Dell XPS M1330 Review

blog
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Another hard drive space program, with a nice, different concentric circle based visualization is Overdisk at http://users.forthnet.gr/pat/efotinis/programs/overdisk.html.

Nice laptop, its one of the candidate for my wife. She will never game or use performance demanding apps, thus I am thinking about going with the X3100. Not because of the price difference, more because of battery life (which for her is important). What’s the battery life with the 8400 on the 9 cell batt? Going to research that a bit…

Thanks for the comments on this laptop, would appreciate a longer review or impressions on it.

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Did the preinstalled Vista crash as well? If not, Dell must have done something to make it work with AHCI.

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So would you recommend a solid state drive as a main OS disk instead of a 10 000 rpm disk drive now? Or are they not fit for desktop use yet?

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Off topic comment: Like the Gibson quote, that man is a genius!

On topic, i like the laptop, but i can’t live without the 1400x1050 resolution of my T43, the resolutions you can get with laptop monitors these days are amazing, i really want the Z60-something with a 15,4" 1900x1200 display!

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@hobbylobby

Lenovo seems to have continued IBM’s tradition of making very solid laptops. Perhaps you’d like the T series?

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Jeff:

Another vote for using WinDirStat instead – it’s awesome.

http://windirstat.info/

-Dave

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Good stuff, Jeff!

I’ve been talking about this with guys at work - based on experiences with iPod Mini vs. Nano, I’d speculated that running from memory would be considerably faster than a hard drive. Nice to hear that confirmed. Do you still need to ocassionally defragment an SSD the way you do a HDD?

I’ve noticed that many newer notebooks are now coming with a very glossy screen, which is just horribly tough on my eyes. Does this have that sort of glossy screen or a more typical (and far superior, IMO) matte screen surface like those found on the Dell Latitudes? How’s the LED screen for viewing movies or other graphics that require a fast refresh rate?

Also, the DVD burner would certainly be one way to overcome the space limitations… and it makes it that much easier to keep your data backed up.

By the way, what was the total sticker price on the M1330 you configured?

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Vista?
Oye Vey! You’re a glutton for punishment.

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Very nice Jeff.

In the words of Sir Bruce Wayne, “Does it come in black?”.

I haven’t read any reviews and I read most of this one due to time restrictions… but how rugged is it compared to a Thinkpad?

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@hobbylobby

DDH is right. I’m a veteran IT guy in the desktop/notebook deployment section and we’ve been a Dell shop for a bit more than a decade. Latitudes are very nice machines - Inspirons are cheap wannabes.

Dunno about the T series, but I certainly would NOT recommend a Lenovo X series.

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I’m a new addition to the IT/programming dept at my work. The previous guy had started buying Dells for everyone in the company. Now the company is basically sold on the idea of Dells. From my perspective, I see the laptops which were purchased less than a year ago already falling apart.

The Inpiron that was bought for me felt like a crappy Taiwanese toy right out of the box. the screen panel crinkled and creaked!

The construction of every single Dell laptop that I’ve seen at work is far below acceptability.

I have a compaq presario v5000 at home and like that a bit more - the construction is considerably better, though not without complaints.

I’ve already sworn to myself that I’ll get a Mac and run windows on it when i have to buy another PC…

but that may change if some pc maker will step up to the bat with a decent, sturdy design ethos that can compete with Apple.

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If the guy bought Inspirons, then that was a mistake. He shouldn’t have tried to save the extra cash. Dell’s business line is the Lattitude. They are built better and have better support. The cheap-o Inspirons are just that - cheap.

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I seriously thought of buying this laptop Dell XPS M1330 to replace my aging Sony Vaio 550. I priced it out and when I returned to the website, I noticed that the $600 SSD (Solid State Drive) option is no longer available. I was terribly disappointed…

I’d also assume that this review would have not been so good, if the SSD drive was absent.

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Hi Jeff,

I’m wondering about your impressions of the screen itself. I saw some reviews of the new Apple laptop with the LED display about the colors being a little “off” - particularly with flesh tones. I haven’t seen an LED laptop display and would be interested in hearing what you think about it.

Thanks again for an interesting blog!

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Looks like if you click through the “Small Business” path to the XM1330, you don’t get the option for the 32GB Solid-state drive. You have to go through the “Home/Home Office” path.l

Weird.

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Jeff, how max hot does this get when the CPU is 100%? Any benchmark? I currently own Dell Inspiron 700m (12" screen discontinued) and that gets warm a big time. I always have to use Antec cooler (which works great btw) all the time.

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So why would you want your keyboard to angle in an ergonomically incorrect way all the time?

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Very nice review!

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The best software ever for checking space usage is Scanner: http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/

I’ve used it for years and have still not found anything better.

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I haven’t been looking into the SSD hard drives at all but what happens in the long run because if it’s flash based NAND storage then after a few million writes it’s likely to burn itself out.

I think there is an option to use ferroelectric memory which as far as I know doesn’t suffer from this trait.