D830 Owner's Lounge

Linux. Anyone?

1. What distro?
2. Does the fan spin properly to keep it cool?
3. Is the graphics better then Vista under Xorg, as expected?
4. Hibernation?
5. Battery life?
6. Any issues at all?

I'm moments away from ordering a D830 with a T7300, 72000rpm drive, 1GB of ram (which I'll upgrade to 4GB via newegg), and WSXGA+ (I want WUXGA, but not without seeing it first, and I live in a little town in New Zealand - so there's little chance of seeing one.)

I've done my homework, and believe this machine will run under linux. Might be a bit of work to get it going, as the hardware is all rather new.

 

So will I be able to power up a 3.5" external hard-drive from the Powered USB port on my Latitude D830 ?

 

Well, it's called a powered USB for a reason... yes, you should be able to.

 

Yup, you should be able to. I'm not sure if it applies to non-Dell drives, though, especially if they don't have the additional power cable.

 

As for Linux, I run Ubuntu Gutsy (which is alpha)on a Intel GMA X3100 D830: you need to install it with the command line installer (some bug in the detection code for cards I guess). After that, you get X.org running automatically (must be different code there) and at the correct resolution. You need to compile a recent ALSA yourself (I put instructions for that in Launchpad, dead simple if you know how to use a command line) as there is a buggy one in the current kernel that won't detect the audio hardware properly.

Fan control works, but something about the CPU power states isn't quite right (after some time, the CPU seems to run in C0 state half the time for no reason at all). Suspend to RAM doesn't work for me, but supposedly does work for some others.

A good starting point https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LaptopTestingTeam/DellLatitudeD830

Ubuntu Feisty theoretically works (including sound, but not suspend to ram), but unless you compile Intel GMA X3100 drivers yourself, you'll only get unaccelerated VESA which is dead slow.

For my knowledge, there are no USB powered 3.5" drives because those need 12V as well as 5V and USB only provides 5V (and only 500mA at that, which comes down to 2.5W which is way less than what a 3.5" drive needs anyway). 2.5" USB ones should be no problem though (but of course, they are a lot more expensive for the same capacity).

 

Yeah, that resolves the 'powered USB + 3.5" external HDD' topic. I got the same response from a powered USB dedicated website's webmaster.

 

Hi all

I am looking seriously at the D830 and I work primarily with Adobe Production studio apps (Flash, Illustrator, Premiere, Soundbooth,AfterEffects, Photoshop) as well as small 3d work in Cinema 4d and Adobe Acrobat 3d. Will this card (NVS 140M) suffice for day to day operations with any or all of these apps? Does anyone have experiences to share?

Could someone explain how this turbo cache works? Does the card have 256 megs of dedicated memory with the integrated memory being used if more than 256 of video memory is required? Or does it work some other way?

Cheers,
Jeremy

 

From what I understand this is exactly how it works.

Unfortunately I haven't had the need to install any intensive 3D applications on my 830 yet, so I can't comment on the performance. All I've got is a 3DMark05 bench of around 3200.

 

Yes, that's how the Turbocache works. Right now, my video card is using 840 megs of memory. Since the 140M only comes with 256, I think it's safe to assume the remnant 584 is coming off of my system RAM.

 

Hey freefishereater

What in the name of all thats holy are you doing that is making your video card use 840 megs of memory?

Ok then, now that I understand how it works the question remains...How well willl this card run Adobe production studio applications? (ie flash, premiere, after effects, photoshop, illustrator etc.) I know I won't get great 3d performance but if anyone has used Cinema 4d for basic modelling and animation tasks I would love to hear your experiences!

The other machines I am looking at are the Vostro 1500 with the 8600 GT and the Precision M90 with the quadro 1500. I know the M90 will give me the best performance especially 3d but its alot more money and the Vostro has slow hard drives

Hahah there is no such thing as the perfect notebook is there?


Thanks,
Jeremy