Recently in Dell Category

Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin' Los Angeles Daily News).

But Dell is trying to earn your business, and right now (and through April 2) the company is running a "9 great systems under $499" laptop promotion.

True, the $399 Inspiron 13 is no great shakes specs-wise, with a measly 2.13 GHz single-core Celeron processor. But it does feature 1 GB of RAM (barely adequate for the included Windows Vista but quite enough for Linux distributions such as Ubuntu) and a fairly roomy 160 GB hard drive. A 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor adds $100 to the price, and an extra gigabyte of RAM adds another $50 (yes, Dell SHOULD be ashamed to charge $50 for something that couldn't be costing them more than $10 wholesale), and for $550 you have a very respectable laptop that should serve you for at least three years (or 7-10 years if you're me).

What I'm much more excited about is Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 netbook (pictured above), the price of which has dropped to $249 for the basic Ubuntu Linux/512 MB RAM/8 GB solid-state drive model.

I had the pleasure of trying this very-small but quite usable netbook at the San Fernando Valley Linux Users Group booth at the recent SCALE 7x show, and I was quite impressed with it. I've seen quite a few ultra-small netbooks over the past couple of years -- the Asus Eee PC, the Everex Cloudbook, the HP 2133 Mini-Note, and this Dell is the best one I've encountered yet.

The smallish keyboard, while not super comfortable, is definitely usable, and unlike some other netbooks, the Dell Mini 9 doesn't run hot. It has a nice display and is fairly snappy with Ubuntu GNU/Linux 8.04 (the long-term support edition I'm using on the little girl's Gateway laptop and my extra Toshiba 1100-S101). It handled multimedia well when I saw it, and the small size makes it extremely convenient. It's easier to tuck it in a bag or backpack and open it up at will.

Battery life is supposed to be 4 hours. Not bad, but the talk recently of basing the netxt generation of netbooks on power-sipping ARM processors, like those used in cellphones,
and promising all-day battery life, is something to look forward to.

Anyhow, while the base Dell Mini 9 is $249, bringing the memory up to 1 GB adds only $25 to the cost. (Now you're talking, Dell ...) Going from the 8 GB solid-state hard drive to 16 GB adds an extra $50, but that isn't completely necessary (although I'd probably do it) because you can easily save to those miniature SD cards used in digital cameras — most netbooks have a slot for this — and keep your main drive fairly clean.

One catch with netbooks is that they don't have built-in CD/DVD drives, so you can pop for one from Dell for $89, or take your chances and pick one up for possibly less at Fry's or online from an outlet like TigerDirect.com, where USB-connected CD/DVD burners run from $60-80, or not much of a savings.

Again, if you fully embrace the "netbook concept," you won't need an optical drive or a even a huge main hard drive. These little notebooks are supposed to be for casual Web surfing, jotting down notes and the like.

But I still predict that the netbook will become a whole lot more ubiquitous than many hardware manufacturers and especially software giant Microsoft ever thought.

And while Microsoft is making moves to have an operating system other than Windows XP that will run on such lower-spec devices, I think it's just silently waiting and not-so-silently cajoling hardware makers to up the specs of these little laptops so they can more comfortably run not Windows Vista but the upcoming (and said-to-be-lighter-and-higher) Windows 7.

We'll see. The rumors of a shift from Intel-based processors like the netbook-aimed Atom to even-lower-power-using ARM CPUs could throw a considerable wrench into Microsoft's quest to move into the netbook market — a class of hardware the company didn't see coming.

Right now I still recommend running Ubuntu on those netbooks that ship with that version of the Linux operating system. I've heard less-than-glowing things about the netbooks that use modified versions of Xandros and Linpus, but I'll admit right now that I have nothing beyond the anecdotal to go by.

There are many people interested in running everything from Mandriva and Debian to OpenBSD and Novell's SUSE (either the OpenSUSE or SLED varieties) on their netbooks with the help in many cases of active projects porting these OSes to various netbooks.

