First, yes I know that this card sucks big time
Anyway, for the last two weeks I've been trying to get this card to do anything then just VERY basic graphics acceleration.
Although the acceleration I get now is quite enough for my normal use, I'm currently trying to learn the OGRE3D graphics engine with which I can't even get the most basic application to work with this card.
I think the main problem is that the drivers doesn't give me any kind of shader capability (correct me if I'm wrong).
I've tried running the OGRE examples in Windows on the same computer where I get decent performance, being a laptop.
I'm currently running Ubuntu dapper drake, well kubuntu to be exact, and glxinfo shows Direct Render: Yes and OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 915GM 20050225.
Maybe using the new alpha MESA drivers with GLSL capability would help. Or should I simply give up and buy myself another computer, sad as this laptop is good otherwise (1.73GHz Pentium M and 1GB RAM).

you seem to be on the right track. New drivers might get it to work and it is not difficult to try so i would go for that. Beyond that i owuld probably recommend you go for a new card because they arent that expensive and it will be worth it if you want to get into graphics engines anyways. It will make your life much easier in the loing run.

I would get a new card if it wasn't a laptop