Proprietary Nvidia drivers

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS ships with broken Nvidia driver. So did 7.10 Gutsy. Under Gutsy there were some issues running Nvidia proprietary drivers under 64 bit system. The problem this time is that when you’re playing a game in full screen mode, then after few minutes, the game will appear as a window and the whole desktop freezes - neither the mouse or keyboard work. So you have to restart X with ctrl+alt+backspace and login in again. It’s kind of annoying as you might imagine. It also means, that I can’t play games like Frets on Fire or UrbanTerror under Ubuntu (I can always run games in window mode, but I don’t like it that way and it’s really not the solution to the problem).
Actually it was a known bug during beta testing and I was quite sure that It’ll be fixed when the final release comes out. But it hasn’t been fixed (yet). I really hope they’ll push an driver update that fixes the problem in near future.

Updating

Few days ago there was an kernel update that was available from Update Manager. I tend to trust Ubuntu when it comes to updating applications and kernel, because there hasn’t been problems with things braking for me. Unfortunately after update I found out that VirtualBox didn’t work anymore. That’s because the open source version of VirtualBox, which is avilable through Ubuntu repos depend on special kernel module for VirtualBox. So actually update didn’t broke the VB, but just that kernel module didn’t come out with new kernel. For me, it’s not the end of the world when I can’t run VB for few days, but I imagine when I would run a business that depend on VB, it would be a major issue. So my point is that Ubuntu devs should inform developers of different applications that depend on kerner version, that they’re about to push the new kernel into update, so important kernel modules could ship with new kernel.

KDE applications in Gnome desktop

I usually prefer to use Gnome as my default Desktop on distros like Ubuntu and Fedora (on Arch, I use awesome or openbox), but I also need to use Konqueror and Kate at work. Konqueror is great for ftp and sftp access and Kate is one of the best GUI text editors out there (gedit is good for simple text files, but for code editing, Kate is much better). So I use Kate and Konqueror (KDE 3.5) every day on my Gnome desktop.
The problem I have is that when I’m browsing files with Konqueror, sometimes when I go into different folder, the folder content doesn’t change before I press the refresh button. It gets quite annoying when you have to do it after every two or three clicks. With Kate, the issue is when I drag files from Nautilus or Konqueror into Kate, sometimes it doesn’t allow to do that and displays the error cursor. So I have to refresh the folder and drag different files before I can drag the one I need.

It’s a weird issue, because I haven’t noticed the same issue under other distros. I really hope there’ll be a fix for this issue too.

Flash and PulseAudio

I’m quite sure I’m not only one with this problem, because I’ve heard many times different podcasters talk about this issue. The problem is when you’re watching something from YouTube, then after first one or two videos, the sound disappears. Sometimes it helps, when you restart the browser, but sometimes you have to restart the system to have sound back up again.

With flash under 64 bit system the flash player in sites like YouTube and Google Video might not appear at all (especially in Firefox 3 Beta 5, which is now replaced with RC2, but the problem is still there). I understand that Flash is closed source, but still, Adobe is showing some interest into open source lately, so I would like to see some improvements in that area (instead of Adobe Air for example). I think they should fix their core components under Linux before they’ll start pushing new products for the Linux desktop.

Stability

One the positive side of things I would like to say that Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is quite stable. It’s not a Slackware kind of stable in any means (applications still crash often), but for a Ubuntu release, it’s not bad at all. Booting up the system is a lot faster than Gutsy, applications open quickly and the whole desktop just feels quite stable for a desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Conclusion

So, after a month with Hardy, I still use it as my main OS on my Dell Vostro. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t thought to go back to Arch or try Fedora 9 or OpenSUSE 11 instead. But at the same time, I feel that when I close my eyes for these issues I mentioned above, Ubuntu Hardy Heron is still a great release. Only LTS at the end of the release name hasn’t really prove itself.

Well, that was my two cents.

