New M6500 Discussion Thread

If your partners use implementations that strictly stick to the VPN protocoll, then vpnc is what you are looking for. Most distributions have it in their repositories.
Unfortunately some VPN solutions have additional "features" on top of that which are not part of the VPN protocoll. In these cases vpnc might not work.

And of course their is no way to meet silly requirements like having ZoneAlarm installed. Sometimes you just have to ignore or circumvent them. My company requires all employees to have a specific anti virus software installed, which is simply stupid since half of my company uses Linux. There were long negotiations with the top management, who of course has no technical knowledge at all. They insisted to have it on all of our computers. So the admin of my department just copied the program folder from a Windows machine to all our Linux clients and now everyone is happy having this useless thing sitting on all HDDs.

Might be a good first step, but please be aware that Ubuntu has major stability problems compared to more conservative distributions like Debian, RHEL or Slackware. If you're fine with it, go for Ubuntu! But please don't blame "Linux" if Ubuntu doesn't fullfil its own advertisement.

 

Anyone know the part # for the UWB 420 module??

 

In Denmark it is UNAVAILABLE and they insist it has never been made. It annoyed me somewhat, as when I ordered my laptop they said it would be included. Then when it arrives, it was not installed. Took me a ton of phonecalls to finally be told it doesn't exist (which also is not true).
Then they told me that because I purchased my laptop without the UWB written on their order sheet (because I was assured by multiple people from Dell that it would be built in as standard) that it was my own fault, and that I could purchase it when it was released.
Of course, I was fairly miffed about it, but I got a good deal on the laptop in the first place, so the only thing I did to pursue it further was to call up a few different Dell departments and try to explain to them that they should not sell the laptop saying it exists. Most sounded confused that I call up to say it, not to yell at them.. Ah well!

Oh, yes.. your question. No, sorry, I don't.

 

That part has End of Lifed.

 

I can't speak about availability, but took delivery of a new M6500 two days ago and the included UWB 420 is listed as item 430-3530 on my order sheet. Maybe that helps.

 

I'm learning about SSD setup and whatnot with a new M6500, as I'm not and IT type. I removed the minimal OEM HDD and replaced it with a C300 256GB SSD. Question: The "Precison ON" isn't working. Not that I care too much, but since the button is there, might as well. After rebooting, an "ON" window appears with the error message, "Flash Module not found." When trying to install firmware Dell_Multi-Device_A07_R271111.exe it stalls out and reports, "No Flash device is detected...."

EDIT: got my hands on the proper OEM OS disk and reinstall went fine. For now I skipped loading Precision ON drivers.

 

Did you buy the laptop with the Precision On module? This looks like you didn't, in which case you'll have Precision Reader, but not Precision On, which requires a separate piece of hardware.

 

Perhaps I am thinking of the wrong module. I unfortunately have to time to search right now, but I speak of the module which allows you to slot in a 3G card and then you can access the Internet wirelessly from anywhere (with coverage). They also said my laptop would be delivered with a GPS module -- that lack was what annoys me the most; I was really looking forward to some GPS fun when I ordered the laptop

 

The GPS function is overrated - I have a M6400 (not M6500) and have installed a WWLAN 5530 card which works fine but while the GPS does exist there is little software around to take advantage of it and there is an issue with win 7 and at least the 5530 card (unsure if this extends to any other WWLAN cards)

I have also flashed new firmware to the 5530 card to resolve random disconnections on my M11x and am on it right now the 3G is brilliant no random disconnections (I had 3 dell mini 9's with built in Dell 5530 cards so appropriated these onto various other laptops) have been using this all morning connected to work via VPN cisco V5.0.07.0290 has worked flawlessly (running win 7 64bit) all day.

 

There is, however, a few slices of software you *can* use, and I was looking forward to working with them