McDonalds to Offer Free WiFi

It appears that starting in mid-January, McDonald’s will lift their $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access, and offer free WiFi. So, you can check your email and surf the net while eating you Big Mac! For McDonalds locations with WiFi, you can check this web site.

The Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000

For my Dell 11z, I was using a Logitech laser mouse because the small USB Nano receiver had such a small profile which allowed me to keep it inserted in a USB port permanently. I didn’t have to worry about breaking it off or damaging the 11z’s USB port as you would with the typical USB mouse receivers (which are about 1-inch in length). Unfortunately for me, my Labrador puppy got a hold of my Logitech mouse and chewed it to bits. Thus, I was on a search for a replacement mouse.

Now, I could have bought an identical Logitech mouse as I was using, but I wanted to find something that was a little bit smaller and easier to travel with. While on a business trip to Phoenix, I stopped in at a Target Store and found a good looking mouse made my Microsoft called the Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 (a good high-tech name!). It was slightly smaller than my previous Logitech mouse and also came with a low-profile nano USB receiver. So, I decided to give it a try and purchased it for $29.99 US.

After using it for a few days, I really like. It’s very lightweight, runs on one AA battery, and is advertised to work on several different surfaces (e.g., granite table top, carpet, wood, etc). It also is suppose to have a 10 month battery life, and has a convenient on/off switch on the bottom of the device.

The precision of the mouse is pretty good, and the scroll wheel is silent. Of course, it comes with the two standard mouse buttons, a center button (the clickable scroll wheel), a left-side button and the scroll wheel can tilt left and right.

So, I think I found a perfect mouse to use with my Dell 11z. Now, if it was only dog proof I’d be all set!

Intermittent WiFi Issues… FIXED!

Ever since upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 on my Dell 11z, I’ve been having Internet connectivity issues with my wireless home router. I’ll be connected and working along with either Firefox or Windows Remote Desktop, and all of sudden my Internet connect will be dropped. I check my WiFi connection and I am still connected to my wireless router, but the Internet connectivity is down. Sometimes it will come back online after waiting a minute or two, and other times it just won’t reconnect unless I reboot my machine. Even then, it drops the Internet connection intermittently about every 2 minutes or so. So what gives?

At first, I thought the problem might be my Belkin N+ Wireless Router since I got it recently. However, all of my other laptops seem to connect to the Internet with no dropping issues. I then thought it might be either the WiFi card itself or the WiFi drivers I installed. So, I went to Dell’s web site to download and install the latest drivers for the Dell 1520 Wireless-N Mini Card available for my Dell 11z. After installing that driver (version 5.30.21.0) I still had the same intermittent Internet disconnects.

I then did some Googling and found a posting on the Dell Support Forums site that stated Dell Support Reps often tell their customers to download the latest device drivers from the manufacturer’s site directly, since they have the latest and greatest stuff. As such, I found a link to a Broadcom WiFi mini-card driver that was newer (version 5.60.18.8) than what Dell had on their site. So I downloaded that version and gave it a try.

Low and behold, my intermittent WiFi Internet connection issue was solved! I can connect to my home wireless router and not have to worry about waiting every two minutes for my Internet session to reconnect. Hurray! So I learned a couple of lessons from this exercise:

1. The Dell driver’s site doesn’t always have the best device drivers. It may be better to go directly to the device manufacturer’s site and use their drivers (provided you know enough about the device and who makes it).
2. Device drivers are usually the culprit when you have issues on a newly installed OS.
3. Google is your best friend to resolving system issues.

So I’m very happy now that my Dell 11z is running much better. Nothing is more frustrating than an constantly dropping Internet connection!

Dell has updated Win 7 Drivers for 11z

When I first did the Win 7 upgrade for my 11z (last month) Dell had very few Win 7 drivers available on their support site. Consequently, I had to do a lot of digging around and guesswork to find suitable drivers. Fortunately, Dell has updated their support page for the 11z and most of the necessary Win 7 drivers are now available. Most importantly are the WiFi 1520 Card and Bluetooth card drivers. I’ve gone through the process of updating all of my drivers to match what is available on the Dell support site.

Also, I noticed a new BIOS firmware upgrade is available for the 11z dated 25 November 2009, which has a few bug fixes. Dell recommends installing this update, so I’ve done so on my 11z with no ill effects. Hopefully it will run a bit smoother!

Windows 7 Running Great on my Dell 11z

It’s been about  a week since I installed Windows 7 on my new Dell 11z, and everything is working great. Very quick, smooth, and no problems. It took me a while to get all the missing drivers and apps straighten out, but now the 11z is in full production mode.