It’s been a while but I’m back with review of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. First off, I have had my eye on Ubuntu since 4.10 (the very first release) and I have seen the development of the distribution from the beginning. There has been good releases and bad releases. Last release, 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon was bad, really bad. I wrote a short review about my experience with Gutsy last year and mainly I complained about bad 64 bit support (broken Nvidia drivers, no virtual consoles on boot) and very buggy 32 bit desktop (networkmanager could not handle torrents and died after 30 minutes each time I tried to download something, applications like gEdit and Terminal crashed often and with them the whole Gnome desktop died, so I had to press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace). So as you can imagine, I wasn’t thrilled about last version of Ubuntu. But this time, the things look slightly different.

Installation

There’s not much to say about installation, if you have installed Ubuntu before (if you’re still running 4.10, then we have graphical installer now). Installer hasn’t really changed with last few releases. It’s still simple and easy to use, but slightly minimal when it comes to configuration options. On live CD side, there’s an option to boot directly into installation without loading the whole live Gnome desktop, which is useful for multiple installations.

But on the flip side, there’s a major new feature: now, you can install Ubuntu on your Windows machine as an application. Yes, that’s right. With the introduction of Wubi installer, you can install Ubuntu as a application and later remove it through Add/Remove Programs. And I personally think that it’s a very useful feature for new users, because they can try Linux without resizing or partitioning their disks. I’m going to install Ubuntu on my friends Vista laptop this week, so I’ll’ cover this on separate post later this week. And because I don’t run Windows myself, the pictures of Wubi below are from Linux Format. I hope they don’t mind.

Look & Feel

There has been talks about the new Ubuntu look for a year now. There were some rumors going around, that Hardy will ship with brand new look, but unfortunately it was dropped in the last minute. So if you first boot into your new Ubuntu installation, you’ll be greeted with the same old brown and orange look. The first thing I always do after installation Ubuntu, is change the default theme, because I really think that heavy brown and orange is not the color of a usable desktop. I really hope that in 8.10 the thing will move forward. Even though the logo is brown and orange, it doesn’t mean that the whole desktop has to be.

I also recently discovered that there’s a great replacement for default theme, when you don’t like the brown but want to preserve the human touch. You can find the Murrine flavor of the theme at gnome-look.org with links to GDM and Usplash themes and wallpapers.

Also Ubuntu has Compiz-Fusion installed by default, so if you’re running Intel grahpis card, you should have Compiz already running on the first boot. I have Nvidia M8400GS on my Vostro, so after installing Nvidia drivers from Restricted Drivers Manager I had Compiz running in no time. You should also install Advanced Desktop Effects Manager from Add/Remove Programs to really trick out you Linux desktop.

Features

Because Hardy is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, it’s clear that it doesn’t really live on the cutting edge. But there’s still some interesting new features in 8.04. PulseAudio is installed by default and replaces Alsa as the default sound architecture. Ubuntu ships with kernel 2.6.24-16 and latest Gnome 2.22.1 with brings some new features to the table. There has been a lot of buzz about Ubuntu shipping Firefox 3 beta 5 installed by default. Being a long term release, it is an interesting decision, but so far the Firefox beta has been relatively stable for me, but most of the people will find that their favorite add ons might not work with newest Firefox (I personally don’t use add ons as much, only FireBug at work and the latest alpha release runs quite well on FF 3). Apart of some new default applications like Transmission and Brasero there’s not much changed since Gutsy.

Hardware Support & Configuration

Hardware support under Hardy is better than ever. With my Dell Vostro, everything just works out of the box except my built in microphone that I never use, but I’m sure I could get them working with a little hustle. There’s one other interesting thing to mention is that throughout the different releases of Ubuntu, the number drivers in Restricted Drivers Manager is decreasing. Now, the Intel wireless driver is built into the Linux kernel and you don’t have to install separate driver for it. Also it seems that the broken Usplash issue under 64 bit Ubuntu is repaired this time and everything is working nicely under 64 bit. So I’m really seeing the improvement with hardware support with every new release.

When it comes to configuration, except the theme change, there weren’t much to change in the configuration, because everything was already configured the way I like (no icons on the desktop etc). After installing some applications from Add/Remove programs and slight change in the menu layout I was ready to go.

Conclusion

After bashing the last 7.10 release of Ubuntu, I’m really happy to see that Ubuntu developers have done a great job repairing the mistakes of Gutsy and improving the user experience. I’ve always been an Arch Linux lover, but because of some hardware issues (I have no 3D acceleration under Arch and I haven’t found a work around) I decided to switch my main desktop to Ubuntu Hardy. I’m still going to use Arch, but being busy with work, I just don’t have the time to play with OS, rather I would like to get some work done. So if you need a simple but yet full featured Linux desktop to get some work done, Ubuntu is for you.

