Good Afternoon All:
My experience (including the start-from-scrath repartition and
re-intall of win98) on my I7K mirrors Brian's experience. After
reloading the std win98 from CD, I pulled the I7K drivers from
Dell's CD and it all behaved itself.
One difference between my procedure and the one outlined by
Doug was that I made a win98 boot floppy first thing when I
received the machine. I verified that win98 would boot from this
floppy and access the CD. I would imagine that creating a
boot floppy without an installed system may lead to the driver
problems that bit Doug. The remainder of the repartition and
win98 install went forward without a hitch.
Linux then installed reasonably well on my second partition.
My only support call to Dell was in regards to a third party Enet
PCMCIA card that Dell doesn't support. The tech on the other
end made reasonable suggestions on how to proceed but
otherwise this was no test of their support prowess. Thus far
I am very satisfied with the machine and with Dell.
Brian Stempel wrote:
> 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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