Dell E6500 – good hardware, but lots of software problems

I recently found myself in the market for a new home
computer. I have a D820 at work, which has been working fine for a
while now that I'm past the Vista pre-SP1 headaches, so I decided to
look at the new Dell Latitude E series. The E series is the next
generation business line, and the hardware specs on the E6500 I ended
up buying are excellent: Core2 Duo T9600 2.8GHz, WUXGA screen, 250G
hard drive will free fall sensor, 4G RAM, and lots of goodies that are
part of the base platform. Additionally, Dell has completely redesigned
the packaging of their Latitude line, and it's much more solid and
streamlined that past versions.

A laptop is only as good as how well it travels, so I decided to take the E6500 on a business trip to Europe last week (Eclipse Summit Europe
for those following on the Planet). I only put the basics on the laptop
before my trip, because I wanted to prove out the system before loading
it down. Sadly, even with only the basics installed, I had a ton of
problems that all point to unstable drivers and some lousy software
from Dell.

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