To sum it up, Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron is awesome.

If you have any comments regarding my take on Hardy, feel free to comment this review below.

Update on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

I ordered black Stone with 1GB of storage. There’s also Stone Plus with LCD screen available, but I decided that I don’t really need the screen for my daily podcast listening. I also ordered a keychain for my Stone and I find it to be really useful. It’s almost a must have addon for Zen Stone.

Stone feels like a very light stone, it weights almost nothing. I personally think that it looks great. Plain black finish, five buttons in the front side, shuffle/repeat/next folder slider and audio input on top and USB jack in the bottom. Controls are easy to use even when the player is in the pocket. Only thing that bothers me is that when you’re using the keychain (which is made of leather and feels quite solid) the slider is covered by the keychain and you simply can’t use it (I would like to use the skip folder option while wearing the player on my belt with keychain). Other than that, using the player is simple and easy.

Stone connects to computer as a regular USB storage drive, which makes it easy to drag and drop files into folders. Also it means that Stone works very well under Linux, OSX and on other platform, because it doesn’t need any additional software (like iPOD does).

Battery life is rated to 10 hours which is reasonable for player that size. Newer versions of Stone which come with built in speaker (don’t expect much from it though) are rated for 20 hours of battery life. So even though I don’t think that built in speaker is a big feature, still you should go with newer version for extra battery life.

Default headphones are quite reasonable (but not good) for the price range and I actually still use them as my main headphones. With that I think there’s not much more to say about stone.

The verdict is if you’re looking for a cheap simple MP3 player, Zen Stone is a good pick.

First Impressions

Nokia E61i comes in a business looking package that contains the phone itself, charger, CD with software, hands-free and USB cable (for some reason my phone didn’t had the SD card in the box). The phone itself looks smaller in hand than on pictures, but it’s certainly not small or light compared to regular cellphone. Nokia E61i weights 150 g and dimensions are 117 x 70 x 13,9 (/11,5) mm. So at first it feels funny to hold the phone in hand, because it feels like regular scientific calculator that you’re holding next to your ear. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it as the time goes on. Also because it’s twice as heavy (and a lot wider) as my previous cellphone, it might be annoying at first when you hold the phone in you’re pocket. When it comes to accessories, the charger is quite small and very light, which is nice. It also has hands-free in the box, which is sort of old school, because it only has one mono speaker an the microphone (many newer “music” phones come with headphones for better experience). I’m not planning to listen to music a lot on the phone (maybe some podcasts), so that doesn’t bother me. USB cable has regular USB connector on one side and on the other side it has special Nokia connector, that goes into the phone. I didn’t try the software CD, because I downloaded software (Nokia PC Suite) from the Nokia site, but I’ll write about software later.

So overall first impressions were good. It’s a phone with a tweak, that needs some time to get used to.

Build and Features

The build quality of this phone is very good. It’s made of aluminum and plastic and keyboard buttons are made of rubber. It really feels solid in hand. Honestly, I don’t have anything negative to say about build quality and that just shows how good it is.

When it comes to design, there’s nothing interesting in it. It’s not a design miracle in any means. It just is a business looking phone in black and silver. But don’t get me wrong, it looks good, it just doesn’t have any identity or design appeal (like iPhone or Motorola RAZR).

Keyboard is full size QWERTY keyboard which is quite uncommon here in Estonia (like I have said before, BlackBerry’s and Palm’s are not common is Estonia), but that was one of the reasons I chose this phone. At first it feels weird to type on, because the buttons feel different from other phones, but after days of using, you’ll get used to it. The layout is somewhat different from regular QWERTY, for example Y is not next to T, instead it’s in the lower right corner. The keys itself are quite small, but it’s still reasonable to type on them. So for E-mail, SMS, notes and web surfing this keyboard is great.

Screen is 2.8″ QVGA with 16 million colors (320 x 240) and it’s of course it’s horizontal. The phone also has light sensor, that automatically sets the right brightness. The screen looks great and because of the layout, web surfing and watching videos is a pleasure.

