Dell E521

[Jason_Mack at Dell.com]

David,

Thanks for your reply.  It does help focus on the problem.  This is a
Dimension series system, correct?

The insight that I can provide, is that for Tech Support to detect a
hardware failure on the phone, multiple OS's must have the failure
(well, it is one good way, at least).  The obvious route is to install
Windows and find out.

I suspect that it is a hardware issue, and from experience I'm aware
that Dell's Tech Support has a necessarily limited range of options.  To
me, the fact that you have tried multiple OS's (Linux and BSD) and
multiple versions of those, is proof that something should be done with
the Dell hardware to correct the problem.

My standard and Tech Support's will necessarily differ.  Unfortunately.
Since they tend to be more familiar with Windows, installing that and
showing the same failure may actually convince them to take action on a
given hardware issue.  They may require you to point out to them
explicitly, "If 2 very different OS's have the exact same issue, then
software can reasonably be excluded as a cause of the issue."

There is a chance that a BIOS update may come along that fixes it.
There are 2 problems with waiting:  1) I could well be wrong, and 2) You
are the customer, ultimately Tech Support, given a hardware issue, will
respond properly.

I'm sorry that we here in the "linux department" do not have appropriate
hardware to reproduce the issue.

I'd like to investigate it more, but again, I apologize for the issue
being beyond my scope.

Yours,

Jason
 
-----Original Message-----
From: David Siebert [mailto:glwatcdr at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 2:31 PM
To: Mack, Jason - Authorized Dell Representative
Subject: Re: Dell E521

Many people have already done so.  Some people can get it to work with
powered hubs. That didn't work for me. One person says that CentOS fixes
is which I find very interesting. It is all over the Ubuntu and Dell
message boards.
Many people have called to complain and get the answer "It works in
Windows".
It may be something that an update to Linux can fix but Dell knows of
the problem. I  was more wondering if Dell knew of any fix coming soon.
Or if they are trying to track down the problem.
As I have said it seem to effect SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu and even FreeBSD.
I would suggest getting one yourself. It isn't hard to duplicate. Just
hook up a mouse and keyboard and install OpenSuSE 10.1 It will not take
too long to crop up. Less then 20 minutes.



----- Original Message ----
From: "Jason_Mack at Dell.com" <Jason_Mack at Dell.com>
To: glwatcdr at yahoo.com; linux-desktops at lists.us.dell.com
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 12:20:51 PM
Subject: RE: Dell E521

David,

Since you can show a failure of the hardware by using good hardware, I'd
call Dell Tech Support, and explain the problem.

Jason


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-desktops-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-desktops-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of David Siebert
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2006 11:15 AM
To: linux-desktops
Subject: Dell E521

I got a Dell E521 for Linux development.
It has been one problem after another. The USB ports don't seem to work
that well. It looses the mouse and or keyboard randomly. The thing is I
am not the only one having this issue. It seems to effect BSD, Ubuntu,
Fedora, and OpenSuse.
I went and bought a USB card and that works fine but I only have two
slots and now both are full.






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