Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

Your probably able to get bluetooth by calling a dell and talking to a rep if it's not on your dell site...
I'm supposed to receive my M4400 on the 13, it was ordered on the 1st and is supposed to ship the 10th (I can't wait to get it it's gonna be great! )

But anyways the first thing I'm plaining to do is add a light version of xp 64bit for gaming... (Then Linux then the real fun of a new system starts )
What drivers will I need to install for best gaming? I have the 770 but I'm not JUST asking about the video drivers I also want to know what system, wifi ect drivers I NEED as well

 

On the Dell site it says the computer supports Red Hat 5.1 but I went looking for drivers and found none. If I can find thoes drivers it would be teriffic to finally use a computer that has correct drivers for everthing!

 

I was talking XP drivers... But...
With Linux you just need a distro thats using a really new kernel for the really new hardware
Ubuntu 8.10 Beta is supposed to work with just about everything out of the box, It's probably what I'm going to use...

 

I have Ubuntu 8.04 on a partition on mine and trying to find something that works well for the intel wifi link 5100 is a lesson in frustration.
Supposedly the next version [you say 8.10 beta ?]will have support out of the box for the newer wifi cards,so I'm not using it anymore until then.

I did read on the dell support forums that drivers for red hat are only available through the large business section and that they weren't available for the M4400 yet anyway......I did try to have a look but don't have a premier account so can't access it.

 

The new version is 8.10
But since it's still not finished they have a Beta release of it, which means it's still a lil buggy and not completely finished, But you can go to Ubuntu.com and Download 8.10 Beta and get pretty much everything to work fine right now, Or theres a terminal command to just upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10...

 

Did you get audio working?

@spajix
I haven't found networking drivers to change gaming performance. Even different cards altogether (g vs n) doesn't make much of a difference because even g operates faster then most people's internet service. If your gaming on Vista then your best bet is to nlite it down to essentials, This Forum has some really good guides to what you can tweak in vista

 

hi !

for every people who wants to install Linux on their M4400, i suggest you to install linux in Virtual machine, so you won't be issued in drivers problem : you'll get network, get audio, get video..etc.

The one and unique reason to not install linux in virtual is a question of video performance wish. Do you plan to do some linux 3D applications? no! so you don't have to waste a partition, a virtual linux is enought to practice, shell command, code, surf,etc....

Wonder you yourself what you will do under linux before cut you hard drive...

Moreover, in virtual you can switch to another distribution to another in a second !
Moreover, you'll get a CPU with VT technology (and the motherboard???) in the M4400 isn't it ? So, using virtual linux will run better ever !

 

I have a problem with my 2 week old M4400. It's related to the fingerprint device (I have the swipe one).

When I booted, the system asked for the system password (before it was asking for fingerprints). Same thing as well for the Wave GINA, it shows the fingerprint box but has a label saying "Device closed."

When I entered into the control point manager, I can see that it is detecting the fingerprint device. But, when I load the security manager, the setting for the fingerprint device is grayed out.

When I tried to enroll fingerprints, it says "Failed to bring up fingerprint template." I already reinstalled the security center and embassy wave security suite.

Is there something that I can do to have my fingerprint device working again?
Thanks.

 

Have you activated the security devices in the BIOS? There's a whole bunch in the M4400 BIOS that I activated for it to work. Open the BIOS and read every section of the BIOS (which is greatly organized), a couple of them have check boxes that need to be checked, such as TPM security and another called trusted execution.

I actually had Dell help me with this, there's an entire process to get it set up right and it's not a user-friendly one. But I removed it overall, its slower than me typing a system password.

 

hi if any one has the wuxga resoultion can u tell me the vista scores. i will glady look look at the lower resolution screen. not too sure if they wud get different scores in the gaming but wanted to see how it stacks against my t61p. cheers in advance