Dell XPS M1330 delivery woes are over

My new XPS M1330 finally arrived today - earlier than predicted, and I must admit it's lovely.

The only difference between the original order and the second order was the Bluetooth module, so it seems Dell has a problem with the Bluetooth module under Ubuntu.

Which leaves me with two questions:
1. Why does the Bluetooth module option exist on their website when I select Ubuntu?
2. Why couldn't they get in touch with me when they found they'd got a problem with the Bluetooth module on my original order, rather than just cancelling the order?

Posting twitter messages from Python

I've been doing a quick test, trying to post twitter messages using Python, with the Twyt library.

Suppose you've got a piece of equipment, that you want to get a Twitter message from if some event occurs....

Here's a small piece of sample code to show how its done, based on Tony Gambone's Twitmon code:


#!/usr/bin/python
import twyt.twitter as twitter

username = "your_username"
password = "your_password"
if __name__ == "__main__":
t = twitter.Twitter()
try:
t.setauth(username, password)
except AttributeError:
t.set_auth(username, password)

text = "this is a test message"

try:
t.status_update(text)
except twitter.TwitterException, e:
print "Error! " + e

Dell XPS M1330 delivery woes - an update

I've decided to give Dell another chance, more out of interest than hope. I've re-ordered the XPS M1330 with the bluetooth option deselected (but with more RAM than I'd previously chosen).

My order has been confirmed, and the projected delivery date is 26th August.

Lets see what happens....

Dell XPS M1330 delivery woes

I recently ordered a new Dell XPS M1330 laptop for my day-job, to replace my well-used Rock Pegasus TI, which has been a great servant and taken a hell of a beating.

I thought I'd plan ahead, and order my new workhorse before the old one died on me.

I also thought I'd take the plunge, to avoid Vista and go for Dell's Ubuntu Linux option (Hardy Heron 8.04) - which I'm already running on my old laptop (an aged Acer that lives under the sofa), and on my desktop machine.

I'm really keen to support Dell's efforts in the open-source arena, so I decided that I'd show my support and order it from them with Ubuntu pre-installed, rather than order it with Vista and then install Ubuntu myself.

Today was the projected delivery date, and I'm waiting patiently in the house, and I receive an email telling me the delivery has been cancelled (due to "a problem with the combination of components"). How cryptic is that? I'm really disappointed with Dell's customer service.

I suspect the problem may be due to the optional Bluetooth module that I'd specified. There seem to have been issues with Ubuntu's support for some Bluetooth hardware. If that was the issue, why couldn't they get in touch and ask me if I'd like to drop it?

Was I foolish to try to order the M1330? If I google around for "dell m1330 cancelled", there are loads of stories about tales of woe about terrible customer service and piss-poor communications from Dell.

I used to think that Dell were the easy choice for middle of the road equipment, but perhaps I'm wrong. Are they starting to get evil? Are they a company that hates its customers?

Getting the Three Huawei E169G 3g modem working under Ubuntu

I've managed to get my new Huawei E169G 3g modem working fine under Ubuntu Hardy.

I cheated and downloaded the Vodafone 3g driver from
http://betavine.net/bvportal/web/linux_drivers.

The settings I used are as follows:
number: *99#
chap
username: three
password: three
APN: 3internet

Manual DNS settings (I always use openDNS - its safer and quicker):
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

I highly recommend the 3g stick - its working beautifully - if only the 3g coverage were better in the UK....

Scripting OpenOffice.org from Python - too hard

How hard should it be? I wanted to drive the OpenOffice.org Calc app from an external copy of Python under windows, and I've given up trying.

I can do it very easily in Excel, using the COM interface, but OOo has me beaten.

I've got a Python script that I use in a test environment, to put the results directly into a spreadsheet report. I'm running Python 2.5.2 and OOo 2.4.

I start to read the documentation, and it says there's a Python module I can use (uno) - great, says I - where do I get it from? It seems that its included with the OOo installation, in the 'program' directory - excellent! So I add the program directory to my Python path:

import sys
sys.path.append(r"C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.4\program")

and import it,

import uno

and I immediately get the following excepion: 'ImportError: No module named pyuno'. It seems that pyuno is a DLL library that uno needs.

Where do I go from there? I get a vague hint from the documentation that I may need to re-build the DLL for my version of Python. Ouch! It shouldn't be this hard. I haven't got time to get the the bottom of this. Why is this a DLL? What's wrong with a good old .py file. Its not like there's some proprietary technology that needs to be protected within the DLL.

At this point, I've given up on OOo, for this project at least, and I'll be going back to Excel, with its good old COM interface. I'd rather be using Open-Source software, but on this occasion, its too difficult. A pity.