Dear all.
  I have been using a DELL inspiron E1505(6400) since Aug 06. I use Ubuntu.
  I usually drain my battery once in 3 weeks/a month. the same way, I
  let my battery drain and slept off on friday (21/3). On saturday I
  noticed that the battery now has 0% charge. and It doesnt get charged
  after that.
  1. I use a 65 W adapter, tried using a 90W adapter. -> No result.
  2. The terminals of the battery are at 12.88 V DC, when the AC power
  is switched on, I didnt check the current flow though. I.E. the
  battery starts to charge but the charging happens only for a about
  20-30 seconds. and after that it stops.


  any ideas of what I need to before I go in for a new battery would be
  very helpful.
  thanks in advance.
  -santhana.

I will be out of the office starting  22/03/2008 and will not return until
01/04/2008.

I will respond to your message as soon as I can. For urgent matters please
contact our service center at 02/717.08.00 or contact@....

I have heard that draining a battery is not good for it, but others
say it prolongs the life.
If the battery is not taking a charge anymore, I don't think there is
anything you can do to fix it.  They do have a set life on the number
of recharges they can take, so I think you found out who many yours
can have.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 7:08 AM, Santhana Krishnan Boopalan
<santhanakrishnan.b@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear all.
>  I have been using a DELL inspiron E1505(6400) since Aug 06. I use Ubuntu.
>  I usually drain my battery once in 3 weeks/a month. the same way, I
>  let my battery drain and slept off on friday (21/3). On saturday I
>  noticed that the battery now has 0% charge. and It doesnt get charged
>  after that.
>  1. I use a 65 W adapter, tried using a 90W adapter. -> No result.
>  2. The terminals of the battery are at 12.88 V DC, when the AC power
>  is switched on, I didnt check the current flow though. I.E. the
>  battery starts to charge but the charging happens only for a about
>  20-30 seconds. and after that it stops.
>
>  any ideas of what I need to before I go in for a new battery would be
>  very helpful.
>  thanks in advance.
>  -santhana.
>



--
no .sig found
Please restart your browser.

Draining Lithium Ion battteries is a bad idea.  Lithium Ion does not
suffer from the memory loss associated with Nickle Cadmimum batteries,
where discharging  them would "reset" the molecules because they forgot
how to take a charge after a while.  When you drain a li-ion battery,
all you are doing is shortening its life.

You need a new battery.  DON'T periodically discharge it, in fact, it
should be kept well charged whenever possible.  I leave the units I have
for sale plugged in all the time.  The batteries have internal circuitry
to regulate the charge current, and when they are full, they simply stop
taking any more current.

Ardell Faul
Computer Monitor Service Inc.
Ardell's Laptop and PC Repair
10816 E. Mission Ave.,
Spokane Valley, Wa.  99206
ardell@...
509-891-5188



Santhana Krishnan Boopalan wrote:

> Dear all.
> I have been using a DELL inspiron E1505(6400) since Aug 06. I use Ubuntu.
> I usually drain my battery once in 3 weeks/a month. the same way, I
> let my battery drain and slept off on friday (21/3). On saturday I
> noticed that the battery now has 0% charge. and It doesnt get charged
> after that.
> 1. I use a 65 W adapter, tried using a 90W adapter. -> No result.
> 2. The terminals of the battery are at 12.88 V DC, when the AC power
> is switched on, I didnt check the current flow though. I.E. the
> battery starts to charge but the charging happens only for a about
> 20-30 seconds. and after that it stops.
>
> any ideas of what I need to before I go in for a new battery would be
> very helpful.
> thanks in advance.
> -santhana.
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG.
>Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.21.8/1340 - Release Date: 3/23/2008 6:50
PM
>
>

Doesn't the e1405 use a lithium-ion battery?  If so, don't drain the
battery.  You will only shorten the life of the battery.

If the battery is ni-cad, drain to prevent the battery developing a
"memory".


On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 07:08:58 -0500, Santhana Krishnan Boopalan
<santhanakrishnan.b@...> wrote:

> Dear all.
>  I have been using a DELL inspiron E1505(6400) since Aug 06. I use
> Ubuntu.
>  I usually drain my battery once in 3 weeks/a month. the same way, I
>  let my battery drain and slept off on friday (21/3). On saturday I
>  noticed that the battery now has 0% charge. and It doesnt get charged
>  after that.
>  1. I use a 65 W adapter, tried using a 90W adapter. -> No result.
>  2. The terminals of the battery are at 12.88 V DC, when the AC power
>  is switched on, I didnt check the current flow though. I.E. the
>  battery starts to charge but the charging happens only for a about
>  20-30 seconds. and after that it stops.
>
>
>  any ideas of what I need to before I go in for a new battery would be
>  very helpful.
>  thanks in advance.
>  -santhana.



--
DblMtn
--

Dear Linux Experts,

I'm an owner of a three-years old inspiron 9300 laptop running linux
Mandriva 2007.1. In the last few weeks I got a few problems with the
fans and the CPU clock.

For no apparent reasons the fans start whirling at the highest speed and
the only way I found to turn them off is switching off and on the laptop.

Analogously the laptop CPU without reasons stops working at 2.2 Ghz and
slow down to 800 Mhz and again to turn off the laptop is the only way
that (sometimes not always) restores the top speed for the CPU.

Do you know why this happens? I have checked with the Dell check program
but both fans and CPU works correctly.

Especially do you know how to bypass this problems by forcing the turn
off/on of the fans (is there something like the i8k tools for the
i9300?) and regulate the CPU clock?

Thanks in advance for your help

Cheers
Walter

--
Walter Cazzola, PhD - Assistant Professor, DICo, University of Milano
E-mail cazzola@... Ph.: +39 010 353 6637  Fax: +39 010 353 6699
· · · --------------------------- · · · --------------------------- · · ·
                 ... recursive: adjective, see recursive ...
· · · --------------------------- · · · --------------------------- · · ·

On [Wed Mar 26 14:27], Walter Cazzola wrote:
> Dear Linux Experts,
>
> I'm an owner of a three-years old inspiron 9300 laptop running linux
> Mandriva 2007.1. In the last few weeks I got a few problems with the
> fans and the CPU clock.
>
> For no apparent reasons the fans start whirling at the highest speed and
> the only way I found to turn them off is switching off and on the laptop.
>
> Analogously the laptop CPU without reasons stops working at 2.2 Ghz and
> slow down to 800 Mhz and again to turn off the laptop is the only way
> that (sometimes not always) restores the top speed for the CPU.
>
> Do you know why this happens? I have checked with the Dell check program
> but both fans and CPU works correctly.
>
> Especially do you know how to bypass this problems by forcing the turn
> off/on of the fans (is there something like the i8k tools for the
> i9300?) and regulate the CPU clock?


On my i8200 forcing it off was done with Fn-Z.

- peter

On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Peter Teuben wrote:

> On [Wed Mar 26 14:27], Walter Cazzola wrote:
>> Dear Linux Experts,
>>
>> I'm an owner of a three-years old inspiron 9300 laptop running linux
>> Mandriva 2007.1. In the last few weeks I got a few problems with the
>> fans and the CPU clock.
>>
>> For no apparent reasons the fans start whirling at the highest speed and
>> the only way I found to turn them off is switching off and on the laptop.
>>
>> Analogously the laptop CPU without reasons stops working at 2.2 Ghz and
>> slow down to 800 Mhz and again to turn off the laptop is the only way
>> that (sometimes not always) restores the top speed for the CPU.
>>
>> Do you know why this happens? I have checked with the Dell check program
>> but both fans and CPU works correctly.
>>
>> Especially do you know how to bypass this problems by forcing the turn
>> off/on of the fans (is there something like the i8k tools for the
>> i9300?) and regulate the CPU clock?

> On my i8200 forcing it off was done with Fn-Z.

it is not the case here, the support of the function keys is very low
under mandriva 2007.1 on i9300 or at least I give up to get my function
keys working long ago.

Best
Walter

--
Walter Cazzola, PhD - Assistant Professor, DICo, University of Milano
E-mail cazzola@... Ph.: +39 010 353 6637  Fax: +39 010 353 6699
· · · --------------------------- · · · --------------------------- · · ·
                 ... recursive: adjective, see recursive ...
· · · --------------------------- · · · --------------------------- · · ·

On [Wed Mar 26 14:52], Walter Cazzola wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Mar 2008, Peter Teuben wrote:
>
> > On [Wed Mar 26 14:27], Walter Cazzola wrote:
> >> Dear Linux Experts,
> >>
> >> I'm an owner of a three-years old inspiron 9300 laptop running linux
> >> Mandriva 2007.1. In the last few weeks I got a few problems with the
> >> fans and the CPU clock.
> >>
> >> For no apparent reasons the fans start whirling at the highest speed and
> >> the only way I found to turn them off is switching off and on the laptop.
> >>
> >> Analogously the laptop CPU without reasons stops working at 2.2 Ghz and
> >> slow down to 800 Mhz and again to turn off the laptop is the only way
> >> that (sometimes not always) restores the top speed for the CPU.
> >>
> >> Do you know why this happens? I have checked with the Dell check program
> >> but both fans and CPU works correctly.
> >>
> >> Especially do you know how to bypass this problems by forcing the turn
> >> off/on of the fans (is there something like the i8k tools for the
> >> i9300?) and regulate the CPU clock?
>
> > On my i8200 forcing it off was done with Fn-Z.
>
> it is not the case here, the support of the function keys is very low
> under mandriva 2007.1 on i9300 or at least I give up to get my function
> keys working long ago.

The Fn-Z function is a direct call into the BIOS and doesn't need an OS,
at least that's my understanding!      But it may very well be that for this
Dell model they've changed the keys.

p.

Does the bios even detect the drive?  I have seen similar symptoms when the
motherboard was starting to fail and not detecting components attached to it.
A few times reseting the bios would force it to redetect things and that fix
the corruption in the bios that was causing the problem.

Or use a cleaning disk to clean the laser.

On Saturday 19 April 2008 12:19:35 pm G Raghuram wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   My Dell Inspiron 1000 (3.5 yrs old) is giving strange problems nowadays.
> It is not able to read/detect some CDs which it used to previously read.
> Also, It is not able to read/detect CDs written on other computers. Even if
> make a rewriteable CD blank (on a different laptop) and insert it into my
> laptop, it is not able to detect it. I donot have a clue of whats
> happening. Someone please help!
>
> --Raghuram

Most likely the laser in the CD unit is getting weak and/or losing its
ability to focus on the data, which are very very small "pits" etched
into the surface of the disk.  The best and possibly only cure will be
to repalce the unit.    Some units are for sale on Ebay, like item
160230141543

Ardell Faul
Computer Monitor Service Inc.
Ardell's Laptop and PC Repair
10816 E. Mission Ave.,
Spokane Valley, Wa.  99206
ardell@...
509-891-5188



G Raghuram wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
>   My Dell Inspiron 1000 (3.5 yrs old) is giving strange problems
> nowadays. It is not able to read/detect some CDs which it used to
> previously read. Also, It is not able to read/detect CDs written on
> other computers. Even if make a rewriteable CD blank (on a different
> laptop) and insert it into my laptop, it is not able to detect it. I
> donot have a clue of whats happening. Someone please help!
>
> --Raghuram
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG.
>Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.2/1386 - Release Date: 4/18/2008 5:24
PM
>
>

--- In linux-dell-laptops@yahoogroups.com, uteck <theuteck@...> wrote:
>
> Does the bios even detect the drive?  I have seen similar symptoms
when the
> motherboard was starting to fail and not detecting components
attached to it.
> A few times reseting the bios would force it to redetect things and
that fix
> the corruption in the bios that was causing the problem.
>
> Or use a cleaning disk to clean the laser.
>
> On Saturday 19 April 2008 12:19:35 pm G Raghuram wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >   My Dell Inspiron 1000 (3.5 yrs old) is giving strange problems
nowadays.
> > It is not able to read/detect some CDs which it used to previously
read.
> > Also, It is not able to read/detect CDs written on other
computers. Even if
> > make a rewriteable CD blank (on a different laptop) and insert it
into my
> > laptop, it is not able to detect it. I donot have a clue of whats
> > happening. Someone please help!
> >
> > --Raghuram
>
hat Uteck means by resetting the BIOS is downloading the current BIOS
from the BIOS maker's website, the loading the new BIOS, or the old
one if you would prefer, into the BIOS. The BIOS is on the motherboard.

"Is there anyway to avoid/delay this failing of components."

Everything fails at one point or another. There no way to prevent
failing if you want to use the computer. You could leave it turned off
for long, brief periods of time, then it may avoid failure. Use this
as an example. The alternator on your vehicle fails and needs to be
replaced. There is no guarantee the the replacement will last longer
or less time. It may even fail a week after it was installed.

The motherboard BIOS is generally a robust device, but occasionally it
does become corrupted.

> i have tried every method to recover it, but it is useless. Do i
have to buy a software and reinstall it
>   I have problems with my quicktime internet video viewer, i am
guessing i deleted that too unknowingly, do i have to buy and
reinstall it again?
>   My laptop is from toshiba, satellite M115-S1601

Sounds like you're running Bill Gates OS on your on your Toshiba
Satellite M115-51601. 1. This group is for people running Linux, 2. on
Dell laptops. When did Dell begin producing for Toshiba? Bill GAtes
doesn't write Linux software. You're in the wrong group.

