Dell Sucks, but they made up for it...

[psych-major]

Over a month ago I sent my Latitude D800 in for yet another repair. This time, they somehow managed to lose it!!!

To make a long story short, they just sent me a brand-new Latitude D820 for my trouble!

I went from:
Pentium M 1.4
512MB RAM
60GB 5400RPM IDE hard drive
no wifi
CD-RW/DVD-ROM

to:
Pentium M 2.0 (core Duo)
2GB RAM
80GB 7200RPM SATA hard drive
Intel Pro wifi
CD/DVD-RW

Quite an upgrade!!!!

So, I already booted with Mepis and used QtParted to shrink the C: partitiion to 30GB. Then created a 30GB FAT32 partition for My Docs. Now will be installing Linux on the remaining 20GB.

Life just works out sometimes!!!

[The Coder]

Wow, thats' a huge memory jump. 2GB for a laptop is a lot.

[psych-major]

I know, I was shocked when I saw it.

But I'm not complaining!!!

[ph34r]

More ram on a laptop can extend battery life - not so much disk activity for swapping, etc.

With the new laptop did you get a new warranty as well?

[cybertron]

Sweet, now you just have to watch out for exploding batteries...

[EnigmaOne]

Denver's not that far from my brother....I'll tell him to watch for mushroom clouds.

[psych-major]

Ph34r:
I don't think so, but I should probably login to the support site and enter my service tag and see.

Cybertron:
Ironically, I have two non-exploding-type batteries for my old D800 which don't fit this new one, so I'll be calling Dell to further sweeten my deal!

EnigmaOne:
Like that new show that's coming out. Can't remember the name of it, though.

Also, Installed SuSE 9.3 and the video isn't working very well, no wifi and no sound. <Sigh> I guess I'll have to go back to Slackware...

[leonpmu]

Do yourself a favour and make sure that you have updated everything, as the new kernel supports all of that hardware very well, including the wi-fi..

[psych-major]

I agree. I went with 9.3 because I have had better luck with multimedia, i.e. just downloading the option packs through Yast. I also had much better luck with iSCSI in 9.3.
but...
On the D800 I had 10.1, and it worked flawlessly. All hardware, including wireless worked great, and it took about an hour to download and install the missing pieces for multimedia, including DVD's. But I couldn't get OpeniSCSI to work.

Pre-SuSE, Slackware, though harder to setup, also ran flawlessly.

I'll probably start by just running online update within 9.3 and see what that accomplishes...

[psych-major]

Speaking of the warranty:

System Type: Latitude D820
Ship Date: 9/13/2006
Dell IBU: Americas
Provider Start Date End Date Days Left
Depot DELL 4/17/2004 4/17/2005 0
Depot DELL 4/17/2005 4/17/2007 214
Depot DELL 8/19/2006 8/19/2007 338
Depot DELL 8/19/2007 8/18/2009 730

[psych-major]

Do yourself a favour and make sure that you have updated everything, as the new kernel supports all of that hardware very well, including the wi-fi..

I'm a little further down the road, but not quite there. It turns out that I need kernel 2.6.13+ to run the Intel 3495 wifi card.
OK, so I load the 10.0 DVD and update. No luck.
Then I load the 10.1 DVD and update, now the ipw3495 module is loaded, and I have the option for WPA-PSK, but I can't connect to my router, the ability to configure the card isn't showing up everywhere it should, and online updates don't work via a LAN connection. So.....tonight I'll be doing a fresh install of 10.1, and I expect it will work by cleaning out the remaining dingleberries of the original 9.3 install. We'll see...

[psych-major]

More ram on a laptop can extend battery life - not so much disk activity for swapping, etc.

With the new laptop did you get a new warranty as well?

Yes! 3 years from when I got the replacement!

[Syngin]

Sweet! Glad to hear it.

[bosox79]

Congrats on the upgrade psych-major

[psych-major]

Congrats on the upgrade psych-major