E61i comes with 2.0 MP camera, which is located on the back. I have only made some test pictures and the quality is reasonable. It doesn’t come close to N95 or other good camera phones, but for business oriented phone it’s good enough. It has digital zoon and you can also film some videos, but I haven’t tried this feature jet (but I don’t except much from it).

Of course it comes with usual smartphone features like sound recording, music and video player, E-mail client, web browser and so on. If you have ever used Symbian OS, you know what I’m talking about. There’s nothing extraordinary in it. Music player plays MP3 and ACC formats, but I have a problem converting MP3-s with Nokia Music Management. It also plays video using RealPlayer, which is also reasonable. Unfortunately I haven’t got YouTube working with RealPlayer (when you choose a video, it opens it in RealPlayer, but doesen’t play it saying it cannot connect to server. So for multimedia, it does the job, but there’s nothing special in it.

It also has large variety of office tools like QuickOffice (for viewing documents, spreadsheets and presentations), PDF reader, archive tool and so on.

Default web browser that comes with the phone is actually quite good. It supports both mobile web pages and regular ones. Unfortunately flash doesn’t work in the browser (seprate flash player is under media section to play fash games or watch .flv movies). I also tried Opera Mini and Opera Mobile, but honestly I prefer Nokia’s browser. It just feels better and more integrated.

One thing that bothers me quite much, is some lag in the menus and operations. It might be the fault of Symbian or it’s due to the weak processor.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m very pleased with this phone. The keyboard is awesome (I even to some blogging and document editing on the phone), screen is great (only watching videos with realplayer could be better - full screen view doesn’t fill the screen and quality is somewhat medicore), sound quality is great and battery life is also reasonable for that kind of phone - I get about three days, but I also constantly do some web browsing, WIFI, multimedia and e-mailing. If I just used this phone for making calls, I’m quite sure it could last a week.

So the bottom line is: if you’re looking for a smartphone with full qwerty keyboard, WIFI and reasonable price, Nokia E61i is a good option.

Linux Reality

Chess Griffin, the host of this podcast is a nice and soft person. The show is aimed to new Linux user and walks them through different topics step by step. I don’t think myself as a new Linux user, but I still find something useful in every episode. Linux Reality was actually first podcast I ever listened to and thanks to Chess and his references I started listening to other shows. He has covered a wide range of topics in his podcast: from different distributions to whole series of episodes about home servers. So anyone who’s interested in Linux, doesn’t matter are you newcomer or advanced user, you’ll still find something useful and interesting from Linux Reality.

But every good thing have to come to an end at one point. On episode 96 Chess announced that he will pull the plug after episode 100 due to his day job and family taking the free time away, which is totally understandable. I wish him best luck with his future doings. And like I said before, even though the show ends soon, it’s still worth to listen the older episodes, because their full of good information.

To find out more about Linux Reality, head over to linuxreality.com.

Linux Action Show

Linux Action Show is one of the goofiest podcast on the market. Bryan and Chris are two hosts of this show. They can make listening to technology podcast an fun event you wait for. This that sort of show you download immediately after new episode is published, because it just is so great. You have to listen it yourself to get the idea. There’s only one negative aspect with the show - it’s quite weird if you driving in a bus with your headphones on and start laughing suddenly…

To find more information about this awesome podcast, type linuxactionshow.com to your browser address bar.

The Linux Link Tech Show

The Linux Link Tech Show is on… Dann, Allan, Pat and Linc - link it up and take it away. TLLTS is the oldest surviving Linux podcast out there. And that talks for itself. During the years they had almost every big name in open source community on the show (Mark Shuttleworth, Richard Stallman, Miguel de Icaza and Patrick Volkerding to say the least) and it’s funny how they manage to often piss of their importand quests (Linc and RMS, Dann and Mark Shuttleworth…). Their intro says it all: free software - free speech, open technology - open mind.
If you want to know, what’s happening on the Linux world, TLLTS is the place to be.

