[PLUG-TALK] Review Dell Latitude 7275 2-in-1

[John Jason Jordan]

Review Dell Latitude 7275 2-in-1 

My goal is to use this 'tablet plus detachable keyboard' computer to
read books and journal articles while sitting by the fireplace in my
comfortable recliner; meaning that I must hold the tablet in the air as
I would a book. Therefore, the fact that the keyboard can be set aside
to hold down the overall weight was a significant factor in my purchase
decision. Note: The expression '2-in-1' includes computers where the
keyboard can be folded completely around (360°), but is not detachable.

I bought it seller-refurbished on eBay for $299 with free shipping. It
came with an M.2 drive of 256GB and a 12.5" touchscreen display. The
detachable keyboard has a tray with a connector that the display clicks
into. To remove the display you just fold the display toward you and it
comes off. The keyboard section has no ports or connectors other than
to connect to the display. The display section is the entire computer,
containing two USB-C ports (one for power), on-off switch,
microphone/headset port, SD card slot, and volume control.

The seller's refurbishing included a brand new battery inside, plus a
Dell Power Companion that I haven't completely figured out yet. It
connects to the laptop's power connector (one of the type C ports) and
provides additional power when you need to run away from a wall outlet
for longer than the internal battery will last. The Power Companion has
several other ports on it that are a mystery. And the seller also
included a pen for drawing on the touchscreen, but I gave up trying to
get it working. My drawing skills are pathetic, so forget about it.

It came with wifi, but no ethernet port. I have a USB to ethernet
adapter, but the USB is type A. The seller included a type C to type A
cable, but it has only one port on each end, and at the moment it is
being used for my wireless mouse, so my only net connection is the
wifi. I did try my USB to ethernet adapter, and it worked normally.

I started by installing Xubuntu 20.04.2, which was a horrible
procedure, taking me nearly eight hours. The problem was the Windows 10
that it came with and UEFI. To boot to something other than the
internal hard drive you are supposed to switch on the power and
immediately hold down F12, but when I did it invariably ignored F12 and
proceeded to boot to Windows. Eventually I succeeded in getting a
screen that looked a lot like a GParted GUI, so I could see the Windows
partitions. Heaving a great sigh of relief I deleted all the Windows
partitions, then created new ones for / and /home. Only then was I
finally able to boot to the live Xubuntu 20.04.2 USB stick. But, while
I successfully booted to the live Xubuntu, the Install Xubuntu icon
would not work. After an hour of exercising seldom used terms from my
lexicon I finally got to the Grub menu on the live USB, which offered
'Install Xubuntu' as one of the menu choices, and that finally worked.
I left it on 20.04.2, but yesterday decided to do a dist-upgrade to
21.10, which installed without issue.

Once I booted to Xubuntu 20.04.2 I was delighted that everthing seemed
to be working, including ethernet after plugging in my USB to ethernet
adapter. More importantly, the touchscreen was also working, although I
discovered that I hate it. During my shopping I thought that a
touchscreen would be a plus since it would allow me to eliminate
needing the touchpad (I hate them) or an external mouse, but the ends
of my fingers are squarish, not pointy, so it is impossible to touch a
precise point on the screen. Eventually I found that the Xfce4 Settings
> Mouse and Touchpad allowed me to turn off the touchscreen, and the
> touchpad as well. Instead I use a simple external wireless mouse, and
> I'm very happy. 

There is only one glitch that I haven't fixed yet. You're supposed to
be able to hold the display in portrait view and it will automatically
switch from its native 1920x1080 to 1080x1920. That may work in
Windows, but it's not yet working under Xubuntu. On Ubuntu Forums I
read that Ubuntu disabled this feature due to complaints from users who
wave their laptops around in the air. However, you can go onto Xfce4
Settings > Display and switch it manually; which works, although it is
kind of a pain in the neck. I found a GUI utility for xrandr called
'arandr,' but it's buggy. I'm thinking of figuring out the code to use
xrandr to switch to portrait, and another command to switch to
landscape, put them both in bash scripts, give each an icon, and park
them in the panel.

Dell provides online a pretty good PDF for maintenance, including
removal and replacement of:

Battery
M.2 drive 
Wireless card
Ethernet card
front or back cameras
Microphone
Power switch card
Volume buttons
System board
Back cover
BIOS coin cell battery
Display assembly

I considered replacing the M.2 drive, even though it's kind of silly to
do so. In my house there is a 32TB Synology NAS that I have the
Latitude already connected to via wifi, so all my reading material can
reside there. Reading a book doesn't require a lot of bandwidth. The
internal 256GB drive is all the Latitude really needs. I also tried to
buy a 1TB SD card, but 90% of SD cards online are really 32GB cards
that have been hacked to appear as 1024GB, and ditto for a lot of big
USB drives. Bah.

Hope this is useful. Maybe I should post it somewhere on a laptop
compatibility site.