Maybe you don't want a netbooks. I understand. I do a whole lot of writing on laptops, and that smallish keyboard might not get such a glowing review when I'm cranking 500-word articles on deadline.

But then again, I do the majority of my work on a 7-year-old Toshiba laptop with a dead sound chip and the ultra-reliable OpenBSD operating system, now equipped with Java and Flash Player 7 (the "newest" Flash player available in the BSD world). Right now the Toshiba — with 1.2 GHz Celeron CPU, 768 MB of RAM and 20 GB hard drive split between OpenBSD and Windows XP, which for testing reasons I haven't killed out — is serving me quite well.

And I always have the Toshiba's "twin," running Ubuntu 8.04, at the ready. And that one even has working sound (and with Ubuntu I have Java and either Flash 9 or 10 – I can't remember). If I have to do more with video than currently (now = almost none), I'll have to move back to Linux both for the Flash capability and the availability of more video-editing software.

But for the basics — Firefox, Opera, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, the Geany text editor, the Xpdf and Adobe PDF readers, the GIMP image editor, Pidgin for IM, gFTP and the Rox-filer file manager — I have a pretty nice setup in OpenBSD. I've been using this OS on this hunk of hardware for about three months now, so I should be in a position soon to write yet another distro review, except this one will be based on that three months of use and not the "I installed it, here's how that went, and here's how it's different from what I usually run" reviews that I and many others find so easy to crank out.

Winding back around to netbooks, what I mean to say is that $250 is a better price than $300 for the basic model, and for that Dell deserves at least some praise (and more than a little business).

As of today, here are all the machines I use and what they run:

At the office:

Work box:
Dell Optiplex GX520
Pentium 4 (3 GHz)
512 MB RAM
Windows XP SP2

The Debian Mac:
Power Macintosh G4
466MHz single PowerPC processor
384 MB RAM
Debian Etch

The Self-Reliant Thin Client:
Maxspeed Maxterm 5300(??) thin client
VIA C3 Samuel (1 GHz, running at 500 MHz for some reason)
256 MB RAM
8 GB Transcend Compact Flash module as boot drive
1 GB USB flash drive for backup
Debian Etch

At home:

iBook G4
1 GHz CPU
384 MB RAM
120 GB Fujitsu hard drive (replaced by me in a 3-hour odyssey)
OS X 10.3

This Old PC:
Pentium II MMX (333 MHz)
256 MB RAM
10 GB hard drive
Windows 2000 (I haven't booted this or connected it to the Internet in over a year)

The $0 Laptop:
Gateway Solo 1450
Mobile Celeron (1.3 GHz)
1 GB RAM
30 GB Toshiba hard drive
Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Debian Lenny, Puppy 3.01

The $15 Laptop:
Compaq Armada 7770dmt
Pentium II MMX (233 MHz)
144 MB RAM
3 GB IBM hard drive
OpenBSD 4.2

I have quite a few machines in various states of repair that I might resurrect over the next year if and when I get the time, but this is what I have right now. With the exception of the white-box This Old PC, all of these get fairly regular use.

I'm supposed to have a meeting with Dell next week, during which they'll talk about their consumer-focused plans for the near future and at the same time show me some hot new product that I'll be bound not to talk about for a specified period of time.

Great.

I told the PR guy, "What I really want to know about is the soon-to-be-released Dell E," meaning Dell's answer to the Asus Eee (note the similar names) and HP Mini-Note.

The flack was pretty cool about it. He didn't let anything slip.

so I looked around for Dell E info, found some — saw that Linux is a big part of the whole shebang — and concluded that I really, really want one:

• More details surface regarding Dell's UMPC by Gina Hughes, the Techie Diva
• Dell E and E Slim revealed, taking on Eee and Air in one fell swoop by Engadget's Paul Miller
• Dell Mini Inspiron by Gizmodo

(Photo above from Gizmodo, below from Engadget)

Computer maker Dell Inc. is trying to regain the lead in the
notebook computer world (HP is the current PC market leader)
by adding a splash of color to their notebooks - faster processors?
better graphics? who needs that!?

