The Good

It’s snappy! This machine for the price is quite quick which is perfect for doing web development and rendering… This also means gaming is nice too… I’ve already tried a couple of games like Mass Effect 2 and Fallout 3, which are both around a year old I know but they ran very nicely… You won’t be playing Crysis at max settings but its pretty decent the performance you will get at this price…

The webcam is great too and works well even in light conditions, though I haven’t been able to test the 720p quality part of Skype due to my poor connection…

Battery life is pretty decent using the 9 cell battery. I get around 3 hours and 45 minutes on a single charge, which is not breath-taking but decent enough for a performance laptop… Just to note this is so far not using the NVIDIA GT435  but Intel’s integrated graphics… I am yet to see how long it would last using the dedicated graphics cards but I can imagine that it won’t be as long as 3 hours and 45 mins…

Dell have been promoting the JBL system a lot as part of this system and I have to say it does kinda live up to what they say… To put simply you are not going to get home theater sound quality but this is as good as they come and they’re pretty loud too… They are able to provide a kick and fullness that you wouldn’t normally get from laptop speakers which for listening to music pretty nice…

There are 3 USB ports one situated on either side and at the back near the power input… There is a multi card reader in the front and 3 headphone jacks on the right side by the Blu-ray/DVD drive one of which also acts as a SPDIF out so you can connect a home theatre system to it using an optical cable… There is a HDMI 1.4 port on the rear, mini-display port and Ethernet port…

One other cool thing, this laptop is 3D enabled hence the 1.4 HDMI port version… Having tested it on a 3D TV I can say it works as you would expect it too, connecting it by HDMI to a 3D capable TV and watching Monsters Vs Aliens in 3D looked great and was pretty painless to get viewing in 3D… If you’re so inclined this will also work for games and photos that you have on the laptop, outputting them to a 3D capable TV or monitor will allow you to view them in all their 3D glory…

The Bad

Battery life. Now, while I said before that the battery life was good it really isn’t great and again this is to be expected and is really just me being really critical… But I really would stress that to those that want laptop that can run for longer then you can’t go wrong with the 9 cell, it’s $50 more and adds a bulge to the other wise slim and sleek design to the laptop… A small sacrifice to pay to keep it running a little longer especially if you go for the higher end i7 and GT435 combination…

The drivers for the TV tuner may be broken… As Windows Media Centre only reports an analogue tuner to be available… No radio and no digital tuner seems available for selection even though I ran the set-up multiple times… This may be due to drivers or windows media centre acting up, I’ve yet to look into it more thoroughly…

Conclusion

All round a very good laptop that I really cannot fault for the price on any level… It’s a good size and has decent performance for its price point… Any one who is looking for a mid-high range laptop should probably start with the XPS before looking elsewhere, try customizing it from the different models they have available to see if you can get a configuration that you like and they always have offers that can save you a fair amount of money…

After a little bit of googling I found out this post and his solution works… This is what you have to do to fix this issue….

Download this plugin: (I uploaded the plugin to my site, just in case if the author removes it)

mmkeys.dll

Copy the file to iTunes Plug-ins folder…

For XP Users: “C:Program FilesiTunesPlug-ins”
Vista Users: “C:Users<your_username>AppDataRoamingApple ComputeriTunesiTunes Plug-ins”
In each case, you have to create this folder if it doesn’t already exist…

Now restart iTunes and your multimedia key should work…

Said to be the world’s thinnest laptop, the Dell Adamo XPS is just 9.9mm thick, and weighs in at less than 1.5kg. The laptop doesn’t open with a conventional mechanical button release. Instead you move your fingers over a heat sensor to release the full-size aluminium keyboard and watch the laptop unfold itself. AWESOME!!! :)

Specs pf the laptop are as follows : LED-backlit 13.4-inch, 720p widescreen display, 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage processor, GS45 integrated graphics, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 128GB thin-micro SSD, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. In terms of connectivity, there’s 802.11a/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, location awareness, DisplayPort, two USB 2.0 ports (one on each side). Other packaged goods include dongles for ethernet and VGA / HDMI, and for an added fee you can nab a DVD+/-RW drive, a Blu-ray drive, or an external hard drive measured at 250GB or 500GB in capacity. There is an option of a 20WHr Li-Ion battery which can last around 2 and a half hours or a 40WHr version which lasts for around 5 hours.

At $1,799, the price isn’t as bad, but it’s still far from great if performance takes any precedence for you over style. The Dell Adamo XPS underscores design innovation and engineering excellence. It’s hard not to appreciate just how thin and good-looking this machine is.

I highly recommend heading over to Dell’s Flickr page to see the notebook from various angles.

Have a look at the Press Release

The Dell Adamo XPS looks absolutely stunning. And that’s based on just one sideways shot which shows the newbie laptop in all its slimline glory. So slim, in fact, it measures just 9.9mm.

Sadly Dell is keeping everything else under wraps, no details of its configuration are know. But with the countdown to CES beginning in earnest, expect to see this little wonder strutting on the Vegas show floor come January 2010.

If you want a sneak peek at Dell’s new “world’s thinnest laptop” candidate, head over to www.dell.com/AdamoXPS.

The first couple of netbooks all had Linux pre-installed. Unfortunately, Asus chose to go with a custom Linux distribution for which it has yet to release its first update. No Firefox 3, no Flash 10 and no easy way to get additional software. Except for the easy to use interface, they came up with the worst example of what Linux can be. But if there’s one thing Linux offers its choice. It is my opinion that Ubuntu is the most user-friendly Linux distro out there, and I highly recommend giving it a go on your netbook.

