Experience with Dell Latitude D[568]00's?

[Jamie Bowden]

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Doug Barton wrote:

> Just when I thought the laptop issue was resolved, I've got some new
> drama. :)  I am moving to a new job, and they use Dell Latitude's there,
> so I need to find out if anyone has experience with either the Latitude
> D500, D600, or D800. I'm particularly interested in ACPI support in
> -current, and things like suspend, resume, etc. I'm also interested in
> the support for the internal wireless and bluetooth modules. It looks to
> me like the Dell TrueMobile 1400 wireless card is atheros based, so that
> should be fine, yes?

I'm running -C cvsup'd as of yesterday at about 3pm on mine currently.  I
haven't had a chance to do much with it yet, I did a very basic 5.1-R
install, and used an xe0 based PCMCIA NIC to do my initial CVSup.  The
XFree86-4 port doesn't want to install for me, but that's something for
-current, not here.

If anyone cares, xe0 doesn't work under newcard.

Almost everything so far is functional save for wireless, which on mine is
a Truemobile 1300.  The reported chipset according to the WinXP utility is
a BCM4306/BCM2050, so I don't expect it will ever work considering
Broadcom's current attitude towards free OS's.

I say almost because the machine will not boot in the dock.  There's an
additional USB EHCI controller/hub in the dock, and when the kernel hits
it, it's panic city.  The other bit that FBSD doesn't like is the TI smart
card reader.  With an oldcard kernel, it just ID's it, and goes an about
it's business, with a newcard kernel, I get a continuous stream of cbb0
and cbb1 unsupported device errors on the console (despite cbb0 being
empty; cbb1 is the smart card reader).  It's an annoyance, but a minor
one.

> I'm also wondering about carrying around the D800 with the big screen.
> How is the weight on that? I will definitely be traveling with this
> laptop, so portability is an issue, but I'm a pretty big guy. A 7
> pound laptop isn't that much worse than what I have now, and since I'm
> going to be using it on the road a lot I want something I am
> comfortable with.

I really like the larger screen.  I run WinXP at 1920x1200, and once I
have working X, I plan on doing the same under FreeBSD (I need both, so I
run a dual boot setup).  You can never have too much screen (but if
someone wants to prove me wrong and give me a 2048x2048 display just to
make the point, I won't complain).  This machine is about the same weight
as the C810 I was carrying previuosly, but much faster, and I get as much
battery life out of a single battery module as I did with two on the C810
(which is a good thing since unlike the C, the D doesn't have a place to
run two batteries simultaneously).

I've used multiple Dell laptops under FreeBSD (from a CPi R400GT on up to
the current D800), and have had very few problems with them (my most
severe failure to date has been a battery module, though I'm sure others
will be more than happy to share horror stories).

I fully expect that by the time 5-S is branched, these minor issues will
have been worked out.

Jamie Bowden

-- 
"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold"
Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur"
Iain Bowen <alaric at alaric.org.uk>