Dude I Got a Dell!
Posted by ushimitsudoki on July 9, 2009
After a very long wait, my Dell Inspiron Mini 10 finally arrived today! Huzzah!
I wanted to get a little netbook, and I had two criteria:
- It had to come with Linux pre-installed on it. I wanted to support Linux that way.
- They had to ship it to my APO/FPO mailing address.
That pretty much narrowed it down to Dell. After I ordered, someone told me about a shipping service that could have been used, but I didn’t know about that at the time.
This won’t be a comprehensive review, more of a first impression sort of thing.
The keyboard is nice and almost full size. The “outer” keys (like shift/enter) is where most of the typing mistakes are so far. Nice keyboard overall.
Screen clarity and picture quality is great.
The custom Dell interface is slow. Got out of there really quick and went to the normal Ubuntu interface.
The trackpad is crazy as all hell. The cursor jumps around randomly and is very frustrating. It has some Smart-pad control center — get this, the first section is “Patents”, where they talk about how patented this touch pad is. Crazy, check it out:
Something to be proud of?
There are like a dozen one-, two-, and even three-finger options to set up, but I just went and got a bluetooth mouse, because it was terrible control.
Wireless and bluetooth worked right off the get-go. It came with Fluendo codecs, so there is a EULA as part of the setup.
A special edition of Ubuntu comes on a CD as well: “Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS Mini Standard Edition Inspiron 1010 Recovery Media”. I looked for updates straight away, but didn’t find any.
This little thing gets a bit hot while being used.
Yahoo toolbar installed by default. Yuk.
I was up and on the net via my WPA-secured wireless in under 10 minutes from opening the box. I still have not opened the command line; the only changes I made were to revert to the standard Ubuntu desktop and disable a lot of those finger options for the touchpad.
Mighty impressive effort here on the part of Dell and Canonical. Fix the touchpad issues and it would have been a perfect experience (I can’t really fault the Dell interface, it just seemed to slow me down – it might be fine for someone else.)
As is my custom, I will be sticking with the stock stuff for a couple of weeks to give it a fair shake. Then I will proceed to putting on some crazy stuff. Your suggestions for superior netbook pleasure are welcome!
Magice said
My suggestion would be:
1. Try to double check the repository sources. If you cannot update, chances are that the default source is not Ubuntu, but Dell’s, and that may be (kind of) slow
2. Upgrade to Ubuntu 9 and see if it is better. Upgrading in Debian-like family is a breeze, but remember to:
2a. BACK UP. Given that there are a bunch of proprietary software, it is best to back up.
2b. Split /home from the rest. This allows you to backup/restore stuffs easier
2c. Do 1
2d. Cross your fingers and tells everyone around you to do the same ^_^. Don’t worry, it is safer than installing SP in Windows.
3. Touchpad issue MAY be fixed through synaptic package, although I am not sure if you want to do that or learn how to use the current thing properly, because your touchpad seems to support multitouch, which is like the hottest thing nowadays.
4. Reinstall Firefox.
5. Stick with it for a while. If you return your netbook right away, you are contributing to the number of “bad netbook due to stupid GNU/Linux” by Microsoft, so I suggest that you try to stick with it and see if you can use it effectively.
6. GOOD LUCK!!!!
Ezra Levin said
I gave my Dell Mini 9 one month on the default Dellbuntu8.04. I then installed the regular Buntu for another 6 weeks and the wife and eldest HATED it.
My wife withheld supper from me until I installed VLC (she uses it to watch TV shows while our kids are at practice).
My eldest said it looks like Uncle Gary’s old computer (it runs Win95) and didnt want to touch it.
I needed video chat so I dumped Pidgin for Kopete and ran Amarok and Audalicious which was easier coming form the Windows world.
I gave Xubuntu a look and finally settled on Kubuntu 9.04 w. KDE4.2
Some of the Kwin effects are really helpful
and I keep only 1 fluffy one.
kpackagekit is a breeze, Krunner and Kickoff search of both the application name and decription means faster acces to what I want. Its got a nice sleek look and runs very well on 1GB ram. My son now uses it at home more often than his Imac and is angling to get mom the 10inch one,..you know, so he can inherit this one.
The thing is getting some serious workouts here as I sometimes take it to work for the commute, then when I get home, its in the kids hands until one of them goes to soccer or judo where my wife uses it for 1-2hrs.
I still say the price is way too high for netbooks and while I like using all the power of a Linux OS on this machine, Im gonna wait until the ARM based netbooks come out.
Ive recorded podcasts, edited photos and have Skyped my family from 8 different countries when ive taken it with me for work. Oh yea, Id rather carry a small 300$ machine that I can still hook up to a projector across the globe that a 2000$ dollar hernia.
But my wife doesnt need as much ‘power’, she’s strickly web and social/identica/facebook/IM/skype. She could be the perfect candidate for the ARM based netbooks.
What a coincidence, my criteria is also now only buying from a Linux vendor, not more installing my own over a Windows machine. And our band has played in concerts in support of protest of APO/FPO, italy where theyre building a base agaisnt the will of the people, Okinawa which is an occupied city, and in Cuba about 400metres from Guantanmo. Thank god the US is the world’s Microsoft, we have anywhere between 700-1000 shows to do.
Im not a huge DELL fan and I think their Linux promotion is pathetic if not totally inexistant but they are a big manufacturer and buying Linux installed machines is important.
We cant win the PR battle against the Microsoft supporters in the media which is why the Linux at 1% story, even though we heard anywhere between 2-6% a few years ago, is getting so much play.
But sale numbers do matter.
So, uh,.. go… DELL, go.
Links 22/07/2009: | Boycott Novell said
[...] Dude I Got a Dell! Mighty impressive effort here on the part of Dell and Canonical. [...]
David Gerard said
Play with the default for a while, then upgrade to Ubuntu Netbook 9.04. It’s noticeably nicer :-) I like it so much I put it on my 12″ laptop (1024×768 screen) running 9.04 as well.