• Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Topic: dell inspiron 11z review

I had mentioned in a few posts about netbooks that I had ordered an 11z and it finally came in, so here's the promised review....

I configured mine with the dual-core cpu and bigger battery, but other than that left it stock. I also ordered an ssd for it but that hasn't arrived yet. So here's my first impressions. The larger battery is frickin huge... if you are planning on lugging this around I would just go with the stock battery, if I had known how much it stuck out the bottom I wouldn't have ordered it. The overall size of the laptop is pretty decent, but I think it's still a little too large to really compete with netbooks... it is really light and well built but a little larger than I feel it needed to be. They could have shaved about an inch from the width and length based on the external appearence(haven't opened it up yet).
I ran it with the vista that came on it for an afternoon to see how it was and to update the bios. It really reminded me how much I hate windows. My main complaint on vista was the touchpad, it was laggy and would zoom when I didn't want it to. After the bios update that was all I could take, so it was on to a stock karmic install until I get the ssd in.
the install went quickly, but I didn't feel like hooking it up by cable for the restricted drivers(wireless). It was kind of a pain because it doesn't have a cd drive, so I had to manually install the packages from the thumbdrive I made. Then I had to manually use dkms to get the wireless working. After that everything is smooth. The keyboard is pretty nice, definately a huge step up from the mini 9. The screen is awesome too, really crisp. With the dual-core everything is really snappy, plays 720p video fine, haven't test 1080p yet but it would probably struggle. Also the touchpad is much less annoying in ubuntu, two finger scrolling worked out of the box, and zoom doesn't(thats a good thing in my opinion).
The way I configured it came out to $500, a little pricey compared to a netbook, but it feels like I didn't have to make any compromises with it. All in all I'm pretty happy with it. So if your in the market for a netbook, but could afford an extra hundred or so dollars and don't mind a little bit bigger laptop(but not much, it is really light) then I would go wtih the 11z.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • pvsage
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  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: dell inspiron 11z review

Great review!

How's the battery life?

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

well I haven't installed my powermanagement app yet and I've been running with full brightness, also like I said I have the dual-core cpu so that sucks some more power too. But the first run is about 5 hours. I'll post back once I've installed my power manager and run with the display dimmed and see what I get. Also once I get the ssd in and swap out the wireless with the intel card I have.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • Registered: 2009-02-02
  • Posts: 547

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

iggykoopa wrote:

swap out the wireless with the intel card I have.

care to expand for the uneducated? tongue

  • pvsage
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Re: dell inspiron 11z review

I'll field this one. tongue

Dell (and several other PC manufacturers), in their infinite wisdom, prefer to use Broadcom wifi cards, which don't play nicely with open source software.  They even put Broadcom cards in their "n series" netbooks, which are the ones that came bundled with Dell's own rebranded version of Ubuntu Hardy.  Intel wifi cards, on the other hand, tend to be more open source friendly.  The difference?  To use a Broadcom card, you need a closed-source driver (sometimes referred to as a "binary blob") rolled into your Linux kernel.

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2009-02-02
  • Posts: 547

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

pvsage wrote:

I'll field this one. tongue

Dell (and several other PC manufacturers), in their infinite wisdom, prefer to use Broadcom wifi cards, which don't play nicely with open source software.  They even put Broadcom cards in their "n series" netbooks, which are the ones that came bundled with Dell's own rebranded version of Ubuntu Hardy.  Intel wifi cards, on the other hand, tend to be more open source friendly.  The difference?  To use a Broadcom card, you need a closed-source driver (sometimes referred to as a "binary blob") rolled into your Linux kernel.

Nice - always seemed a bit ironic i needed the internet to make my internet work tongue

Aside from linux-hapiness, are there any other advantages/disadvantages?

  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

The intel card is wireless N also, I could have upgraded to an N card when I bought it but I really don't like the broadcom cards.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • pvsage
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Re: dell inspiron 11z review

By "wireless N" you mean WWAN/mobile/cellular/yada/etc?  Not just wifi, but truly mobile?

I wonder if anyone makes bigger batteries for the Mini 9.  Have you gotten anything better than 3.5 hours on yours?

while ( ! ( succeed = try() ) );
  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

There are some larger third-party batteries for the mini, but I don't have any personal experiance with them, check out the mydellmini forums if you want some more info.
Wireless N is the newer wifi spec, it's just faster than B/G.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • benj1
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  • Registered: 2009-09-05
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Re: dell inspiron 11z review

iggykoopa wrote:

They could have shaved about an inch from the width and length based on the external appearence(haven't opened it up yet).

hehe, spoken like a true hacker.

- - - - - - - - Wiki Pages - - - - - - -
#! install guide           *autostart programs, modify the menu & keybindings
configuring Conky       *installing scripts
  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

lol well I need to put in the ssd and wireless card, and if I feel like it I should get a third antenna for the wireless card. When I put it in my mini I just used the two antenneas that came stock, but I really should put in a third one. There aren't really any other mods I can think of for this one though, if there was some way I could get a backlit keyboard that would be nice, because I type in the dark a lot.
After a couple days using it I definately think it's a great linux laptop, not so much with windows. If you're buying a new computer it's really worth the money. In my case since I already had an inspiron 1420 I'm not totally sure it was worth the money, I thought it would be a little smaller than it is, but it is a lot lighter the screen is nice and it runs really quick. So now I just have to find someone to buy my mini to help pay the new one back off. (hard drive still isn't in yet, have to check the mail during lunch)

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

now that I've been running it for a while I can report a little better on the battery life. I still don't have the ssd or intel wireless (stupid overseas shipping) but here's how it is with the stock config.
Totally stock running compiz standalone it averages about 11 watts with light firefox usage, that works out to about 4 hours of battery with the extended battery. Running wattospm I get about 8.5 watts with the same load and 6 hours of battery. Both ways once the cpu starts working a little more it goes up to around 13 watts and 3 hours of battery. Hopefully the numbers will be a little better with the ssd, but the intel might balance it back out since it is N and may take a little more power. The lowest I've seen it is with everything closed and backlight all the way down(wireless still on though) was 7 watts. That's lower than I saw with my mini 9, but it does quickly spike higher with any cpu usage. All in all though I'm very impressed with the new culv cpu's. The only thing that's weird to me is there are only two freqeuncy steps 1.3 and 1.2, if they had .8 then the power savings would be even better. I'm not sure if that is by design though because I couldn't find specs on it anywhere as to what it officially supports.
Just remembered the only other thing I changed from stock besides wattospm is I set /tmp as a ramdisk and have my firefox cache loaded to ram. Oh and it's running lucid now.

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
  • Registered: 2008-12-13
  • Posts: 1,480

Re: dell inspiron 11z review

finally got my SSD in, haven't had a chance to check the power because I'm setting everything back up. It's taken me all afternoon because I wanted to see if I could get btrfs working on my root drive. It was a little of a pain to set up, but it was totally worth it. This thing boots up insanely fast now, once I'm done setting everything up (probably tomorrow) I'll post a bootchart for it. Also the compress option with btrfs is nice, I only got a 32gb drive and it's helped space-wise already.
Just a side note...if you're planning on buying this laptop avoid taking it apart as much as possible. I figured with how easy the mini 9 was to upgrade it was a new direction for dell....well thats definitely not true with this one. To get to the wireless card I had to almost completely disassemble the laptop, just to find out it's a half-mini pcie card so my intel one won't fit sad

I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.