It's in! While I don't have any pictures of the unboxing, it was securely packaged and free of blemishes or external damage to the box. The system is great. The first thing I noticed though was a little problem with the AC adapter. It does not fully fit when you try to plug in the cable from the wall to the brick. It still gives power but it's very sensitive and can pop out easy. I spoke with Dell Chat Support and they're giving me a replacement with a return label, so that's good news. Anyways, here are the pictures and some words: My first task was to reinstall Vista Ultimate x64 clean without Dell bloatware. The screen quality is top-notch and very sharp. The brightness range is good and (thankfully) have no dead pixels. Running at native 1440x900 On the left, you have 2 USB ports, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet (marvell) and mini-1394 On the right, you have the slot DVD, TV In, USB, wireless switch and lock. The key spacing is good and feels comfortable when typing. Also, the fingerprint scanner, which can be used to replace typed logins. It works well and saves me from typing in passwords all the time. The palm rest area has a brushed steel texture and is very durable. I'm also sure this was chosen to dissipate heat since the laptop can get a tad warm after heavy usage. Rear shot The bottom of the system offers adequate air vents and the system has never gotten hot, just a bit warm. Note the rise in the bottom-back of the system. This is due to the 9-cell battery's size and gives the keyboard a nice ergonomic feel to it.
Awesome! You have to post some benchmarks, 3DMark2006 for sure. That's odd about the power adapter. Have you tried pulling it out and reversing it?
I bought my wife the exact same model for Christmas. Had a heck of a time ordering it and dealing with sales in India but still got it by Christmas. We've been traveling so I haven't had a chance to sit down and play with it yet. Does the restore DVD have both versions of Vista? Mine came loaded with ultimate 32 bit.
Well, I just ran 3dmark06 (basic free version) and got 4761 which seems like a good score. I made a comparison to some other m1530s and it's about 400-500 points higher. Right now, the only things I really want to invest in are a bluetooth mini-mouse, carrying case and eventually a 7200RPM drive because some of the apps take a little long to load.
Just tried this. It runs good on medium settings, but I'm not really looking to play on this notebook. It's mostly for my studies, videos, productivity. I've got a desktop for gaming that's much more comfortable.
That sounds about right with the 8600GT and CPU you have. My work laptop is a 2.2 C2D w/ Nvidia Quadro 360M and I get a piddly 1569 in 3DMark2006.
Your lucky you didn't get the standard 7200 drive. My wife's was taking forever to load so I got online with Dell, had to do a firmware update for the 320g 7200 Seagate drive. Definitely fixed the issue and they offered to replace with another brand if I wasn't satisfied. They were also pushing a bios update but I'm going to look into it before I do that. One positive thing I have noticed is my wife was on it what seemed like our entire six hour flight the other day back to Hawaii. What great battery life, my Alienware literally has about a 20 min battery life, I don't even bother getting it out when I'm not near an outlet.
Holy shit dude, I'm still getting 70-80 minutes under full load with mine. You ought to call and raise hell, that's ridiculous.
Fucking hell I's stuck with this slab of plastic, but, I do like my wife's computer, dont want to steal the thead
Damn Krod, I didn't realize you hated your Alienware so much. PM me your details and I'll help you out with any problems. I work 9-6pm EST
Naw I love it, one should stay off the forums while drinking, hopefully that was the only post I made. Apologies to Torx, Bear etc...
LOL. Been there, done that and still haven't learned my lesson. Looks sweet though. [gripe] Why haven't they redesigned Ethernet jacks already.... I dunno I just hate the fact of the overly-exposed (vulnerable) conductors. They could redisign it to be up to stadard with other jacks and in the meantime make an adaptor until it becomes standardized. Phone jacks too. [/gripe]
There's some interesting gel substance that you can put in ethernet port to prevent corrosion. Don't know what it's actually called. BTW, Dell overnighted my AC adapter and I got it today from FedEx. Pretty damn snappy and it works great now.
