Received my Dell Inspiron 1420n

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:18 pm

I'm really excited, but I'm at work and have barely had a chance to touch it. The top has an interesting rubbery feel, and I think it looks great, but I'm worried that with this kind of texture it might collect dust. The keyboard feels nice, and I think the screen looks sharp, too. Sorry I don't have much to say at the moment, but I'll try to add more later, perhaps some pictures as well.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 5:52 pm

I have to wait till this weekend till mine come in......I don't think I can make it.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:20 pm

Mine was originally scheduled for July 28–30, and they called me last week to say something was backordered, and that it would be late (Maybe this is a good thing, is it because there are a lot of orders?). They then set the date back for August 1–3, so I didn't think another four days or so was that bad a wait. The shipping guys made some serious time, though, it arrived today on the 31st, only one day after they shipped it out!

I won't get home until late tonight, since my wife and I carpooled today, so I'll barely have time to even play with it then.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:42 pm

hmm my shipment went out today and the mouse i ordered with it came in....but not the actual laptop.

I really hope it comes in tomorrow so I can have it for my vacation this thursday.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:08 pm

When you post your review, could you include specs? If the "rubbery" is anything like thinkpads are, dust isn't so much an issue, but greasy finger marks are, and so is anything that might find its way into the texture. Chalk, for instance.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:10 pm

Well, things are definitely snappy on this lappy, but a couple things are already annoying. If you enable desktop effects, it locks up hard. No alt+ctrl+backspace, alt+ctrl+F#, or anything like that. You have to use the power button. If you log back in again, you'll get the same problem, and can't even get to the preferences to revert back. I had to use the grub option to boot into the console so I could go deep into the .gconf directory and get rid of the XML file with the settings that started compiz.

It's less annoying, but there's also no support for scrolling using the trackpad.

Other than that, I really like it. I like the feel of the keyboard, it's quiet enough not to bother my wife, and it's got some pep. If they get some support for scrolling, I'll be happy, and it looks like I'll be waiting for Gutsy Gibbon before I enable desktop effects again.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:53 pm

Vogateer wrote:Well, things are definitely snappy on this lappy, but a couple things are already annoying. If you enable desktop effects, it locks up hard. No alt+ctrl+backspace, alt+ctrl+F#, or anything like that. You have to use the power button. If you log back in again, you'll get the same problem, and can't even get to the preferences to revert back. I had to use the grub option to boot into the console so I could go deep into the .gconf directory and get rid of the XML file with the settings that started compiz.

It's less annoying, but there's also no support for scrolling using the trackpad.

Other than that, I really like it. I like the feel of the keyboard, and it's quiet enough not to bother my wife, it's got some pep, and it suspends just like it should. If they get some support for scrolling, I'll be happy, and it looks like I'll be waiting for Gutsy Gibbon before I enable desktop effects again.

Have you tried Sauerbraten or Nexuiz or something else with decent graphics? Im interested if the graphics card is any good.....

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 1:26 pm

I'll give one of those a shot tonight, though it sounds like my wife wants to got to the movies tonight. I briefly had a wobbly window effect going before locking up (it worked ever so briefly after running all the updates), and it looked really good. Not sure how graphics intensive Sauerbraten or Nexuiz is, and I won't have much to compare it to, either, having never tried those two, but hey, I'll give anything a try.

I imagine there's a good chance you'll be receiving yours pretty soon, too.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:03 pm

Vogateer wrote:I'll give one of those a shot tonight, though it sounds like my wife wants to got to the movies tonight. I briefly had a wobbly window effect going before locking up (it worked ever so briefly after running all the updates), and it looked really good. Not sure how graphics intensive Sauerbraten or Nexuiz is, and I won't have much to compare it to, either, having never tried those two, but hey, I'll give anything a try.

I imagine there's a good chance you'll be receiving yours pretty soon, too.

Whoooo, just got it 30mins ago! Im installing updates. Its a pretty nice machine, more compact and light than I imagined it. The only grip I have so far is the mouse I ordered with it doesnt work to scroll horizontally like it would in windows. I might be able to configure that manually but everything else is very nice.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:26 pm

You're right about the lightness of the thing. I even added on the 9 cell battery that sticks out the back, and it's still pretty light. I think I'll bring it to work tomorrow, and I'm sure I can find some excuse to do so. That's right, it has an SD card reader, and we don't have one of those here! Lappie's coming with me tomorrow!

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 7:47 am

Although Ubuntu is nice, I could not stand using Gnome. So I installed the Kubuntu desktop package but then I had GNOME and KDE apps in my menu so I figured I would just install Sabayon since it has a very good KDE desktop and I am already very familiar with it. However now my sound doesn't work and my 3d and wireless are not very consistent. I am thinking this is just because the laptop hardware is so new so it doesn't have full support for it even though it is using the 2.6.22 kernel. Anyways I still love this laptop, I am getting insane battery life on it, up to almost 9 hours with wifi turned off on my 9-cell and I haven't even finished tweaking everything with the help of powertop.

As soon as this gets configured it will be amazing.

allix · Post by **allix** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:09 am

They are now offered to threee european countries, uk, germany and france.
In the uk the saving is £30 by not getting the vista ones.

I hope this goes through http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/6 ... ch_laptops

the current available one looks bulky,

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:05 pm

allix wrote:They are now offered to threee european countries, uk, germany and france.
In the uk the saving is £30 by not getting the vista ones.

I hope this goes through http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/6 ... ch_laptops

the current available one looks bulky,

I would say it is definitely not bulky like my 17" work laptop, I think it is just the right size, the keyboard is a little compact and I am hitting the wrong keys a bunch but it is not too bad. I don't think I would like it and smaller though.

I was able to get Gentoo installed on it and get most everything working except I am still having trouble with sound. I am going to try asking on the Gentoo forum to see if it can be fixed. (On a side not this thing compiles insanely fast, over 3x faster than my desktop which is not exactly old hardware (though could still use an upgrade or two)).

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 12:47 pm

I've never owned a laptop before, but it seems pretty light, and certainly doesn't compare badly to my wife's 12 inch iBook. I got the high resolution screen, and everyone raves about it. It does look quite nice, if I say so myself. I don't think of it as bulky, but a 13 inch might be the sweet spot for size and functionality.

I have small hands, so the keyboard hasn't been a problem for me. It's good to hear about the fast compiling, I might have to give Gentoo another go. It's been a while, but I think I could remember a few emerge commands. I bet Gentoo will be one of the first out the gate with a decent KDE4 release, too. I was always a sucker for the testing packages.

I did want to make sure I'd corrected an earlier post. The 1420n does not suspend. It just blanks the screen. It can hibernate with a few errors (the sound has to be restarted), but that's not as nice as suspend, which is what I really want. Maybe this will be fixed in Gutsy. You'd think Ubuntu would want to make these laptops shine and make it a primary testing machine for their releases.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 1:04 pm

http://tinyurl.com/26zqku

Looks like someone has the scrolling touchpad working with that package, had to add a single line to the code, it appears:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php? ... ost3132270
&
http://tinyurl.com/yop2d5