Hmm, this is interesting. I don't know whether you have a 3200 or an
7000, but my experience wasn't nearly so painful. I'm telling this
not to play devil's advocate, but rather to provide an alternative
view, as many people (including myself) read this list and lists
like it, to get an idea of what to buy, and use it as kind of an
electronic "consumer reports" type source. And if I would have been
going off the previous post, it's likely I would have chosen a
different notebook.
It took me about 2-3 hours to wipe my disk, repartition for linux
and win98, and get everything reinstalled for win98. It was fairly
painless, and the only noticeable difference I can see with my
install and doug's is that I used the psion gold card modem, with
no nic installed. AFA backing up things to disk, I only backed up
2 things, and it turned out they were already on the CD, so I didn't
need to back them up. Again, don't know about the nic, so no
comment there.
Right now I have linux and win98 installed, and they both run
beautifully, and the matsushita DVD drive is great, no problems
as a cdrom on linux, everything's running like a top.
AFA dell, I had absolutely no problems with them, and their reputation
as being one of the better tech support/customer service shops in
the industry held true in my case, although probably not in doug's :)
Just remember that even the finest restaurants have bum nights
where the food isn't always up to par...
oh yeah, that's an interesting p.p.s line below... Don't take offense,
but you ought to kick back and have a beer after going thru what
you went thru, rather than venting on the list right away - you're
apt to scare some people away from an otherwise fine notebook. :)
Brian
On 29-Nov-98 at 22:47, Douglas Wagner ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
[snipped]
> Let me put it this way...before you do ANYTHING MAKE SURE YOU HAVE EVERY
> DRIVER IN EXISTANCE for your machine backed up on disk...don't assume
> anything. Dell does not ship the correct network card drivers (actually
> they don't ship any at all..they expect you do download them from 3com, how
> the hell you are supposed to do that without a network card I have no
> p.s. Any comments to the above can be directed to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> If you've got a bitch or complaint about dell you'd like posted but havint
>
> had the time or inclination, i'm starting a page to do just that...:) Your
> name will be attached to the complaint tho...just for my protection..:)
>
> p.p.s Oh yea...the inspiron is a very nice piece of hardware...mind you
> it's not well designed hardware, and the technical support for the company
> supporting it isn't worth the powder to blow itself to hell, not to mention
> the parts and repairs part of the company....but it is a nice piece of
> hardware when it's finally up and running.
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