electrocomputerwarehouse

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:48:51PM -0400, Eric Battersby wrote:
> Please clarify; in what way?

For being unreliable crap.

> For running Linux, or hardware-wise?
> Interfacing to newer hardware?
> I have no experience with the Dell Dxxx laptop series.
> 
> 4 years ago I bought a Dell C640 with 256MB RAM for $300
> because I was familiar with the model (since it was used in
> many large corporations) and I had extra compatible
> peripherals lying around. Specs: P4, 2Ghz speed, 1GiB max RAM
> (advertised), but 2GiB max RAM (actual).
> It didn't have WiFi, or USB2.  It came with a lame non-Dell
> battery (I should have checked).

The number of Dell laptops about 5 years ago that had the charging
circuit fail was insane.  And Dell didn't care because well they were
outside warrenty when it happened in most cases (one at work failed
after 6 months so at least the warrenty covered that, but that along
with other reliability issues meant work switched to thinkpads instead.
The Dells just broke way too easily.)

The P4 should never have been put in a laptop in the first place (nor
Desktops really, but that's another issue).

My wife's 2ghz athlon64 laptop she got 7 years ago had better specs
than that (wifi, USB2, 2GB ram).  Unfortunately HP/compaq had a major
design flaw in the power connector that kept breaking that was a hassle.

> The Dell removable DVD reader cannot read CDs burned past
> 650MB, so some Live-CDs didn't work.

That's pathetic.  But I guess when you pick hardware based purely on cost,
you get such issues.

> The PCMCIA USB2 card I got had issues with newer SATA drives.
> Getting a SATA to IDE adaptor might have helped
> if it would fit into an external case.
> Don't expect the latest Fedora to work well.
> 
> Otherwise, running CentOS, I am generally satisfied with it.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists