Thank the Lord and all of you who prayed and contributed — the laptop arrived today. It wasn’t picture-worthy, just a simple box with the simplest packing. The main thing about the machine itself is that it is relatively small (13″), light and rather thin. As expected, I couldn’t stand the default Unity interface, so I installed the Xubuntu desktop packages and I’m using it for this post.
Dell does throw in a couple of special drivers, and they add Google Chrome browser for some reason. It’s okay, but unexpected. I suppose it has to do with some kind promotional deal so Dell makes a few extra bucks. However, I can confirm the keyboard is comfortable, but I’ll have to get used to the shallow keystrokes. My only real complaint is that the touchpad doesn’t allow me to emulate the middle mouse button paste. I have to actually put a mouse on it to get that. But the display is very sharp and everything else seems to work as expected.
Thanks again, folks.