Because of its compactness, I tend to take my 11z with me more when I head out to a coffeeshop or if I know I might have some down time waiting for an appointment or such. With such a laptop you begin to know all the free WiFi spots in the area, so staying connected isn’t that big of a problem. In fact, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are offering free WiFi at various airports in the US during the holiday season.

I’m still amazed at the clarity of the 11z display, as it’s very crisp and bright. It certainly makes up for the small size of the screen. The only negative I can call out is the short battery life. I get around 2.5 hours with the WiFi turned on, which is ok but sometimes I wish I could go 3-4 hours so I can ditch bring the AC power adapter. As a temporary solution, I’ve got a 110v cigarette lighter adapter that I use to charge my 11z in my car while I’m driving to different appointments. That seems to keep my 11z topped off when I go over the 2.5 hour limit.

Painful upgrade to Windows 7 for my Dell 11z

I just spent the entire day and a half working on getting Windows 7 installed on my Dell Inspiron 11z Netbook… what a hassle. Just to recap: I ordered my Dell 11z last month a few weeks before the release date of Windows 7, and Dell offered a promotion to “pre-install” Windows 7 on certain machines if they are delivered after Oct 22nd. My order fell in this category, so I made my purchase with the belief that my Dell 11z would ship on Oct 25th with Windows 7 installed, and thus I would avoid the hassle of doing an upgrade installation and having to fight to find the right drivers, etc. Well, that didn’t happen. My Dell 11z arrived with Windows Vista installed, and after talking with Dell support several times discovered my only recourse was to get the Windows 7 upgrade DVDs from Dell and do the upgrade myself.

First of all, the upgrade installation came on DVDs and I do not have an external DVD-ROM drive. So, I had to do some Googling to figure out how to create a bootable USB flash drive, copy all the install files to it, and boot up my Dell 11z from this USB drive.

After doing the installation (which went fairly smoothly), I discovered that several internal devices (such as the WiFi Card, Bluetooth module, card reader) were not present on my system under Device Manager. Apparently, these drivers were not part of the “native” drivers available with Windows 7. So I visited the Dell web site to discover that most of these drivers are non-existent under the Dell 11z product for Windows 7 drivers and apps.

I decided to contact Dell tech support via the online chat, and I get someone who just runs me in circles doing a bunch of crazy stuff. He’s giving me links to download drivers and apps that just don’t work. Finally, he tells me my Win 7 installation must have “gone bad” and I will need to reinstall Vista, then Windows 7 on top of that. Go suck an egg, brother… I’m not doing that!

Dell finally ships my Win 7 Upgrade DVD

After being told that my Dell Win 7 Upgrade DVD wouldn’t be shipped until around Nov 22nd, I just got an email confirming that Dell did ship out the upgrade this morning.

I have a UPS tracking number, but it apparently isn’t registered in the UPS system yet so I don’t know when the upgrade will be delivered. I’m actually getting two shipments (one for my Dell 11z and the other for my Son’s Dell Inspiron 15) so Dell may be processing all the registered requests pretty quickly now.

For those waiting for their upgrades, good luck. My next project, will be figuring out how to install Win 7 from a USB drive since I don’t have an external DVD-ROM drive available to use with my Dell 11z.

Dell delays my Win 7 Upgrade shipment

I just check the status of my Windows 7 OS Upgrade shipment, and Dell has moved the estimated shipping date out from November 7th to November 22nd. Ugh. I’m not sure what is going on with Dell these days.

Did they run out of DVDs, or do they not have the necessary drivers for the Dell 11z model figured out? Maybe customers are reporting major issues with running Windows 7 on their 11z (if they even have Win 7 installed by Dell on their machines)?

So much for the “buy now and we’ll ship your 11z with Windows 7 preinstalled” false advertisement. I really wish I had made a screenshot of their web page ad stating this so I could throw it back in Dell’s face to complain about it. I could probably just get the Windows 7 Family 3-Pack and install it today and not wait for Dell’s BS.

My first field trip with the Dell 11z

Today I’m traveling to Bremerton Island to visit a customer, so I decided to leave my giant Dell Precision M4400 laptop at home and take my new Dell 11z along with me. I’m only doing a Powerpoint presentation on this day trip so I don’t need to use my mega work laptop. As such, I’m taking my Dell 11z on its first field trip.