LUGradio

LUGradio is four fat bastards from England talking about Linux. Jono Bacon, Stuart Langridge, Chris Procter and Adam Sweet form this boyband from Brittan. Seriously, LUGradio is something different, I would say it’s the real Linux show. Tech mixed with a lot of swearing and laughing. You can just say that they’re enjoying themselves on the air and that’s how it should be. They are also famous for their LUGradio Live events, which this year are taking place both in England an US. So if you have chance, you should go to get the feel of tech conference mixed with rock concert atmosphere. To get the impression, listen to this.

So if you haven’t listen to LUGradio yet, you have no idea what you’re missing.

Lotta Linux Links Linux User Podcast

Podcasting at 75 miles per hour, here’s your host - Dave Yates. Yes, that’s right, Dave records this show while driving on the highway 75 miles per hour with his Honda Civic. So it’s understandable that it not might be as high quality as show recorded in studios, but he still manages to produce a good quality show. He lately has a lot of interviews with members of the Linux community, but I prefer his solo episodes. One thing that might bother a bit is that he is always apologizing for his mistakes or rambling. Come on Dave, you’re recording podcasting in your car. Man, you’re doing a great job, so don’t worry about some mismatches and ramblings. This sort of stuff makes this show different and great.

So if you’re interested in podcast covering news and different topics in Linux, head over to lottalinuxlinks.com/podcast.

Other Shows

I also listen to some other shows, which I’ll mention here, but I don’t have time right now to write about each show.

So Linux Basement is a great Linux podcast hosted by Chad Wollenberg, who’s a great guy to listen to. He also plays his own intro music and ending song, which is just one reason to listen this great show.

Another one is LinuxQuestions.org podcast by Jeremy Garcia. He often covers different lawsuits and software patent issues that other podcasters usually don’t like to talk about. He also has deep information about topics he covers so it’s really interesting to listen to him. If you want to know what’s going on on LinuxQuestions.org on in software word, listen to LQ radio.

Linux on the Desktop was one of my favorite podcast from Marland Dunn, really passionate guy about open source. His show was really inspiring and he himself is still the person who other podcasters mention often. He discontinued the show, because his book didn’t sell well, but I (and I think I’m not alone on this one) hope that he’ll be back someday.

Open News Show was short news show with impressive quality and finish to it. But again, Aaron Newcomb decided to discontinue the show in January (as for now) due to the time limit (he also has a videocast called the_source). And that’s really unfortunate, because he managed to produce high quality professional show about Linux news.

Damn, I really hope we’re not seeing a new trend developing here: First Marland Dunn, then Aaron Newcomb and now Chess Griffin. Here’s my message to podcasters: if you can, keep it up. You’re listeners will appreciate it.

Conclusion

So that was my somewhat short overview of different Linux podcast out there. I might left some out due to the time limit at the time of writing, so I just might add some podcasts in the future. I also would like to mention, that there’s a great podcast network out there called TWiT which stands for This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte and his co-hosts produce daily shows about different topics in the technology world, so if you’re interested, go and check it out. I didn’t want to put TWiT into the main post, because I wanted to concentrate on pure Linux shows only.

So that was my two cents about Linux podcasts out there. If you have any comments or remarks, feel free to leave me a comment.
Thanks for reading and until next time, keep it between the ditches.

Prologue

I’m a long time Linux user, which means that I have used Linux as my main desktop OS more than five years (I have used computer for six years) . So I have used more Linux than Windows. Last September I attended a local vocational school to study IT and with that I got an opportunity to use Microsofts Academic Alliance (MSDN AA), which means that I have access to different Microsoft products and I can use them legally (as a open minded person, I don’t want to use pirated software). And among with the other products, I also can download and install Windows Vista. Because I hadn’t touch Vista jet, I decided to use the opportunity and install Vista on my Vostro.

Installation

One of the top features of Vista is the new installer and compared to the XP installer, it really is a huge improvement. It is not a live cd installer as many of the Linux distros offer nowadays, but still it looks elegant and simple. Before I get into the detail, I would like to mention in front, that the BIOS settings on my Vostro by default didn’t let me to install Vista or XP. They just didn’t recognize my hard drive. With little help over Max123 I managed to get the installer work. And that’s just weird, because computers are mainly built for Windows (newer computers for Vista) and it’s quite surprising that the BIOS setting didn’t allow Vista to see my hard drive. Other than that, installation was quick and easy and I only had to reboot twice (don’t get exited jet, I’m not counting drivers and essential programs). Whole installation took about 30 minutes to complete. So in terms of installation, Vista was quite nice experience.

