Okay, my notebook PC (Linux Thinkpad) is old and clunky, and I'm thinking of finally joining the 21st century of notebooks with ACPI that don't suspend/resume to RAM under Linux.

Why? I want more speed and more RAM (aka even more speed).

Dell has sent me a coupon for 30% off the web price on several of their models, including the Inspiron 6000 with UWUXGA (1920x1200) 15" displays -- as well as the 9300 with a 17" version of that display.

Any caveats come to mind from anyone out there? The price is excellent for the I6000 models.. I can get 1.86GHz P-M w/ATI-128MB (ugh, but it does work with X11) and 2GB of SDRAM for around US$2000 or so after taxes here.

Looks good to me, apart from giving up suspend/resume to/from RAM under Linux (have to use "software suspend" to disk instead).

??

I just received an Inspiron 6000 yesterday (I ordered it when they were doing 34% off last week). I haven't had much time to mess with it, but I must say, that screen is so very sweet! I got mine with the Pentium M 760 (2GHz), 1 GB RAM, and the 128 MB X300. I played a bit of Battlefield Vietnam tonight, and it ran pretty smoothly. The only weird thing about the 6000 is the white trim. It just looks wrong to me! I got the 9 cell battery, and with the display at the default brightness Windows shows about 6 hour battery life. If you have any other questions about it I will try to answer them

The only "warning" I have heard out there was to hold off on the first models of this next gen of Centrino. But they (Tom's Hardware) were reccomending to get old Centrino notebooks as they should be going down in price.

That seems like a decent deal. Be warned that the quality of a thinkpad is much higher than any dell you're going to get. That said, the dell will probably cost half as much, so it's definitly a trade off. If someone else is paying, always spring for the thinkpad.

I didn't realize the 6000 had decent screens, when I looked at it when it came out it had WXGA as the only "option" so I never gave it a seccond look.

Make sure to price it without the ram and see what buying the ram at newegg or your equivalent would cost. I suspect you'll come out ahead. Dell recently had a couple of $750 off $1500 coupons, which was a good deal if you were sticking with a low end system. With a high end system, the percentage off coupons can be better. However, an emailed 30% off isn't actually much for dell, especially when you consider that all the prices listed on the home site are 20% off already at the moment, and percentages don't stack. In addition to the memory, keep in mind that anything you add is overpriced. An 80GB laptop hard drive costs $115, dell wants $100 to upgrade from a 40 to a 80. Most people around here have an empeg that wouldn't mind an extra 40GB for $15. In the same vein, it costs $99 to upgrade to the high capacity battery, and $129 to buy the high capacity battery as a seccond one. $30 for the low capacity battery seems like a good deal.

I've attached the system I think you're configuring. It came out to $2100. The coupon code NSHFXB?R6$BSD2 will get you $750 off, for a total of $1350. You could save $100 on the dvd burner or the extra battery. Add $400 in newegg memory, and you're all set for $1750 plus tax. If you of all people need a decent hard drive, pick up a 7k60 for $150 or so.

Anyways, you're still in the same ballpark either way. The dell pricing game is a complex one, and it's rigged so that the house always wins.

Matthew

I forgot to mention bensbargains.net is a good site to keep with the various deals if you don't want to delve into the deal forums.

Matthew

Thanks for the great Dell tutorial! The system I was looking at had 2GB of DRAM rather than 256MB, and also had bluetooth, big battery, and other goodies, all at the 30% discount. But apples and oranges abound in the comparisms, for sure!

Now I've moved upscale: Dell Inspiron 9300, 1920x1200 17" LCD, ATI-128MB, CD/DVD+-RW(8X) dual-layer, 100GB HD, 2GB RAM, 2GHz P-M-760, Bluetooth, Intel Wifi a/b/g, (software: XP-Home+MediaPack and other windows goodies I'll not be using), etc..

Specs attached, cost is CAD$3168.20 + tax, shipping is free.

Cheers

Of course, this box has no serial ports.. which I need.

So.. anyone know of a nice serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the cheap? Self powered would be nice. Then I could just plug that into my empeg dock, and get a wireless console connection to the new Dell.

I'll also probably pick up a USB-serial dongle as a secondary connection for some of the embedded machines I need to connect to around here.

Thanks!

deluo.com has one which is pl2303 based and under $20 (it's either $10 or $15); kernel has a driver for it. self powered.

As to this:
So.. anyone know of a nice serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the cheap?

I dunno. I suspect what I want is more involved than what you need. I want to do dialup networking, I want the empeg to connect to a phone and get a ppp connection, basically.

I'd really hesitate to purchase a 17" portable desktop unless you've seen one in person, really want one, and don't plan to travel with it. The 9300 weighs nearly 8lbs and is 1.6 inches tall. You can get the same resolution screen and the same processor in the 6000.

Matthew

Yeah, the size might be a bit BIG.

But the published dimensions are only about 0.15" thicker than the 6000 (or my current Thinkpad A21p), 0.8" deeper (front to back), and about 1.5" wider than the 6000 (2.5" wider than my A21p). Definitely large, but worth every gram for that 17" display.

I have seen a 17" Dell notebook before, and it definitely seemed larger than the measurements would indicate, though. HUGE comes to mind.

It will, however, fit into my existing (Dell, actually) nylon carry case.

