Dell XPS m1330: Thoughts?
 

Heya FT'ers,

I recently bought this laptop, upgrading the processing speed, as well as the overall RAM. Took the LED option as well. It's a great little machine so far (only had it three weeks), but wondering if others here may have had a little more time with it already.

Anything good, bad, indifferent? I appreciate you posting up some thoughts.




Thanks :)





BN

Only just got mine today, the 1330 being my fifth Dell.

Initial impressions are good - it runs FSX better than my desktop and is smaller than the 640m that it replaced - it's also a very cool looking machine.

Will report back when I've had more time to play with it.

Got one here too, fully specced.

The ONLY 2 things I dislike about it: the entire system freezes for 4 or 5 seconds when I insert or eject a cd or dvd, and the bulk the 9 cell battery adds to the machine. They use an empty piece of plastic to lengthen the battery pack on one side. It's already broken twice :(

Other than that, it's brilliant.

I've got an XPS M1210 next to it here and am having serious problems deciding which one to keep for my primary "on the road" machine.

Ordered mine last Wednesday, and it arrived at my office Monday. It's replacing a very old Latitude C610 that I used almost daily for close to five years and is my first Vista machine. I got the red cover with 3 GB of RAM and LED screen upgrade and am very happy with the overall size, weight, and keyboard. My only complaint to date is that the metallic palm rest area was a little cold this morning; that took a little to get used to.

There's some other comments in this thread relating to this unit... http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=778713

Gizmodo looked at a bunch of thin machines, and the M1330 actually comes out looking best of all...

http://gizmodo.com/345574/is-macbook...ptops-face-off

Had one for about three months now.
Other than great looks, it is pathetic.
Many a time, it has failed to "sleep" properly-- resulting in a drained battery plus a very hot computer. It is also very noisy, with some clicking/whiney noise.
I regretted purchasing this thing. My previous Inspiron 6100 was significantly quieter.

Sounds like you have some software issues (preventing it from sleeping) and some hardware problems. I'd call XPS support if I were you. Neither of those issues have shown up in my machine, and it would be a shame if you learned to live with problems that shouldn't be there.

Decisions, decisions. This looks like a lovely piece of equipment.

But I don't know if I should go with a highpowered desktop and an Asus EEE for travel, or just get something like this alone.

I've posted a couple of photos of my M1330 here

It's a tough choice. The EEE is great for quick and dirty online stuff, but if you plan to do anything more than read an email or browse the web it may feel a lot underpowered. But it's also much smaller.

Decisions, decisions indeed...

I saw this in passing in some other threads, but for you fellow users, do you think the LoJack for Laptops software that comes with the m1330 is worth loading, or is it kludge?

Same here with decisions, decisions. My current 700M is three years old and my fourth Dell, and I have been extremely happy with it and use it for both my office and travelling. Definitely no need for a high powered desktop, which I have found to be a hassle. So I have decided to go the XPS route and spec it up to the maximum.

I didn't even bother to install it after the downgrade to XP Pro.

-David

I bought one in December. I went with the 6-cell battery because it doesn't protrude out the back. I'm very happy with mine.

Downgrade to Windows XP is well-supported. All the drivers are available at support.dell.com and there's good threads on the order and how to do it in the Dell community forums. It's very easy, and if you follow the right steps, you can continue to use/support the media direct thing and whichever Dell specific apps you want, including quickset and the standalone diagnostics.

http://www.dellcommunity.com/support...read.id=253132

I never bothered to boot vista on mine. The first thing I did when I got it was to replace the hard drive with a 200G Hitachi 7.2k notebook drive, used the included media direct CD to partition the new drive, and did a clean install of XP Pro.

-David

Why do I always see these posts too late?
 

Just - literally 10 minutes ago - ordered a black one loaded to the gills including (am I nuts?) the two 9 cell batteries. It seemed like a deal. I prefer to just wander without 'em plugged in and while they're losing some stamina, the extended life batteries in my two year old Dell 710m - which has been great - still give me about three hours (vs. four when new) on a full charge.

Can anyone hazard a guess how long a charge lasts for the six cell battery?

I imagine I can change an order once placed. Build/ship date is late next week, so I have time.

ScottC reports 3 hours of "medium" use on a 6 cell in his report (linked above), which is consistent with what I've read on other reviews of this model.