How about a "ruby red," "sunshine yellow" or "espresso brown" notebook?

Remember last year's recall of Sony batteries? You know, the one that affected more than 10 million notebook batteries, including Toshiba's, Dell's and Apple's?

Well, it seems not everybody tended to that recall notice.

At least three more fires have been recently attributed to Sony's lithium-ion battery overheating.

In response to those fires, Japanese electronics maker Toshiba - who already feature a list of defective batteries and affected notebooks on their website - is stepping up efforts to contact customers who may own a notebook featuring the affected battery.

While Ed Bott at ZDNet had to wait for Dell to come and replace a fried motherboard (said frying happening during an unsuccessful BIOS upgrade), once he got the box running, it just flew on Windows Vista -- and he says all reports of slowness about the new Microsoft OS are, in this case, unfounded:

I’ve read several complaints about Vista taking too long to display menus or open Explorer windows. Everything’s downright snappy here. Menus show up instantly, and with the exception of Windows Mail, which takes five seconds or so to start, I experience nothing that makes me feel I’m having to wait even a little.

and:

Over a network using the C521’s Fast Ethernet (not Gigabit Ethernet) adapter, it takes me 16:51 to copy 6.3GB of files. On a nearly identical system running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and plugged into the same Ethernet switch, copying the same batch of files from the same source takes 16:56, a statistical dead heat. I plug in a 500GB USB drive and copy more than 80GB of music files to the Music folder, and the file transfer moves just as quickly as it does on Windows XP.

Shoulda popped for the gigabit Ethernet, I think ... but it's good to see a happy Dell/Vista customer.

By selling at retail, Dell will reach a different kind of consumer than it currently does with its direct-only channel.

While my current Dell box at the office (Optiplex GX520 with 3 GHz Pentium 4 and 512 MB RAM) was part of a big corporate order that numbered in the hundreds of units, it isn't my first Dell.

Way back in the early '90s, pre-Web, we bought a Dell at Price Club, the warehouse store now known as Costco. It was a 386sx 25 MHz model with something like 4 MB of RAM and an 80 MB drive. It shipped with Windows 3.1, which was barely usable at the time. We mostly ran DOS (I think it was at 5.5 or 6), and that box got us on a bunch of local BBSes, plus the GEnie, Prodigy and AOL online services. Never mind that this PC couldn't run much of everything today, but in its day, it was well-built and ultra-reliable. It gave me a good impression of Dell.

Today I'd be more inclined to assemble my own system, if only to facilitate easy upgrades of the various components, from motherboard to optical drives to video, sound and networking cards. While most of us don't do all the upgrading we say we're going to do, it's nice to have the option. I still plan to replace the motherboard, drives and even power supply in the now-10-year-old This Old PC, if only to a) prove to myself that it can be done, and b) from an environmental and "simplicity" standpoint to save the case, keeping it from going into a landfill and eliminating the need for a new one. And I'm cheap.

But back to Dell. Selling through a mass-market retailer and offering customizable systems online are two very different businesses. To compete with HP/Compaq, Dell needs to be out there, side by side with its competitors.

A smarter bet for Dell would be its own mall-located, branded stores, like the Apple Store, and unlike the current Dell mall kiosks in that they'd have actual store space and actual inventory that customers could purchase and carry home. It didn't work for Gateway, but it could work for Dell (or for HP).

... it's just a subset of the overall Dell forum, but it has a Linux logo, complete with Tux (that's it above). And here's the Dell Linux Engineering Web Site, where the project's Wiki lives.

Today's debut of Dell PCs with Linux preinstalled threatened to be eclipsed by another Dell bombshell -- the Round Rock, Texas, PC giant will supplement it's direct-to-you sales method with a heaping helping of Middle American retail through Wal-Mart.