Post-Installation

When the installation was finished I could log into my new Vista desktop. And the first impressions? The screen resolution was 800×600, no sound, touchpad worked only partially, no 3d efects, no nothing. That just shows how Linux overcomes Windows in terms of first impression (complete set of applications, hardware is detected automatically etc). Then I connected to the internet over my Wireless network and started to install updates. The whole updating took about one hour or more. Then I had to reboot of course and next time I looked at my desktop, everything looked the same. I then found out that update installed Nvidia driver and I have to configure it by hand (set the correct screen resolution). Then I went over support.dell.com to get driver for my Vostro. There is one important thing to say here: Dell doesn’t offer 64bit drivers for Vostro. So under 64bit system I tried to installer drivers fromXPS M1330 and XPSM1730 page, but that didn’t work out very well. Touchpad didn’t work (scrollbars, “third click” and I had several yellow triangles under device manager). But under 32bit system drivers worked well and after several reboots my system was good to go. I’d like to mention that Dell’s QuickSet application, which displays the sound and battery levels just look bad under Vista. Evidently they draw the graphics with Paint.

So after installing drivers, I started typical Windows programs rally. Because I hadn’t use Windows for a long time, I really didn’t know where to look or what programs to use. I just think that how should non technical person feel behind their new computer with default Vista installation - there’s just isn’t anything (if you don’t cound WordPad and Paint). That again shows that Linux on the desktop is simpler for new user, because out-of-the-box you have full range of software from GIMP to OpenOffice. Then I went over to download.com to search some applications and found a nice article about windows programs to use called Windows Starter Kit. So I installed Firefox and Thunderbird (I also tried Windows Mail client, but that didn’t worked for me), OpenOffice, GIMP and other well-known open-source application. Basically I ended up with Windows Vista packed with open-source applications.

Daily Usage

How is it like to use Vista daily? Well, actually it’s not bad. I kind of enjoyed good hardware detection: sleep and hibernate worked, internal speakers ans mic worked well. But then again, the fan was often on, hard drive indicator light was always on (Vista just did something on my hard drive all the time) which was odd, cause under Linux the light turns on only when I copy files or lunch programs. Also default memory usage was always over 50%. Now there is one important thing to say: Vista worked reasonable well, when you didn’t shut down the machine, but used sleep instead. When you shut the machine down, it took more than two minutes to get fully working desktop up. Just to metion, file coping under Vista is terrible slow, but they say that SP1 will fix this problem.

In terms of security and stableness, Vista worked quite well. I didn’t detect any virus or spyware on my machine after weeks of using the operating system. I should also mention, that I sit behind hardware Linux firewall (Linksys WRT53GL). Programs crashed occasionally crashed, but I think it’s normal for Windows (and programs occasionally crash under Linux too).

Now here comes the bummer: sleep and hibernate stopped working after few weeks. Every time I put computer to sleep, it didn’t come back again, but showed me a boot Windows in safe mode option. Also I had problems with disk burning application and overall performance. So it all led me to uninstalling Vista. Why should I mess with different drivers, why I have to search the web deeply to find certain application (and almost all application are priced) and the real question is why I should use Windows to run my Linux applications? I ended up installing Vista for six or seven times and finally gave up. Why bother.

Conclusion

I have mixed feelings about this one. I think Vista is huge improvement over XP and I can’t think a single reason (except hardware requirements) why anyone should prefer seven year old XP to Vista. It looks better, works better and has some nice features built into it (search bar in the menu, some decent security applications) and the overall experience is just more sleeker and elegant.

Then again, the default install comes without even basic set of applications: no office suite, no decent graphics editor, no messenger. And besides that, surfing the web for good programs can be a pain, because it’s quit hard to find decent free application for Windows (I ended up using the same applications I use under Linux). When it comes to performance, Vista is kind of slow and I imagine that when you buy computer with pre-installed Vista, it’s quite bloated too. And all that driver rally you have to go trough to get the system running. I’m not saying that Vista is bad operating system, but it just doesn’t work for me.