It just seems somewhat of a waste to have 1920x1200 on a display roughly the same size as my existing 1600x1200 15" panel.. I'd never see all of those extra beautiful pixels on 15.4", and just end up using larger fonts to compensate. But on a 17" panel, I think it should end up with a similar actual pixel size as my 1600x1200 machine.

I haven't hit the "buy" button yet, as I'm still working through various usage/travel scenarios in my mind to make sure all will be fine. Mmmm...

Cheers!

My 9100 goes past the BIOS in about 3 seconds tops, and my friends 9300 seemed just as quick.

That is one thing I will give credit to, Intel based boards tend to POST amazingly quick. My old P800 Intel made motherboard POSTed in about 2 seconds. I still see AMD motherboards taking an unusually long time, closer to 10-15 seconds for no good reason.

Any ideas about the "dual channel DDR2-533" memory in the I9300?

Can I just pick up an aftermarket pair of 1GB (each) SODIMMs and expect them to work fine as dual-channel?

Buying from Dell with the machine costs me CAD$700 extra vs. the "standard" 1GB. Aftermarket seems to be US$200/1GB stick, or about CAD$500 for 2GB.

Thanks

Look up the i9300 at Crucial and see what they recommend?

They don't have any 1GB modules for the i9300. And their 1GB modules for the i6000 are about 2.5X the price I get elsewhere -- comparable to Dell.

Cheers

If you throw matching sticks of decent quality in there of DDR2-533, it should run in dual channel mode. If they aren't identical, the motherboard will just run them in single channel mode.

Nah. I didn't mean buy it from Crucial just that they'll list what type of RAM you'll need to get. You need two identical "DDR2 PC2-4200 NON-ECC UNBUFFERED" SODIMMs for it to work in dual channel mode.

So Tom,

How is your buddy's 9300 working out for him?
Any issues with it that required a call to Dell?
Screen look nice? WUXGA?

Thanks

So far he loves the 9300. He got it mostly to keep files on for his new store he is opening, and to be able to game there in the down time.

He got whatever acronoym screen that matches up to 1440x900. Windows does DPI scaling horribly, so he saw no need for the higher resolution one. In my quick glance at it, didn't seem bad.

The only dowsides I can really say about it is that it feels like a typical Dell laptop. AKA not the best it could be. Very plasticy, not well thought out at times (like the lack of a number pad so many other 17 inch systems have). Durability wise, it does seem a step up from my 9100.

Yeah, well Dell isn't exactly known for durable construction, are they! Runs against the business model and all that. (we have two Dell notebooks around here already).

No question that other brands IBM, HP, Sony, (gasp!) Toshiba & Compaq are more solidly built, and priced accordingly.

But up here in the land of snow and ice, everything costs proportionally more than in the sunny south, and this just magnifies the Dell difference. I'm currently leaning hard towards ordering a maxed-out 9300 on Tuesday, with full on-site warranty to counter any serious build/durability issues for 3 years.

Still sounds very hit and miss, though. I know my Thinkpad is way (WAY!) more rugged than either Dell in the house, but at 2X the price it oughta be.

Thanks for the data points.

Cheers!

Ordered it!

This will be the first ever "state of the art" machine here at RTR (SWMBO & I)! Oughta be good for wasting some time on when it arrives in a couple of weeks!

Cheers

If you havn't maxed out the ram already: link because ubb doesn't like commas in urls.

Matthew

Okay, I've had this machine for a week, and am finally coming "up for air".

Wow! What a great machine. Especially for a Dell!

So far, *everything* on it works under Linux. The only thing I have not yet tried are the back panel video outputs (SVGA, DVI-D, TV-Out).

The rest is all alive and very well. Even "suspend-to-RAM", which was totally unexpected. Linux is very weak with ACPI suspend functionality, but on this machine it's just fine. And fast. Did I mention fast?

Cheers

It is so cool when everything works just right, especially in these days of fighting with technology.

How much have you hammered on the Centrino 802.11g driver? I got Linux installed on my Vaio laptop a while back, only to find that the driver required a 2.6 kernel when I had installed 2.4, and I haven't gotten back to it yet (as I've managed to waste basically all of my hard drive space).

At the time, it was pretty early in development, and the laptop is pretty useless to me without wireless.

Excellent. Time to buy some NAS and get back on that. I need to reinstall Windows (shudder) anyway.

Hey, if that's the worst thing that happens, count yourself lucky.

I bet that it's got a PCMCIA slot that you have no use for other than to plop in a 6-in-1 media reader.

I'm thinking perhaps a "16 in 1" (really only 8 in 1) USB2 reader for CAD$14. I picked up a similar $40 unit from Radio Shack, and it it plug'n'plays just fine. Gonna return that one, and order in the cheapie one.

Cheers

Yeah, but the PCMCIA adapter will fit completely within the laptop and you don't have to carry other junk around. Of course, you already got one of those supergigantic laptops, so that may be less of a concern.

I already have a Delkin Cardbus adapter for CompactFlash -- these are the fastest ones available. I did have to write the Linux driver for it last fall, when I first got the card. This works well as the "in-laptop" solution for just CF. But the USB2 reader will work with the other formats nicely, and with other computers around here as well as the laptop. Thus the motivation.

Cheers