Experience with Dell Latitude D620?

[Doug Barton]

Daniel Eischen wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Oct 2006, Eric Anderson wrote:
> 
>> On 10/25/06 13:19, Doug Barton wrote:
>>> After a long (and sometimes ugly) ordeal with a few other 
>>> manufacturers, I finally decided on a Dell Latitude D620, which is 
>>> sitting here next to me. It has the new Core 2 Duo, and lots of other 
>>> exciting bells and whistles. :) The only negative so far is the 3945 
>>> wireless, but I have an atheros pccard to use in the meantime.
>>>
>>> I'm wondering what experiences people have with this, gotchas for 
>>> FreeBSD, etc. I am planning to dual boot windows and -current. I am 
>>> particularly interested in being able to suspend/resume in freebsd, 
>>> so if anyone has got that working, please share the secrets. Also, 
>>> has anyone with a core 2 duo tried running the 64 bit freebsd?
>>
>>
>> Doug - my coworker has lots of Atheros mini-pci express wifi cards 
>> that he's been selling for cheap.  I have been using it instead of the 
>> included card, and am very happy.  You can email him at 
>> kramer at centtech.com if you want.
> 
> Are you sure they are mini-pci express, not mini-pci?  I couldn't
> find any Atheros-based mini-pci express cards when I looked just
> a few months ago.

Yeah, the ones he is selling are pci-express, and using the latest and 
greatest Atheros a/b/g chip that's available stand-alone (the 5423). I 
did a lot of research on this topic when I was considering my 
purchase, and even called Atheros and talked to a very nice guy who 
knew exactly what I was asking (refreshing in a hardware vendor). The 
5424 is _the_ latest and greatest Atheros a/b/g chip, but it's only 
available to a select few vendors right now, and only as a "built in," 
not as an OEM part. The Atheros guy I talked to said that the two 
chips should have pretty similar characteristics, although the newer 
chip would have better power consumption.

PCD Global has a PCI-Express card built from the 5423, but my research 
gave them mixed reviews. Lenovo also has a card built from that chip 
that's available as a non-standard option for thinkpads. I didn't do 
any research on whether it would work in non-thinkpad machines.

At that point I kind of gave up and decided to do what I could as a 
user to help get the 3945 working, since it's almost impossible to buy 
a laptop nowadays without one of those. But since no one is really 
interested in making that card work atm, I think I'm going to give 
Eric's colleague a buzz. :)

hth,

Doug

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