Overview

Dell Vostro 1400 is a small-business oriented notebook with 14.1″ widescreen. According to Dell, Vostro 1400 is “for frequent travelers who need powerful performance in a lightweight and compact design“. When it comes to being lightweight, I have my own opinion, but I’ll save it for later.

So here the specs for my Vostro 1400:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0 GHz, 4 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB)
• Screen: 14.1″ WXGA with TrueLife (1440×900)
• Memory: 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2
• Hard drive: 160 GB 5400 rpm SATA
• Graphics: nVidia GeForce Go 8400M GS (128 MB GDDR3 dedicated graphics memory)
• Wireless: Intel 3945 802.11 a/b/g
• Optical drive: 8 x DVD+/-RW
• Battery: 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion battery
• Warranty: 3 years

I should also mention, that here in Estonia, the local dealer MAX123 gives by default a 3 year warranty for Vostro instead of 1 year in States.

Build and Design

So, it’s a lightweight laptop, right? No, wrong, it’s not. First of all, it’s as thick as a 17′ HP Pavilion and it’s almost the same weight as the 15′ Pavilion. So, I’m guessing there’s a typo on the Dell page. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not XPS 1730, but it’s still quite big and heavy compared to the other 14,1′ laptops on the market. It just seems, that this Dell’s design theme which they use with Inspiron, Vostro and XPS 1730 is just designed to be thick and heavy (when new XPS M1330 and M1550 are huge improvement in terms of size and weight).

As you may already know, Vostro is basically a Inspiron in black in terms of look and feel. It means that Vostro is almost identical to Inspiron 1420, except it gomes only in black. The look itself is somewhat conservative. No touch-sensitive buttons, no flashy light-effects. Instead it haves five blue LED lights in the front left edge and simple mechanic multimedia keys, which are located above the keyboard. So overall it’s a nice black finish with some metallic (multimedia and on-off buttons and dell logos) and blue touch. It might be boring for some people, but I personally like this minimalistic design.

There’s one thing that I have to say in front when it comes to build quality to make things clear. My Vostro came with build fault, which means that the build quality of the screen an lid was awful. But they fixed it with few days. So I’m trying to be objective and not describe my first impressions.
In general it’s a pretty solid machine. The screen fits tight and stays exactly there where you put it (in other words it doesn’t bend back again), plastic feel solid and durable and there’s only a minor keyboard flex. Dell claims, that the body made of magnesium-alloy, but that only goes for the lid and the bottom (everything else is made of plastic). But still the chassis feels strong. Also pushing the back of the lid doesn’t affect screen at all, which is quite nice compared to other cheaper notebooks. Dell also claims, that Vostro keyboard is protected from liquid spills and hard drive is shock mounted, but I’m not in a hurry to try it out.

Screen

The screen is somewhat typical of what you can expect from a notebook. As usual nowadays, it comes with glossy widescreen (14′1″) with 1440×900 resolution. There’s some graininess to the screen and the viewing angels are also medicore. Which means, that you have to move the lid, to get a reasonable view. So it’s not the best screen on the market.

Speakers

There’s nothing much to say about the speakers. Again, they are just typical notebook speakers with no bass and medicore quality. Speakers are located above the keyboard and get loud enough to watch a movie, listen some music or watching sometohing on YouTube in a small room.

Performance

Like I said, I’m not going to do any benchmarks or statistics, I’m just going to say that with this configuration the performance is quite good for a laptop this size. It’s fast and responsive and really I don’t have much to add here. If you really like to see benchmarks of Vostro 1400, you cand find them at NotebookReview or Dell Reviews.

Heat and Noise

Vostro 1400 is relatively quiet and only thing that’s annoying is when DVD or CD is inserted, sometimes the drive gets very noisy. But otherwise in classroom or home it’s hard to hear the computer working (only fairly quiet ambient fan noise, nothing compared to the jet engine on my old PC).

As far as heat goes I would say that Vostro stays relatively cool all the time. only when playing you can feel the warn air coming out of the left side of the notebook. But the bottom of the notebook doesn’t get very hot, so it’s easy to hold the notebook on your lap.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Keyboard is quite good. There is minor flex, but that’s not a big issue. Keys are well placed and aren’t very noisy, so typing doesn’t annoy others in the classroom or library (except the space key, which is a bit loose and noisy).