From Seattle I take the Ferry over to Bremerton which is about an 1 hour ride. During the journey,  I proceeded to the passenger deck and settle in at a table with my new Dell 11z out and ready. The ship has WiFi provided by Boingo, however I don’t have a Boingo account so I can’t utilize it. I do have my Verizon USB Broadband adapter, but in this case I really don’t need to be connected to the Internet.

Instead, I’ve got the WiFi turned off and I’m typing this blog in my Evernote application locally on my 11z. Note, that with WiFi turned off my Vista system showed 3 hours of battery life, which isn’t too shabby.

Now, I’m a stickler for being able to see a lot of content on the screen vertically, and with most Netbooks that have a 600 pixel vertical resolution that really is bothersome to me. In fact, I returned a Dell Mini 9 several months ago for that very reason. I’m happy to say that the 1366 x 768 resolution of my 11z works just fine. Especially when I fine tune FireFox to hide the top menubar. And again, the nearly full-sized keyboard is wonderful, and as a touch typist it works great.

The compact size of the 11z makes it a very welcomed travel companion. The only thing I’m missing is a DVD drive, but that isn’t a big deal since I normally don’t use one on a routine basis. If I ever wanted to watch movies or videos, I could certainly rip the video from a DVD to my PC and convert it to WMV or MP4 format (lessons I’ve learned for my Zune HD media player).

After getting off the ship in Bremerton, I have about an hour to kill before my customer visit so I stopped in at the local Starbucks for a small coffee. While there, I pulled out my 11z and tried to connect to the WiFi available at Starbucks (through AT&T). Fortunately, I can get 2 hours of free WiFi access because I have a registered Starbucks gift card. I highly recommend travelers to getting such a gift card, as it doesn’t cost you anything (other than the amount you put on the card) and it gives you free WiFi access at most Starbucks stores.

With the Starbucks WiFi connection, I do a quick speed test (using www.speedtest.net) and get the following results:

Don’t you just love free WiFi? While connected, I fire up Evernote on my 11z and do a quick syncing to save all the notes I’ve type in while on the Ferry ride (just in case). Evernote is a great place to place all my ideas that I can access later on my PC, and I highly recommend using it for note takers.

Carrying the 11z around in my travel bag is certainly nicer than the 10+ lbs Dell M4400 laptop. I’ll need to get a smaller travel bag that can hold my Dell 11z, its power cord, mouse, small notebook, and a few other minor accessories. Maybe a nice messenger bag of some sort. One thing I will look into, is getting an extra 3-cell battery pack. I could have ordered the 6-cell battery when I originally bought my 11z, but the battery just seemed too bulky and angled the keyboard up too high for my taste. An extra 3-cell battery would give me another 2.5 hours or so of power, so that should be long enough to be untethered from an AC outlet.

So, that was my first outing with my Dell 11z. It worked out well, and I very much appreciated the reduced weight in comparison to my usual Dell M4400 companion. This netbook would be the prefect machine for a traveling business person, except that it doesn’t have a VGA video port (which is necessary for Powerpoint presentations on most video projectors). A HDMI-to-VGA cable is a must for such a task (I wonder if Dell sells one?).

Wireless broadband speed test with the Dell 11z

For my work laptop I have a Verizon Wireless USB Broadband adapter which I can use to connect to the Internet using a cellular connection. Its come in handy when I’m at a remote location (say, in my car on the side of the road or in a small airport) and I want to check my email or look up an airline flight schedule. With all the available free WiFi these days, I’ve had to use this cellular adapter less and less often in my travels.

As a kick, I decided to test out the Verizon broadband adapter with my Dell 11z Netbook. So I loaded the Verizon Wireless Manager software, then inserted the USB device to make a wireless cellular connection. The web browser response time was reasonable, seeming much faster than a standard 56k Modem (remember those?). For an unofficial speed test, I went to www.speedtest.net and ran a test connecting to a local server in the Seattle area. Below is what the results were using the cellular wireless adapter on my Dell 11z:

I guess “Cellco Partnership” is the name of the cell tower service provider that Verizon is using in my area. As you can see, the download and upload speeds aren’t tremendously fast, but acceptable. I was able to attain 0.69 Mbps download, and 0.33 Mbps upload.

In comparison, here’s what I was able to get using my home desktop PC connected via a Comcast high-speed cable connection:

Here, I’m getting 25.52 Mbps download and 7.44 Mbps upload speeds which is great. I can remember not too long ago getting 1 Mbps download speed from a cable connection (and being happy with that), so the 25.52 Mbps isn’t something I can complain about!

WiFi is great, but in a pinch a cellular wireless connection isn’t too bad.