Dell Inspiron 11z

Ubuntu 10.10 worked. Needed to use ethernet to download wireless drivers, then all was good.

The keyboard pulls up in in spots where not specifically screwed in. I've re-tightened the screws but it doesn't matter. The result is that some keystrokes are missed. Not a big deal for me. I don't like the touchpad and it's even funnier acting in Windows 7… under both OSes it is slow to respond, doesn't accelerate properly, buttons need an explicit & deliberate push, etc. I've checked the hardware here too with no luck. It's workable but slightly annoying. I got a wireless mouse to avoid the issue.

Battery life is 4-6 hours depending on use, and it looks great with the HD screen and over HDMI. I'm loving the speed for a “netbook” type PC too - boot time and Google Chrome are quick.

Great little PC and for the price (refurbished model) - I can't complain. Would love a backlit keyboard, more solid case, and the battery to stick out the back instead of down.

Design it gets a 7 of 10.
Everything else is 10 of 10.

The sad thing about this site is that you seem only to try ubuntu in your machines. Why dont you try Fedora Linux, which is known by its great wireless compatibility even in its Live CDs? I know a lot of people having wireless problems in Ubuntu which get solved immediatly in Fedora. Come on give it a chance

only issue I have is the mobile broadband card. it sees it, but it won't connect or see a signal. worked fine before i blew away Win7

I have an 11z with the dual-core SU4100 processor running 64-bit Arch Linux flawlessly. Getting it set up was a bit annoying, as the wireless ethernet needs the proprietary Broadcom drivers, and the wired ethernet needs a fairly recent kernel (the install images I had were too old). To get Arch installed I needed to do a non-network install, and copy over an updated kernel from a different machine, though this shouldn't be necessary if the install image you use is newer than 2009.08.

The touchpad is positioned annoyingly (it's hard not to brush it while typing), so I tend to leave it disabled and use a bluetooth mouse instead. Webcam works fine with mplayer, sound, wireless, network, card reader, bluetooth, and HDMI all work beautifully. I get battery life of around 4-5 hours (light use) with the somewhat dorky 6-cell battery, which also charges quite quickly. Even suspend/resume works fine.

I've experimented with the open-source wireless driver, but largely without success, but I've had no issues with the proprietary one (well, other than philosophical issues).

It's much snappier than my old laptop, and my old desktop, and I'm very happy with it.

I have the Dell 11z and unfortunatly my experience is that when I get UBUNTU 9.1 up and running, I run the updates, and go into the hardware drivers to activate my wireless and when I go to activate the SATA wireless Ubuntu freezes, Everyone tells me that the broadcom cards are not linux compatible, did anyone get wireless to work, even if it is putting in a new WLAN card. Help pleas.

ignore my above statement - in desperation, i reformatted my usb stick, and recreated the ubuntu 9.10 bootable usb stick from another machine, then tried again. and it worked, absolutely flawlessly. 20 mins and i was fully up and running on ubuntu, webcam works, desktop effects work, can't find a single fault with it. the touchpad works fine too. battery life with my 6 cell battery looks to be about 4 hours, but looking at the battery charge profile throughout the day, it depends on usage. an impressively quick laptop, i'm very pleasantly surprised, especially given my dreadful start, but it was the usb stick, not the laptop that was stopping my progress. highly recommended.

oh dear. i bought an 11z. can't get ubuntu 9.10 to boot / install. Nor Mint 7, Nor Knoppix Adrianne. Things are NOT looking good so far. Regret my purchase? YOU BETCHA.