Boot up the computer into the bios setup
Press 'ALT' and 'F' at the same time
Turn 'NUM LOCK', 'SCROLL LOCK' and 'CAPS LOCK' on. (Make sure the lights on
the keyboard are on.)
Press 'ALT' and 'P' at the same time. The bios should now be reset to the
factory settings.

If this fails, then you may be out of luck unless Dell has a recall for your
laptop.  I know they did for the GX270? dekstop which I dealt with a lot were
I used to work a few years ago.

On Saturday 19 April 2008 11:27:40 pm G Raghuram wrote:
> Does the bios even detect the drive? I have seen similar symptoms when the
> motherboard was starting to fail and not detecting components attached to
> it.
> A few times reseting the bios would force it to redetect things and that
> fix
>
> the corruption in the bios that was causing the problem.
>
> Uteck,
>    The bios is not detecting the drive. By resetting the bios, do you mean
> that I should restore factory settings? Or does bios resetting mean
> something else?  Is there anyway to avoid/delay this failing of components.
>
> raghuram

--- In linux-dell-laptops@yahoogroups.com, "G Raghuram"
<contactraghu@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>   My Dell Inspiron 1000 (3.5 yrs old) is giving strange problems
nowadays.
> It is not able to read/detect some CDs which it used to previously read.
> Also, It is not able to read/detect CDs written on other computers.

Hi, G. Raghuram, I've been following this thread, and have a simple
clarification question. You use the word "some", which means to me
"not all". Is this correct? I ask because over the years a recurring
problem I've seen on a few computers seems similar. That is that a CD
I can read on my own and some other's computers cannot be read on the
computer that wrote the disk, and sometimes disks written on other
computers also can't be read. The problem I finally discovered was
that the CD write sessions were never closed. I would using my laptop
write a one word file to the CD, and , voila, suddenly the disk and
the seemingly dead disk drive came back alive with all the previously
hidden data. So, I figure that their write sessions defaulted to
multiple session writes. I'm not talking about re writable CDs, just
multiple sessions strung together. This is what brings my original
query about the word "some". --Douglas

I have openSuse 10.3 running on a Latitude D830 and would like to add
a portable webcam for videoconferencing, probably using Skype. Any
suggestions on webcams known to work in this environment would be much
appreciated. Price isn't really an issue and neither is bandwidth.

Thanks in advance.

--Ted

I was just watching a show that talked about video conferencing with Skype.
There are only a few cameras that are supported and you need the MS version
of Skype for it to work.
On Wednesday 23 April 2008 9:38:23 am Ted Markowitz wrote:
> I have openSuse 10.3 running on a Latitude D830 and would like to add
> a portable webcam for videoconferencing, probably using Skype. Any
> suggestions on webcams known to work in this environment would be much
> appreciated. Price isn't really an issue and neither is bandwidth.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --Ted

uteck a écrit :
>
>
> I was just watching a show that talked about video conferencing with Skype.
> There are only a few cameras that are supported and you need the MS version
> of Skype for it to work.

That's wrong, I just test it:
- with integrated webcam (Dell XPS M1330) it works
- with external webcam (Logitech QuickCam pro 4000) it works.
I think it works with all webcam that works with linux.
I don't use skype, i prefer ekiga (it is opensource and it uses
standards h323, sip...)

Alex.

> On Wednesday 23 April 2008 9:38:23 am Ted Markowitz wrote:
>  > I have openSuse 10.3 running on a Latitude D830 and would like to add
>  > a portable webcam for videoconferencing, probably using Skype. Any
>  > suggestions on webcams known to work in this environment would be much
>  > appreciated. Price isn't really an issue and neither is bandwidth.
>  >
>  > Thanks in advance.
>  >
>  > --Ted
>
>


--
http://www.univ-orleans.fr/lifo/Members/tessier/
tel: +33 (0)238494670

After I responded I read the Skype article in this month's Linux Journal.
They said web cams do work, but playback is not that good.  The Linux version
is a 2.0 beta, but the MS version is at 3.2 and has many more features.  The
one I was confused about is the HD video support.  For that you need the MS
version and a special camara.