Touchpad has vertical and horizontal scroll areas and the buttons feel quite nice. There are two things with the touchpad that disturb me: there is no on/off button for touchpad and it could be a little bit bigger. Also sometimes the touchpad goes crazy and stops working for a second or two, but fortunately that doesn’t happen often.

Input and Output Ports

Vostro has good selection of ports for notebook this size. It has four USB ports, FireWire, two headphone outputs, microphone input, 8-in-1 Media Card Reader, modem, ethernet, S-Video, ExpressCard slot and so on. But there are also some things missing. There is no HDMI and maybe the biggest issue with Vostro (as a business oriented notebook) is that Dell doesn’t offer any docking solution for Vostro. I personally doesn’t use docking at home, but I still think that a “business class” machine should have docking support.
Also I have issue with the monitor output. I just like, when the monitor output has those two holes for screws that would fix the cable. Sometimes the monitor cable jumps out of the port, because nothing holds it there. But I can see the same trend with HP and other major notebook manufacturers too (Lenovo still has screw holes, which is a nice touch).

Wireless

Built in Intel 3945 802.11 a/b/g works well. Haven’t had any issues with it so far, so nothing more to add here.

Battery

So the other thing that Dell claims on their home page is that Vostro is “for frequent travelers” which I assume means that it has long battery life. Well, it doesn’t. Unless you think that 2,5 hours of web surfing with half the screen brightness is a long battery life. When gaming or doing other resource hungry tasks, the battery life is less than two hours with full screen brightness.

Operating System and Software

I ordered my Vostro without any preinstalled operating system because of two reasons. First, I’m a long time Linux user (Dell doesen’t offer Ubuntu systems in Estonia unfortunately) and secondly I have access to MSDN AA (which is Microsofts MSDN Academic Alliance), so I can legaly download a free copy of Vista and other software. I’m running both Linux and Windows Vista on this notebook, so I’ll quickly describe them both.

Vostro 1400 doesen’t support Linux very well. Which is suprising, cause Vostro’s silver sister Insiron 1420 comes preinstalled with Ubuntu. Well, speakers don’t work in any distribution out-of-the-box (I was able to get them work after some tweaking on Ubuntu and Arch, but not on Fedora, which uses PulseAudio). Also susbend and hibernate can be tricky under Linux, but that’s a quite common issue uner Linux.

Installing Windows Vista on this system was a bit pain. First of all, default BIOS setting make installing Windows (both XP and Vista) impossible (none of the systems can’t recognize the hard drive), so after two weeks of searching I could finally start installing. Default Vista without any Dell driver is much worse than any Linux distribution (I have always said that out-of-the-box Linux is better and easier than Windows). Resolution was 800×600, sound didn’t work, touchpad didn’t work (in terms of scrolling) and almost all hardware had some issues without drivers. That just shows how helpless is Windows without vendors drivers. But after installing drivers and updates, system runs well. Everything is fast and responsible, Aero works smoothly and Vista score is 3.7 (based on graphics card).

Customer Support

Customer support in Estonia at MAX123 is the best I’ve seen so far in Estonia. The hardware issue I explained before was fixed with two days and also people seemed to be quite smart and friendly, which in Estonia unfortunately is not common jet.

Conclusion

Well yeah, I bashed it here and there - it has it’s problems. But at the end of the day, it’s still quite reasonable laptop. It’s better than any local vendor has to offer and for that price you can get good configuration with 3 year warranty.
So will I suggest Vostro 1400 to my friends? Probably not, I would suggest M1330 or newer Inspiron 1525 instead of Vostro. So that shows that I’m not disappointed in Dell, it just that Vostro could be better in many ways just like everything else under the sun.

Pros:

• Very cool running and quiet notebook
• Good performance
• Good looks (arguable)
• Good speakers for a notebook this size
• Reasonable build quality (except out-of-the-box, at least for me)

Cons:

• Quite thick and heavy for 14.1″ notebook
• Sreen has bad viewing angles and some graininess to it
• No docking solution (for business oriented machine)
• Short battery life
• Quite expensive here in Estonia compared to the prices in States