E4300 resolution?

I got word from our IT department last week that Dell is going to replace the motherboard in my E4300 sometime in the next couple weeks.  The rumored BIOS update that was supposed to be out on January 19th still hasn’t appeared.  The only thing that is making life with my E4300 palatable is that the connections problems seem to under control now that I reinstalled the Dell Connection manager software.  It still behaves oddly from time to time but at least it is mostly usable.

The one behavior which still drives me crazy is the unwillingness to turn off or go into Stand-By.  I can press the function key or use the Start Menu option but the computer simply remains powered on.  Sometimes it will go into Stand By only to turn itself right back on a minute to two later.  Very annoying when it happens while it is in my computer bag.

Dell E4300 improvements

After all of the frustration I have had with the WiFi and wireless broadband I have had with my E4300, things are a little better.  The really odd things I am not really sure why.  Dell was supposed to have a BIOS update on January 19th but as of the 29th, it has yet to ship.  I have been checking their web site daily.

I had taken the SIMM card out of my laptop to use in a Sony-Ericsson Z750 UMTS phone that I have and when I put it back in my laptop, I noticed that I didn’t have a BroadBand device listed with the Dell Connection Manager.  Very odd.  I cannot explain why it went away.  After dinking with it off and on for a couple days, I decided to reinstall the Dell Connection Manager software.

After doing so, my BroadBand card was recognized AND both my WiFi and BroadBand connections have been more stable.  I worked for almost two hours Saturday night via BroadBand without any problems.  Last night I used my home WiFi connection for several hours also without any problems.  I had also noticed that there was a newer version of the Dell Connection Manager (A11 vs A10) than I had installed so I have installed it as well and all seems to be well for now.

I will continue to monitor this and I am sure that now I have committed it to a blog post, it probably won’t work worth a crap tonight when I need it!