Dell told the Associated Press that June 10 will mark the debut of two Dimension E521 desktop models at 3,000 Wal-Mart stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

The deal "represents our first step" into global retail, Dell spokesman Dwayne Cox said, according to the AP report.

No prices were announced, but the cheapest Dimension E521 goes out the door for $359 at Dell.com.

It doesn't look like Dell will offer Linux on its Wal-Mart boxes, and a check of Wal-Mart's Web site shows that the company -- today anyway -- no longer offers the Linspire-based Linux desktops it had been quietly selling for some time.

Hmmmm ... maybe it's Dell and Wal-Mart's way of giving Microsoft an open-mouthed kiss with extra tongue.

But back to Dell's Linux offerings -- prices for a single laptop and two desktops preloaded with Ubuntu 7.04 begin at $599 and are slightly lower than when equipped with Windows Vista. Oh ... and Dell's Ubuntu won't be able to play .mp3's, DVDs, Flash and a whole bunch of other stuff without the user going through the usual hoops, a kiss of death for the Dell-Ubuntu experiment, according to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog.

And finding Dell's Linux-equipped PCs at Dell.com isn't easy. What's more apparent is Dell begging its customers to stay with come-ons for Windows XP, which they really, really want you to know they're still selling.

There are no links on the Dell home page, and the first thing you see is the ubiquitous "Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium." Of course it does.

But in the dropdown menus for Desktops and Notebooks, there are links for "Open-Source PCs." The headline is "Ubuntu has arrived by popular demand." And there's a handy link, right there in the middle, for Windows users who somehow navigated to the page as if by evil sorcery:

The main thing to note is that when you choose open source you don’t get a Windows® operating system. If you’re here by mistake and you are looking for a Dell PC with Windows, please use the following link.

But for those who do want an open-source box, you can get one from Dell with Ubuntu ... or FreeDOS. Yep, nobody mentioned in this whole Ubuntu-Dell lovefest that the Texas computer giant will ship you a box with FreeDOS on it. What the hell? I'm sure there's a reason for it ...

Here's how Ubuntu describes its FreeDOS offerings:

FreeDOS is a completely stripped down PC operating system for experts and people interested in working in a DOS environment. The main things that set FreeDOS apart from Windows and Ubuntu is that it doesn’t have a graphical interface (i.e., it’s typing only, no mouse) and it only supports DOS applications, such as classic DOS games, business software written for DOS and embedded DOS systems, such as retail cash registers. Generally, users who want FreeDOS know what it is and what they want to do with it. Other users should look to our Ubuntu and Windows platforms.

Embedded DOS systems? If they're out there, I guess it makes sense ... but again, what the hell?

Anyway, when you click through on the Ubuntu link, here's what you get: A mid-level desktop, low- to -mid-level laptop and then a more upscale desktop

Not bad at all. As an exercise for this entry, I "built" a primo XPS 410 system with as many upgrades as made sense (i.e. nothing stupid), no extra warranties or support, and it came in at a hefty $1,964 with Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E6700 (4MB L2 Cache,2.66GHz,1066 FSB), 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 500GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™, Dual Drives: 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW w/ dbl layer write capable, 19 inch Ultrasharp™ SP1908FP Digital Flat Panel, 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache, Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer, Dell USB Enhanced Multimedia Keyboard and 13 in 1 Media Card Reader.

So you CAN spend a ton on a Linux box at Dell.

But here's the kicker for Canonical. Although this disclaimer appears --" Dell provides hardware support only. Software support is available through Canonical and Linux Community" -- there are options available with each system for "Starter Support" ($65), "Basic Support" ($125) or "Standard Support" ($275). That's above and beyond any extra money you want to give Dell for "In-Home Service, Parts and Labor."

Who's providing this non-free support? Certainly the "Linux Community" means Ubuntuforums.org ... but the others must be Canonical, which I hope is ready for what could be an onslaught. It's an experiment, all right, in more ways than three, and it will be very exciting (and I hope not disheartening) to see how it plays out in the months ahead.