I caved – Dell Latitude E5530 Review

I was about to spend $500 to upgrade my existing D630, and then I found out that my $dayjob gives us $1K to buy our own laptop. I threw my hands in the year and decided I would buy a new laptop.

Lots of back and forwards on whether I would go back to a Mac or buy the best Intel based laptop I could and run Linux on it. I am already pretty happy with my Dell and their enterprise range are usually well built. I did check out a few other makers, but they didn’t offer the same specifications.

Everything I have tested has worked first time or with a little bit of googling, which is good, I didn’t want to end up with something so bleeding edge hardware wise that running Linux was going to be difficult.

Quick overview:

• 16GB RAM
• 128GB SSD (I replaced this with my OCZ 256GB SSD)
• Core i7-3540M @3.0GHz
• 15″ matte LED backlit LCD 1920×1080

Keep in mind I am still running Ubuntu precise, but with the raring kernel.

One of the things that screwed me up for a while had nothing to do with laptop, but the fact that Bigpond tie their SIMs to their devices, that was so frustrating. So I went and got a SIM from Vodafone… well, I tried. I eventually got it after nearly 3 weeks. Anyway once that was in and I had changed the way the kernel modules load, the WWAN adaptor worked flawlessly.

http://v2.blogdoch.net/2013/02/17/wusel-102516/

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-289985.html

Laundry list of things:

• Booting when in the dock ends in a non-working X server (just don’t dock it at the moment)
• X server seems to crash (but restarts) on first startup sometimes
• bluetooth module is asleep (all the time)
  • https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=133093
    • for dpc in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control; do echo “on” > ${dpc}; done && hciconfig hci0 up && start bluetooth
• usb mouse slept (fix in laptop mode configuration)
• brightness fails to change sometimes
• would like to test digital audio pass through

Here’s the dmidecode, lspci and lsusb:

<br /> System Information<br /> Manufacturer: Dell Inc.<br /> Product Name: Latitude E5530 non-vPro<br /> Version: 01

Processor Information

Socket Designation: SOCKET 0

Type: Central Processor

Family: Core i7

Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation

ID: A9 06 03 00 FF FB EB BF

Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 58, Stepping 9

Flags:

FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)

VME (Virtual mode extension)

DE (Debugging extension)

PSE (Page size extension)

TSC (Time stamp counter)

MSR (Model specific registers)

PAE (Physical address extension)

MCE (Machine check exception)

CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)

APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)

SEP (Fast system call)

MTRR (Memory type range registers)

PGE (Page global enable)

MCA (Machine check architecture)

CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)

PAT (Page attribute table)

PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)

CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)

DS (Debug store)

ACPI (ACPI supported)

MMX (MMX technology supported)

FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)

SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)

SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)

SS (Self-snoop)

HTT (Multi-threading)

TM (Thermal monitor supported)

PBE (Pending break enabled)

Version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3540M CPU @ 3.00GHz

Voltage: 0.0 V

External Clock: 100 MHz

Max Speed: 3000 MHz

Current Speed: 3000 MHz

Status: Populated, Enabled

Upgrade: Socket rPGA988B

L1 Cache Handle: 0x0042

L2 Cache Handle: 0x0041

L3 Cache Handle: 0x0043

Serial Number: Not Specified

Asset Tag: Fill By OEM

Part Number: Fill By OEM

Core Count: 2

Core Enabled: 2

Thread Count: 4

Characteristics:

64-bit capable

Memory Device

Array Handle: 0x0044

Error Information Handle: Not Provided

Total Width: 64 bits

Data Width: 64 bits

Size: 8192 MB

Form Factor: SODIMM

Set: None

Locator: ChannelA-DIMM0

Bank Locator: BANK 0

Type: DDR3

Type Detail: Synchronous

Speed: 1600 MHz

Manufacturer: Samsung

Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Asset Tag: 9876543210

Part Number: M471B1G73BH0-CK0

Rank: 2

Configured Clock Speed: 1600 MHz

root@dangermouse:~# lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09)

00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)

00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)

00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)

00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4)

00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4)

00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev c4)

00:1c.6 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev c4)

00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)

02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)

0b:00.0 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Device 8221 (rev 05)

0c:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5761 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)

root@dangermouse:~# lsusb

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:8197 Dell Computer Corp.

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0c45:643f Microdia

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 08ff:2810 AuthenTec, Inc. AES2810

Bus 002 Device 007: ID 413c:818e Dell Computer Corp.