Feedback on the Dell Inspiron 1545

Asked by Waso

The details on this ( http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/200912-4897/ ) page seem to mislead your customers. I own this laptop, and 3 of the 5 specs are incorrect. same with this ( http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/200912-4896/ ) page which when search lists it as a Dell Inspiron 15 as oppose to what is on the page itself. You seem to get a lot of specs on the models you support wrong. So my feedback is that this sucks, and the customer is better off just hooking up to a network via ethernet connection from the Marvell ethernet brand port and downloading updates via the installer because this never works out of the box except for that one component.

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Daniel Manrique (roadmr) said :
#1

Hello,

Whether a system will work or not with Ubuntu is very dependent on the set of components it contains. Thus, if you say that "3 of the 5 specs are incorrect" for the quoted system as compared to yours, it means that your system doesn't have the same specs as the one that was tested and certified, and thus, the certification does unfortunately not apply to your system.

I understand that seeing "model X is certified with these specifications" and then confirming that your system, with the exact same "model X" sticker, is different from what we show, is very confusing. Unfortunately manufacturers do reuse model numbers for systems with different specs, something which has troubled us for a long time but is out of Canonical's control.

That's why the certification page states clearly "The Dell Inspiron 1545 portable with the components described below". This means that if your 1545 has different components, then it's not the one we certified and we do not guarantee Ubuntu will work on it as described.

This has definitely been an issue before, and we have some answers explaining how it all works:

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+faq/2224

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+faq/1664

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu-certification/+faq/1536

Revision history for this message
Waso (andrewbean90) said :
#2

Well I am sorry to inform you Mr. Manrique but Dell only released the Inspiron 1545 with my features. The newer versions are listed as a Inspiron 15r and so on. The Dell Inspiron 1545 only came with all of my specs which are almost none of these with only 3 changes in terms of specs were changed when they upgraded it to the OS Windows 7 and removed OEM support for Ubuntu. They left the support for Vista and XP when the updates occurred. They removed 1 GB of ram in 1 of the slots and replaced it with a 2 GB piece, added more HDD spaces but the same brand of HDD that you don't list; but in turn still has a Intel processor different than the ones listed. A Intel T4400 at 2.2 ghz dual-core. I would be happy to give you the specs, or you could just download the manual. The system has yet to work fully out of the box (or out of the iso if it were) without a ethernet network connection connected directly to the router since 8.10 which was the one they bundled with the system if asked for it online, and Dell gave drivers for that Ubuntu Linux OS version. This is all the reasons why I stated your certification pages suck. Plain and simple they just suck. They never list the correct components on any premade system, and basically require you to have a wired connection at install to get the drivers to work correctly meanwhile you can use old wireless cards for this in Windows and other OSes including OpenSUSE and Linux Mint just to name a few.

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Po-Hsu Lin (cypressyew) said :
#3

Hello,

The system we certified here was provided by Dell.
Dell is selling their machines all over the world. They might ship systems with different configs in certain regions, base on their marketing strategy. And unfortunately we have no control over it.
Maybe that's the reason why you can only see the config of your Inspiron 1545 on the market.

If you're interested, you can check how the hardware configuration vary for Inspiron 1545 in the specification section of the following document:
ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-1545_setup%20guide_en-us.pdf

I think you have pointed out a good point for us to improve our site, maybe we should add a note to inform users about this kind of availability issue.

Regards.

Revision history for this message
Waso (andrewbean90) said :
#4

Mrs. Po-Hsu I (like you) live in America. I was born and raised in Michigan. So that being said the one that you just listed is my exact model and is what I have been talking about. You have mislabeled it on the website if you are wanting to do the specs for models sold in the United States of America. I agree with you that you should add that note, but also add the note that you definitely mislabeled the systems and the system specs which you have proven with your link.

Revision history for this message
Waso (andrewbean90) said :
#5

Also the system refuses to work fully without an update during the system install via Ethernet connection since version 8.10