Inspiron 1501 laptop and Ubuntu

[David M]

I'm looking to buy a laptop but am on a very limited budget, and 
therefore I'm very pleased to see that the Inspiron 1501 seems to meet 
my main requirements (reasonable screen resolution/size, enough memory, 
just about big enough hard disk, not-too-sluggish processor, 
DVD-writer) at a reasonable price. (If only it didn't have the "Windows 
Tax", it'd be an even more reasonable price ;-)

I get the impression that it is also by and large plain sailing as far 
as Linux is concerned (apart from perhaps WiFi), but I'm a little 
worried to read the following article:

http://ubuntu1501.blogspot.com/2007/04/cant-get-feisty-to-install.html


I'm a fairly experienced Linux user, but when I see things such as the 
possible need to reflash the BIOS, I still get The Fear..

Ubuntu is my preferred distro, and naturally, I do want to stay up to 
date with it, and I'd greatly prefer not to have to switch distros or 
stick with 6.06 LTS as a workaround, and I'd certainly really not want 
to have to reflash the BIOS. I'm sure I could probably handle it fine, 
but having to do things that could potentially kill a computer is not 
something that I would feel comfortable doing!


Dell's recent announcement of official support for Ubuntu is very 
welcome, and I sincerely hope that both Dell and Ubuntu can work to 
resolve this problem, and then hopefully I will be able to become a 
happy customer. Knowing that a laptop is properly fully-supported for 
the OS would be a great comfort. I greatly look forward to Dell making 
Ubuntu laptops available in the UK (and the rest of the world) as well 
as the USA.


David.

-- 
David M. -- Edinburgh, Scotland. -- [en,fr,(de) <-- corrections welcome]
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