Staying in sync with the latest official patches on Ubuntu is a bad idea. After the recent samba updates I can’t connect to my Windows share anymore with Ubuntu, something I was able to do for 2 years now. Just like that, poof, a feature just gone. Very poor testing. Nothing ever works well in any OSS desktop, something is always broken one way or another.

Dell released tonight their new Studio laptop line. They are very nice looking laptops: they go up to full HD 1920×1200 at 15″ or 17″, they have an HDMI out to watch movies on the HDTV, and there is a choice for a Blu-Ray player. I swear, I would go for one, but not without the following three features that I also need:
- Keyboard backlight. On my current laptop I hit the stumbling block all the time: I mostly use the laptop when JBQ is sleeping and the lights are off or down. So I really need the backlight like the one on the Macbook Pros.
- DVD burning ability with their Blu-Ray player drive option. The current one reads CD/DVD/BD, but doesn’t burn CD/DVD. I do video, so I need the ability to burn DVDs.
- An SDHC reader slot (not plain SD). I need that to use with my Kodak HD digicam.

Give me these three hardware features (possibly for another $70) and I would buy one of these babies with closed eyes. I am afraid though that while these features will eventually come, by that time the firewire port would be redundant and it would be excluded — and I need firewire for my DV/HDV cameras.