I have the fingerprint reader working on my own laptop. After the installation of Ubuntu 7.04 it did not just work for me, I had to hunt down information to figure out how to do this. This isn't a problem specific to just Dell or even Linux for that matter. I had the same problem when I upgraded my own D820 from XP Pro to Vista Business. Dell had the biometric coprocessor drivers for Vista available, but the thing still requires additional software to work. I still don't have mine working in Vista because I can't find the software for it from Dell, just the drivers. Under Linux though, like I said I do have mine working, the free software and all the simple instruction can be found here for getting Linux and your fingerprint reader working... http://en.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader Those fingerprint readers are worth their weight in gold once you get use to using it. They securely store all of your online credentials too which many people don't realize. When I go to one of many sites like even here which require my user name and password all I have to do is go to the log in screen page and swipe my finger, it automatically inserts my user name and password for any given site and I'm logged in with the single stroke of a finger. Unlike the similar feature most web browsers have to do this the info is stored on the hardware security encryption chip so it's very secure and you don't loose the info when you clear your browser cache and cookies like happens with web browsers.

http://en.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_enable_the_fingerprint_reader Sorry not sure what happened to that post but the link came out screwy.

Thanks for your exhaustive information, but my problem is a little different.

Could you, please, supply your output of "lsusb" command run on Ubuntu 7.04?

I think my problem is that the device is not even *present* on the bus, so I cannot even try to make it working.