On Wednesday 23 April 2008 2:56:58 pm Tessier Alexandre wrote:
> uteck a écrit :
> > I was just watching a show that talked about video conferencing with
> > Skype. There are only a few cameras that are supported and you need the
> > MS version of Skype for it to work.
>
> That's wrong, I just test it:
> - with integrated webcam (Dell XPS M1330) it works
> - with external webcam (Logitech QuickCam pro 4000) it works.
> I think it works with all webcam that works with linux.
> I don't use skype, i prefer ekiga (it is opensource and it uses
> standards h323, sip...)
>
> Alex.
>
> > On Wednesday 23 April 2008 9:38:23 am Ted Markowitz wrote:
> >  > I have openSuse 10.3 running on a Latitude D830 and would like to add
> >  > a portable webcam for videoconferencing, probably using Skype. Any
> >  > suggestions on webcams known to work in this environment would be much
> >  > appreciated. Price isn't really an issue and neither is bandwidth.
> >  >
> >  > Thanks in advance.
> >  >
> >  > --Ted

> Hi Douglas,
>    Your interpretation of 'some' is correct. Some cds are
readableand others
> are not readable.
>    However, In my case, it so happens that the presence of cd is not
> detected at all by the drive. It says      "Please put a disk in the
drive"
> Did you have same msg when you used a multi-session cd? Or does it
say the
> cd is not readable?

Hi, Raghu, yes in fact the drives did appear to be unable to detect a
disk at times. Because of that, I twice incorrectly, perhaps, replaced
the drives. I now think that the problem stemmed from software
incompatibilities. My linux system was always able to read the disks,
though. The disks were written on windows systems. If I were you, I
would find someone who can test the disks on another computer or two.
If the disk can be read, have them add a small file to the disk and
close the session. Then try to read the disk again on your system.
good luck, Douglas

Hello friends,

SafeSquid, Linux based Content Filtering Internet Proxy, Version
4.2.2.RC8.2 has been released.

Highlights:
A memory leak in request forwarding has been fixed. The disk cleaning
mechanism has been rolled back. Logs have been fixed to report
"username@IP_ADDRESS". Crashing due to incompatible values set in the
global sub-section has been fixed. Repeated authentication challenges
have been fixed. cProfiles (a Web site profiler) has been added. The
SafeSquid init script has been enhanced. Automatic log rotation has
been improved. There are major optimizations to allow handling of more
than 1024 concurrent sockets. There are optimizations in the automatic
creation of directives for Monit.

Check 'Changelog' on the SafeSquid Forum for details.

Cheers.

Hi!

I'm going to buy a Latitude D830 soon, but haven't decided yet, what
graphics card to choose. For a T9300 I can select between a NVidia NVS
140M or an on-board Intel GMX X3100.

Which of these graphics cards causes less trouble on Linux? Will the
GMA X3100 have enough performance for Beryl / Compiz and 3D
applications like Blender? I also need to run some more or less
complex WPF applications in a VirtualBox VM with XP or Server 2008.

What about support of external monitors? Am I restricted in the
resolution of the external monitor somehow?

Anything else I should be aware of, when intending to run Linux on the
D830?

Thanks,

Tobias

--- tzaphod <listaccount@...> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I'm going to buy a Latitude D830 soon,

You don't want to buy a "linux" laptop except from a
company like Linux Certified which has worked out the
driver and configuration issues.

Dell claims to sell a Linux version of the 1420 which
I made the mistake of buying.  It was 32 bit only (not
biarch), the wireless driver had over 30% packet loss,
it went into infinite loops when coming back from
suspend, etc.

While all these things can be solved you don't want to
loose a few days doing it.

> What about support of external monitors? Am I
> restricted in the
> resolution of the external monitor somehow?

You can configure the NVIDIA driver to support
1920x1200 external and move your desktop between
internal and external monitors with xrandr.

Drew Eckhardt wrote:

>> I'm going to buy a Latitude D830 soon,

> You don't want to buy a "linux" laptop except from a
> company like Linux Certified which has worked out the
> driver and configuration issues.


I generally don't see a problem in running Linux on a Latitude D830. All
components are known to work with Linux. I'm just not sure, which graphics
card is better.


> Dell claims to sell a Linux version of the 1420 which


I'm not interested in an Inspiron - it hast to be "business-class"
notebook - that's the Latitude at the moment (I think Vostro and XPS only
come with glossy WSXGA+ displays.).

What about running an external 19" monitor with 1280 x 1024 and the
notebook with 1680 x 1050?

I'm not sure, but I think I've read somewhere the GMA is limited to
2048x2048, so the above combination wouldn't work.
Can anyone confirm this?


Tobias