Here are some reasons why you should use linux(Ubuntu) on netbooks instead of windows…

1. It does everything what netbooks should do…

There’s no Adobe Photoshop for Linux, and the same goes for many other professional applications. There are alternatives, but that’s not the point here. Running Photoshop on an Atom processor is no fun. That’s the kind of thing you do on a desktop PC or a high-end laptop. Ubuntu comes with everything installed that you need to surf the web, chat, download (a bittorrent client!) and email. Oh, and OpenOffice too.

2. It’s extremely configurable

If you’re even slightly geekish (like me ;)), you’ll probably like tinkering with a new Operating System. Ubuntu, like any Linux distribution is extremely configurable. Lots of options to play with, tons of new software to get to know. But even if you’re not into all that, you’ll find Ubuntu to be incredibly easy to operate and very stable.

3. It’s got fast boot time

Ubuntu 9.04 version of Linux has proven that it doesn’t need to take minutes to boot into a fully operational OS. Intel’s Moblin also boots in seconds, even on slower hardware. Because of the nature of open source software, Linux would always have an edge over windows in this field.

4. F for Free and Freedom

When you use Windows XP on netbooks, it takes a long time to boot and then you have to wait for the updates to finish. Firewall, virus definitions, Windows Updates. Not fun at all. And once all that was done you’d be looking at XP’s ugly (and ancient) user interface. It’s like working on your PC, just a lot slower.

With Ubuntu, using your netbook has becomes a little adventurous, :) because everything normally don’t work out of the box you’ll occasionally need to figure out how to do something, and that’s when you come across Linux’ best feature. Its user community is full of helpful people. I’ve never not been able to do something I wanted, and even the most challenging issues took no longer than minutes to fix. :)

Talk about Microsoft Statistics..:D

Most netbooks might be sold with Windows on them, but the only reason you didn’t get one with Linux was because those weren’t actually available. Very few Linux models are, so everyone wanting to run Linux on them will still need to buy a Windows version. That will definitely skew the statistics.

But I don’t want to be a poor sport here… It’s upto people to decide what they like or dislike. Some people like Windows because they are familiar to it.. :) Others like to be adventurous and wanna go off the track.. for them there’s Linux.. :)

Cheers :)

One of the goal is to bring the Sugar OS to any computer, not just the OLPC XO Laptop. And as step one, the team released Sugar on a Stick a while back. Basically, what Sugar on a Stick lets you do is download and install the Sugar OS onto a USB flash disk with 1GB of storage space or more. The end result is a USB stick that you can insert into pretty much any x86 based computer to boot into the Sugar environment.

There are two versions of Sugar on a Stick available at the moment. One is based on Fedora 10, while the other is based on Ubuntu 8.10. I tried out the Fedora version, which also makes it easy to create persistent storage space on the flash drive, which means you can save any changes to the USB stick. In other words, while Sugar on a Stick boots like a LiveUSB, since you can save changes you can treat it like a portable operating system. You can carry it with you and plug it into any computer to pull up your operating environment. I used Sugar USB pen drive on my Dell XPS M1530. 

Sugar OS is designed primarily as an educational tool for children, and includes a number of games, and other tools including utilities kids can use to write their own programs. But if you want to see what the buzz is about without buying your own XO Laptop, Sugar on a Stick is the way to go.

For more Screenshots visit my Flickr Photostream..

Installation

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Add the key by typing in the terminal:

Now add the PPA repositories to your source.list (/etc/apt/source.list):

Update installer:

install thinkfinger:

Test the Driver

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Now the driver is installed and should be working.

To acquire your fingerprint use:

To verify your fingerprint use:

Try it as root if it doesn’t work.

Configuring PAM to use ThinkFinger

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You don’t need to edit anything on Ubuntu 9.04, just type in the terminal:

Now we are ready to add users to thinkfinger. You can add a fingerprint for a user with:

If you would like to use thinkfinger for su, you have to enroll the fingerprint for root user with:

I haven’t got my fingerprint reader to work for unlock of screen when it is locked by screensaver. I’ll update this post when i get it to work. :)

The install time was insanely fast and easy. The boot time now is pretty less, around 25 seconds. I got the fingerprint reader to work, find it really useful that typing the password again and again (I’ll post how to make it to work really soon), the webcam worked great using Cheese (in the repository). The 64bit tended to drain the battery a bit too fast–understandable. I ended up reinstalling and going back to 32bit as there were a few applications which were needed and weren’t yet ported over to 64bit.

I used envy to get my Nvidia 8600GT to work. The best thing I find about Ubuntu 9.04 on Dell XPS M1530 is that there is no more need to tweak the mouse pad, the camera or anything else! :D ]]> http://itsanimesh.com/2009/05/10/ubuntu-9-04-on-dell-xps-m1530/feed/ 13 http://itsanimesh.com/2009/01/11/how-to-make-dell-xps-eject-button-work-in-ubuntu/ http://itsanimesh.com/2009/01/11/how-to-make-dell-xps-eject-button-work-in-ubuntu/#comments Sun, 11 Jan 2009 07:53:35 +0000 itsAnimesh http://animeshkmr.wordpress.com/?p=62 The eject button on top of the keyboard does not work out of the box in ubuntu.
To solve this issue :
Just type in the terminal :
sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
And add the following lines at the end
# Unlock the CDROM eject button
dev.cdrom.lock=0
Now reboot and try.
Leave a comment if any problems are faced.

You can also update your BIOS via ubuntu just type the following commands :
wget -q -O – http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bootstrap.cgi > bootstrap.sh
sudo bash bootstrap.sh
sudo aptitude install firmware-addon-dell
sudo aptitude install $(sudo bootstrap_firmware -a)
sudo update_firmware

If the command returns that new BIOS has been found and can be updated. Then type
sudo update_firmware –yes
After this proceed with editing your /boot/grub/menu.lst.
If you face any problems plz leave a comment.