my computer when it started because I didn’t have the latest version of the Catalyst drivers for my card. This would be no problem…if Dell had released those drivers. ATI won’t give them to me (my hardware configuration, again, is incompatible, and they’re unwilling to develop alternate drivers for Dell systems). I had to fall back on third-party drivers, and I haven’t had the chance to test them out yet.

Some people tell me I shouldn’t be gaming on a laptop unless I shell out thousands of dollars for an Alienware or Dell XPS notebook. Others tell me I should just buy a desktop rig and trick it out. That would be nice, yes, and I intend on putting together a desktop gaming PC in the future, but for the time being, I have to make do with what I have. And I’m entitled to whine about it because I’m a poor, starving college student who knows better than to whip out the credit card and act like I don’t have to pay it off. So there.

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Upgrade

Published
by
Cody
on October 24, 2007
in Asides
. 0 Comments

I upgraded my laptop memory from 1 GB to 2 GB, and I have to say I’ve noticed a huge increase in performance already. Word to the wise: if you get Vista, don’t stick with the bare minimum of RAM.

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Vista annoyances

Published
by
Cody
on May 22, 2007
in Personal and Technology
. 0 Comments

I’ve been using Windows Vista on my laptop for a couple months now, and I have to say it’s pretty awesome. A lot more so than I ever thought it would be, especially considering the anti-hype it was given leading up to and shortly following its release. Contrary to the claims you’ll usually find, I haven’t had problems running games, all the drivers are there and up-to-date (even for graphics), the UAC doesn’t bug me about every single thing, and finally, it doesn’t crash every five seconds.

However, as much as I love Vista, I have come across a few really, really annoying things. Some are directly tied in with the operating system, others are just by-products of incompatibility with certain software or hardware, and still others are just personal peeves. Luckily there aren’t many, so I’m sorry to disappoint if you were hoping for a solid Microsoft-bashing. I don’t cater to fanboys (or fangirls, for that matter).

Continue reading ‘Vista annoyances’

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Laptop action, part 2

Published
by
Cody
on April 7, 2007
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Finally, after weeks of anxiously waiting, I have been able to play with my new laptop. As I said earlier, it’s a Dell Inspiron E1505, complete with 15.4″ widescreen monitor, 256 MB ATI graphics card, 80 GB hard drive, 1 GB of memory, and a combination CD/DVD burner running Vista Home Premium. I also took the liberty of ordering an Easy Transfer cable along with the laptop to make the move from my old Toshiba to the new Dell a snap.

Contrary to what you may hear, the set up was the easiest part. I plugged it in, started it up, and ran into no problems whatsoever getting things up and running. The free trial apps included were easily uninstalled and replaced with my personal favorites, such as avast! for anti-virus (replacing the already halfway done McAfee trial), Firefox for a browser, and Office 2007 (which replaced Works 8.5, which is practically useless). I installed a few more applications so the Easy Transfer process would bring over all my application settings, and finally set about getting things transferred.

The first step in this was to install the Easy Transfer program on my old machine. Next, plug the cable into both laptops and let it get detected. Neither of those posed any problems. However, when it came to actually getting things transferred, I ran into major obstacles. The program worked fine on both computers and I was able to select what documents and settings I wanted from the old computer. Unfortunately, every time I clicked the “transfer” button after selecting what I wanted, the program worked for a couple minutes…and crashed. Only on the XP machine, however. I thought I had overtaxed it by having it transfer while it was still calculating the size of the transfer. But no matter what I did, it always crashed, making it impossible to transfer my files as easily as I had hoped.

You can imagine my frustration. I have over 20 GB worth of documents on my old machine which would have transferred very quickly over the USB transfer cable. But since the program refuses to work, I’m forced to send the files over a wireless network, which is quite a bit slower and has the added risk of failing randomly (for whatever strange reason) and mucking up the whole transfer. Hopefully it won’t, but it will still go all night if I’m lucky.

On the bright side, however, the Vista laptop is great. I’ve run into almost no problems getting things customized and installed, although the requisite User Access Control dialogs can get kind of tedious (and eye-straining due to the screen flickering they cause). I’ve yet to put any games on, but I’m hoping to do that soon to see how well it performs at gaming. I’m not expecting anything dazzling, but an ATI graphics card should put out quite a bit better performance-wise than the old Intel integrated graphics I had on the Toshiba.

More stories on how this laptop fares will be sure to follow. Hopefully it will turn out to be a nice little machine (especially considering how long I had to save up my money to buy the bugger).

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