Monthly Archive

So I have had my Latitude D830 for a little over a month now, and I have to say, I am not impressed.  This is no shlock laptop, it has the 2.4 Duo cpu, 160G drive, 2G ram, 512M Nvidia Video.  I even opted for the finger thingy (no haven’t set it up yet).  This thing is so cheap and the dell drivers are a joke.  Before I rant, I have to say, the 15″ wide-screen 1920 x 1200 screen rocks.  It really is the only thing I am impressed with on this computer.

For all the resources this thing has, it’s slow and uses a shit load of ram when idle.  Dell is sending these things with so much crap on them.  No, I don’t want Google toolbar.  No, I don’t want free music program.  No, I don’t want utility x.  Just leave them out of my build.  It is so pathetic, I am still inches from trashing the thing and rebuilding.  I mean my my T40 boots quicker and runs many apps at the same speed.

Let me tell you about the mouse driver.  Why Dell went away from Synaptics  drivers, I have no idea.  Ok, I am sure it was a money thing, but you have to hear about how this driver of Dell works.  Anyone who has used a laptop touch pad has probably experienced it’s scroll feature, were you slide your finder up or down on the far right edge of the touchpad to scroll through documents.  The driver has a setting for scroll speed, which normally I like pretty quick on touchpads.  What the Dell driver does, is change the mouse scroll value to a higher number of lines per detent, how freak’n cheap!  So now when I use my external mouse, each detent on the mouse wheel is 9 lines, not very useful when programming or writing, or basically anything.  It’s just crap.  Another feature missing on the mouse pad is the ability to auto-scroll the window.  You usually do this by sliding your finger up or down on the right edge all the way off of the touch pad (Synaptics instructs to “throw” your finger…).

OK, I am done for  tonight, I am sure I will have more entries on the shit Dell is releasing these days.