New Laptop arrived!

Two days ago I received my new laptop. I had ordered two of them from Dell some time ago, one for my girlfriend and one for me because my previous Laptop died (mainboard issues it seems). The new laptop is an Inspiron 6400 with the following specs:

• Intel Core 2 T5500 CPU with 1.66GHz and 667 MHz FSB
• 2GB Ram with 667 MHz FSB
• 160GB S-ATA Hard Drive with 5400 rpm
• DVD +/- RW
• Intel Express Integrated Graphics Controller 945
• Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG card
• 15.4″ Screen with a resolution of 1280×800
• A Bluetooth Module included
• A Card Reader for SD, MMC, MS, Pro, xD
• Of course a standard 56k Modem
• A Microsoft Windows XP Home License (which I will never ever use)

The first thing I did was to install Ubuntu Feisty on it. Here is a small list of what works out of the box and what needed some tweaking:

• The correct resolution was not discovered automatically. Instead a resolution of 1024×768 was chosen although the installation wrote 1280×800 into my /etc/xorg.conf file. I had to install the package 915resolution and after restarting gpm (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) the resolution was automatically recognized.
• Powermanagement works fantastically out of the box. I can see the remaining battery power and in opposite to my previous notebook it is the correct one. I can send my notebook to sleep and it wakes up properly again from both suspend and hibernate. It also goes to suspend mode when I close the lid while I am not connected to the power outlet. The display dimming controlled by gnome works as well.
• Because of the intel graphics card, Compiz worked out of the box. I still have one small issue here: If I run a 3D application (for example glxgears) and I rotate the cube, then the glxgears 3D area stays where it is (although the window decorations get rotated with the cube). Well, I think this issue will get resolved with one of the upcoming releases. I don’t mind that much because I don’t use the cube. I just wanted to try if it works out of the box.
• Wireless networking worked out of the box but the Ubuntu Restricted Manager showed me the device. I think this is because the firmware is non-free.
• All the multimedia keys work out of the box. I have an additionalkey called “MediaDirect” (has a small house printed on it) which had no function connected to it, but it seems to be a standard key because I could easily connect the functions from within the Gnome keyboard shortcuts settings. It had the code 0xed.
• Bluetooth file transfer worked without any problems after installing gnome-bluetooth.
• I did not try the card reader and the modem yet. I think I will try the card reader later on, but I will never have to try the modem at all.