Question for anyone using a Vostro/Inspiron with an M-Audio firewire unit/Express Card

Can anyone confirm that they have succeeded in overcoming the well documented non compatibility of the onboard Ricoh firewire chipset used by these Dell notebooks by using a Belkin/Siig firewire express card to run an M-Audio firewire audio interface?

I've just been through a motherboard replacement scenario with my brand new Vostro 1500 to supposedly cure this problem. Of course the MB was replaced by another board with same Ricoh chipset and needless to say the problem persists.

I'm thinking of changing this model for a cheaper notebook (without the onboard firewire port) and using the money I save to buy a firewire express card. Am I right in thinking the Express Card problems documented elsewhere on this forum have now been resolved with a hotfix and that a firewire card using a Texas Instrument chipset will therefore be compatible with an M-Audio box?

Given the amount of Dell notebook users who have documented this problem here and on other forums it seems absurd that, rather than fix this by using a different chipset, Dell would rather have their customers go through the farce of changing their motherboard (knowing full well that the problem will not cured).

Incidentally the engineer who replaced the MB also replaced the audio daughter board, to fix the perennial headphone jack noise problem which according to Dell customer service is caused by the "audio card being positioned too close to the processor". Was the audio card position changed? No - impossible to do according to the engineer. Was the fault rectified by changing the daughter board? No - and I didn't buy the audio card position explanation to begin with. This is a design fault and has been for some time (I now discover).

Result - one seriously unhappy Dell user.