- Linux Drivers
- I'm sure that Dell has a policy that only hardware
with a Windows driver --- a decent Windows driver --- will be
considered for use in Dell systems. I wish Dell would establish a similar
policy for Linux drivers. It's fairly reasonable for Dell to refuse to provide
software support for Linux, because the range of possibilities and of luser
competence is so broad, and the level of expertise needed in the tech support
people would have to be so high. But at least Dell can insist on useable
drivers, and can publish the nomenclature of each subsystem so those drivers
can be identified. Particularly annoying is rebranding: ``It's a Dell
wireless card'', which tells me nothing worth knowing, except that the PCI ID
isn't going to be in the driver that's correct for the card.
- Case
- Other commentators on the net have indicated that they would
like a more rugged case. It doesn't seem weak to me, and
I have not had any problem with plastic breaking, either on
the Inspiron 4100 or on the 3800 which I had since early 2000. However, I'm
pretty careful with equipment. To my mind the correct material for a laptop
case is epoxy glass, that is, fiberglass in an epoxy matrix. Alternative, more
expensive fibers might be polyimide (Kevlar®) or graphite. A graphite mat
would probably help EMI containment a great deal, as well as spreading the
heat, and those functions might be enough to justify the cost. A fiber
reinforced case should be painted (two coats), since the inevitable broken
fibers will irritate the user's skin.
Do not be tempted to imitate competitors with their magnesium or titanium
cases. Metal is far inferior to fibers in strength, and in the amount of
mechanical energy it can absorb before being damaged. A metal case will be
dented and scarred while a plastic case still looks new. Magnesium will
corrode from the chloride in users' sweat; thus the standard for painting is
high. Titanium is free of corrosion, but is a nightmare to fabricate, not
likely worth the cost. Its superior strength to density ratio (compared to
other metals) is not used to best advantage in broad thin sheets; internal
plastic supporting structures would have to provide most of the strength.
- Screen Clearance
- As discussed in more detail
elsewhere, when the machine is in a backpack
the screen tends to hit the palm rest, the plastic around the small mouse
buttons above the touchpad, marring the polarizer. Another millimeter of
clearance would probably do a lot of good.
- Media Bay Plug
- The Inspiron 3800 came with a goodie about the size
of a battery, but just a shell with some strengthening ribs. The idea was that
if you didn't want to put a drive in the media bay, you put this thing in.
It's important to have something in the bay at all times because the bottom
of the case is not strong enough to stand by itself. The media bay plug
should be brought back, even though many users won't use it.
I can't find any way on Dell's various web sites to buy one, but a Dell tech
person in one of the user forums said to call Spare Parts at 800-372-3355 and
ask for a ``Travel Module'', part number 0849D or 53950 (don't know which is
the right one). Cost is about US$ 5 plus $10 shipping, so people say.
- Color
- The case is gray, with optional decorative palm rest segments.
I miss the ``forest green'' color I got on my Inspiron 3800. I wish the next
case design could have a variety of colors including that one.
- Keyboard Lamp
- A competitor has a very nice feature: at the top of the
display is a hole, so the backlight shines on the keyboard. In a dark
environment this helps one to locate keys not normally touch-typed, like the
function keys.
- Passive Display
- All laptop displays have a lamp in back of the
display, and the light is spread evenly and is directed forward by a clever and
intricate reflector, passing once through the liquid crystal. There is
considerable advantage to using ambient light in a two-pass reflected mode.
First, active displays absolutely cannot be used in direct sunlight, whereas
the brightness of the illumination is irrelevant for a passive display.
Second, the lamp uses significant battery power. Third, in applications where
color fidelity is important, a passive display automatically participates in
the user's eye's adaptation to the ambient light's color balance, same as the
objects and material media that we normally look at.
The difficulty of building a passive display should not be underestimated.
The viewing angle would probably be less than for the active display.
I understand, though, that some handheld PDA's are now coming out with passive
color displays. I urge consideration of this technology.
- Connector Covers
- The case has a lot of apertures where dirt, food and
insects can get in, none more critical than the PCMCIA slots and the docking
connector. When I put the machine in my backpack I have a hard time choosing
which side should be on the bottom. Most competitors have spring-loaded doors
closing the PCMCIA slots, rather than the two dummy cards. I have a digital
camera which has tethered plugs covering the connectors. I suggest that you
consider a combination of doors and plug-style covers on all the connectors.
