Re: [LinuxAP] Dell Truemobile 1184: where is it?

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, Bruno Lopes F. Cabral wrote:

> In july 2003 there was a hype on linux-ap mailing list
> about Dell True Mobile 1184 having linux inside. Since
> that, ppl became very silent.

I was one of the people who jumped on this early on.  I'm also the guy 
that comes up first if you google for Dell TrueMobile 1184.  I'm no longer 
very enthused about the hardware.  I'd rather spend my time working with 
something that's a little easier to re-flash (safely).  I've also had 
problems with Dells own firmware of the 1184 dropping out when traffic 
levels get too high.  For ~$70 a pop I was willing to give it a try but 
I'm not an embedded systems guru and I think that is what would be needed 
to figure out how to reflash these things without making $70 bricks.

> Now I found the unit has dissapeared from Dell's site. 

It was hard to find even when they were selling 'em.

Based on my access logs, the unit is still enjoying quite a lot of 
popularity, especially within the US Government and military 
applications.  I only ever got one hit from inside of Dell itself.

> The URL I got don't work anymore and searches on the site 
> only returns support question pages. The same happen on
> shopper.com and other on-line stores where the units used
> to be. IMHO this was problably because Dell didn't like 
> the hype the code discovery caused

I don't think they ever even realized it to tell you the truth.  I never 
heard anything from Dell suggesting I should take it down or adjust my 
content at all.  If there were internal controversy over it, you'd expect 
to see a brief flurry of traffic coming from inside of Dell against my web 
site but like I said there was only one quick hit and that was all.

> this said, I'm wishing if any of you have any luck on
> the port or have hear any other news about this, perhaps
> from other forums.

Honestly, I'm going to take the lazy way out and find something that is 
already well known to spin my own distro onto.

-=[magnus]=-