DELL Inspiron 8500, a good choice ?

sulu

I think i will buy a Dell 8500 Inspiron Lap.

It seems, according to a search in this forum, that DELL notebooks cooperate well with gentoo.

Please report some experiences.

Is it possible to order a Dell without Windows-XP preinstalled?

Thanks
Sulu

int1 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 139

It works great. Here are some instructions I posted to help set it up:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=52397

int1

BadGuy · n00b Joined: 13 May 2003 Posts: 44

Not much problems getting a dell to run with gentoo I have an inspiron 5100 and it works great! just a few minor issues but the USB 2 is working like a charm just plug it in and it works not much troubles with XFree neither configed at the first try. Only having problems with my radeon but I don't think the 8100 has the same vid card. Sound also works pretty damn sweet although the dell built-in speakers aren't really of high quality...

sulu · Posted: Tue May 27, 2003 7:06 am Post subject:

Good morning.

Thanks for replying guys.

@BadGuy:

You had issues with the Radeon vid-card. I also noticed cery many
posts concerining ATI-Cars hiere in this forum.

Do you thing i should go for the NVIDIA-Card Dell offers for about 60 $ plus?

@int1

Hey, great, your instructions are just that thing i needed :-)

Thanks a lot.

So i think the Inspiron 8500 is a good product.

But i have some questions left.

- How to repair a Dell, e.g. if a cpu-fan i broken? Can i do something by myself ?

- They offer a pick up/repair service for 3 years for about 200 $ more. Is this worth the price ?

- Should i take the NVIDIA or the ATI video-card ?

- Does it make sense to order a second accu?

I like the choices one has if he/she orders a Dell.

xr31Daisy · Posted: Tue May 27, 2003 1:16 pm Post subject:

2nd Battery :
On an Inspiron 8200, one battery lasts roughly 2,5 hours, barely enough to watch a DVD in the train from Paris to Lyon. the 2nd battery made sense for me. But it's also heavy ...

vid-card :
the nvidia card works well in my 8200, it's all I can say ...

wireless :
the latest Dell Truemobile card's don't have any linux drivers. ( at least not the TM 1180 ) ...

int1 : APM is not supported on the 8500 ?
Well, on the 8200, it's the reverse. APM is fine, ACPI doesn't work. I guess that's one thing they've update.
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mpsii · l33t Joined: 11 Mar 2003 Posts: 658 Location: Jackson, TN

Dell's pickup service for $200 is a must. At the price you are paying for a top-of-the-line model, I would think that $200 is a piddly price for Dell's support option of pick-up/drop-off.

With most notebooks, it is better to use your support program to fix hardware issues (your example being the CPU fan). Only in the budget realm would I suggest DIY support.
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Michael

Narada · Guru Joined: 12 Dec 2002 Posts: 300 Location: London, UK

Hello. I own a Dell Inspiron 8100 and it's been an absolute joy to use with Gentoo. The powerful 1.2GHz CPU with 512MB RAM flies through compilation and all hardware works with 2.4.20 kernel drivers and so Dell has my recommendation. Support for dell laptops is only going to improve with future kernel releases if 2.4.20 is anything to go by. Here are answers to your questions.

Repairs: All dell machines come with a minimum of one year collect and return service although you can have more luxurious support if you pay more. Within this time, if you have issues just let them know and they will take care of it. I've owned two Dell laptops for the past four years and not once have I had any issues however. I would not suggest that you get any more support as in my opinion it just inflates the cost without ever being used. I prefer to take the chance of a problem occurring after the first year (which it hasn't so far) and then paying to get it taken care of.

Video card: I can't stress this enough. Do not go for ATi but go for Nvidia. This is one of the reasons using Linux has been such a dream since I have full 3d and opengl hardware accelerated support and can run at full resolution and also game without any problems whatsoever. Also, ATi cannot compare with Nvidia's outstanding driver quality and fast release cycle.

Accu & accessories: I have no idea what you mean by 'getting a second accu'. What is an accu? Once I know, perhaps I can comment on it. I never get any accessories with my laptops but if you wanted to then worthwhile choices would be a second battery, floppy drive for bios updates and usb mouse for gaming.

Problems: I have only had two problems so far. Firstly, I get kernel panics with the latest 2.4.20 ACPI code so I use APM instead which works fine. Secondly, in 2.4.20 the ESS Maestro 3i sound driver is labelled experimental and can crash occassionally but this shall probably be resolved in next kernel release. Also, I'm not sure what modern sound cards are but they may be different. I've made this driver a module and just unload and reload via a script when it crashes rarely. Also, make sure you always keep your machine bios up to date and always update using a floppy disk. That will ensure good system health with usb, acpi and other aspects. Good luck and hope that helped.
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icabodwinchester · n00b Joined: 14 Mar 2003 Posts: 24

I am using a Inspiron 8500, I have had pretty good luck so far, I have only used RedHat so far, I'll be installing Gentoo tonight...

to get at least partially functional power management support ACPI needed to be patched, but suspend isn't currently functional, (or at least I don't know how to fix it)

Also, DMA didn't work at first so disk access was slow, but there was a patch for that to.

I found a good page that has links to all the nessicary patches at http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/G.Wilford/Inspiron8500/
it is intended for RedHat boxes, but if you get the origional patches instead of his one "megapatch" I would think that everything would work well.

sulu · Posted: Wed May 28, 2003 6:47 am Post subject:

Hullo !

Thanks fpr your replies, but it could not go for the Inspiron 8500 because of the price. The model i would have chosen was about 2800 Euros.

Instead i found a HP Pavillion 4300, which has an 2.4 P-4-M 512 Ram 1400x1050 display 60 GB-Disk, what is sufficient for me for a price of 1800 Euros. You note the difference

I whish you all great fun with this powerful Inspiron 8500.

Thanks again
Sulu

ito · n00b Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 27

for the D800 Latitude

http://www.mikehardy.net/linux_latitude_d800/

Bye,

ito

christsong84 · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 2:23 pm Post subject:

I have a Dell Inspiron 8100...took a few minutes to figure out a few things (mostly from being a gentoo n00b...but the forums got me working in no time flat...my experiences are recorded at http://www.thecodemonks.com/linux/
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