- Epilepsy
- When its driver is loaded, the onboard Ethernet transceiver
has two lights, a green one indicating that the transceiver is powered on, and
a yellow one which blinks at about 10 Hz, plus about 100 msec of "on" time
whenever a packet is sent or received. People with photoinduced epilepsy
should be cautious about that light, whose frequency is right in the middle of
the alpha channel. A piece of tape over the light would help. Blinking lights
should not blink at rates in the range of 2 Hz to 55 Hz. Also, packets can
arrive at an arbitrary frequency which could be epileptogenic even if the 10 Hz
blink were eliminated. An adequate redesign would be to change the 1-shot that
drives the light, to put out 500 msec pulses instead of 50 msec.
In Microsoft Windows XP, the light blinks until the Ethernet cable is
plugged in, then flashes once per packet, and does not resume blinking even if
the cable is unplugged. Thus, the various drivers are responsible for the
blinking, at least in part.
- Battery Indicator
- Whenever the battery charging controller is
feeding charge to the battery, the battery indicator shows green. A fully
charged battery is "topped off" two or three times a minute, with the result
of a flashing effect. This can get
distracting. I would suggest that charging should not be indicated unless
the charging current stayed on for a few seconds. In fact, I might combine
the battery indicator with the "on" indicator, like this:
| Power From | Battery | Indicator Color
|
|---|
| AC Power | Full charge | Green
|
| AC Power | Charging | Yellow
|
| Battery | Adequate | Orange
|
| Battery | Almost empty | Red
|
| Power Off | | Dark
|
Unfortunately such color changes are useless for a colorblind person.
Another possiblity, seen on competitor machines, is a small passive monochrome
LCD panel indicating the power and charge status. A passive display is
superior because the indicator lights are almost impossible to see in
sunlight.
- Battery Charging
- When there are two batteries in the machine they
seem to both be charged and discharged, and unequally. I would request an
option (probably chosen in BIOS setup) to charge the batteries in parallel as
is done now, or to charge one fully, and only then to start charging the other.
Similarly, the user should be able to choose between discharging both in
parallel, versus draining one before starting to use the other, as it was on
the Inspiron 3800. Some users may actually need to tell the machine when to
switch batteries, for both charge and discharge. Parallel charging and
discharging is easiest on the batteries, but when the user is out in the field
and has to get the most use out of multiple batteries, or if he has to squeeze
charging time into a tight schedule, manual control of the charger can be very
helpful.
- Smart Battery
- The battery presently reports percent of charge,
which has many disadvantages, and the capacity does not seem to be updated as
the battery wears out. Instead it should report the stored charge in coulombs
(or, equivalently, amp-hours), as well as its estimated capacity. When the
battery is nearly discharged and the state of charge can be estimated from the
voltage, the stored charge should be reset accordingly. The BIOS should
measure and report the current drawn by the computer and going into or out of
the battery, perhaps averaged by the BIOS over 1 and 10 minutes. The operating
system's program can then do the division and get a more realistic estimate of
the remaining run time or the time until the battery is charged.
- Suspend to RAM Battery
- An old machine we have at work includes
a small battery which is (supposedly) able to run the whole machine for a few
minutes while the main battery is exchanged for a full one, or is able to
maintain a suspended machine for several hours until AC power can be located.
This battery can be a lifesaver when the main battery runs out. One strategy
is to suspend to disc, but as noted
elsewhere, I wonder if a sinking battery
will have enough charge to accomplish that. High current from a small battery
is very demanding, and it would make sense to restrict the small battery only
to suspended operation.
- Wireless
- This is a Linux development issue.
Presently if you want wireless on a desktop machine you get a PCI to PCMCIA
bridge card (for about $40) and put a PCMCIA wireless card in it. Linux
support for these bridges is said to be buggy, and my experience confirms that.
Then, the antenna sticks out the back of the metal CPU case into a tangle of
cables and facing away from where the partner is most likely located. One
variant of the Cisco-Aironet PCMCIA card has a jack for an external antenna,
but is also quite expensive. The ideal solution is a USB wireless NIC, because
a moderately long USB cable can be used to place it up high and away from
obstructions, and the cost is about the same as for a PCMCIA card. However,
USB networking is not an official part of the kernel. I look forward to that
development with great anticipation.