Dell XPS M1330 Review

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I have had the M1330 for about 9 months. Screen went to vertical strips upon start up about two weeks ago. Dell has been somewhat annoying coming out to fix it but are supposed to come end of this week. A few other comments:

  • processor seems to make a high pitched noise.
  • LED screen is not as nice as my previous lap top Asus W3V. also build quality and keyboard seems cheaper.
  • i went with a 7400 speed hard drive - like the bigger size.
  • dont get finger print reader - its stupid
  • on board audio is fine

not a bad laptop but not a great one either

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I just ordered a M1330. In case you’re wondering, it now comes with the option of a 128 GB SSD (which I did not get, because they aren’t that much faster, cheaper, or more reliable yet) I’m certainly not paying $450 just so that I don’t have to hear a millionth-of-a-decible hum from a hard drive. Also a 250 GB HD was only $50 from the 120 GB one.

Don’t know much about the laptop, but this is like the 6th or 7th computer i’ve gotten from dell. It’s not because they fail, I just get to wanting a new comp and give the old one to my parents and get a new one, usually for a bigger size monitor or prettier case (stupid reasons, i know) I really liked my last laptop from dell. (m1210, not made anymmore, this model replaced that one) The main problem with it is that i totally stepped on it full force. It did ok but a few months later the screen started to fail in places, and then totally.

I’ve never had major problems with support. It’s easy to bitch about support until you realize that NO major laptop maker offers good support according to everyone on the internet, so you might as well deal with it if you want to keep prices as low as they are. Most of the time I call dell support, though, I get service i would call more that acceptable.

If you actually PAY (sweet JESUS!) for Dell-on-call you will actually get good service. I’d rather pay like $50 for someone who speaks english. NO OFFENSE but some of these people at dell just plain CANNOT speak english. Dell on call (when I used it like 6 mo. ago for something that wasnt dell’s fault) was great and all of the people could understand me and they even gave me a partial credit because the prob didnt take long to fix.

Becuase i stepped on the last laptop I decided to pay the 80 bucks for 4 yr accidental damage (you also have to pay for the 4 year warranty, too. Plus it was on sale for memorial day, its usually WAY more expensive.)

All-in-all I got a sexy-looking laptop that should be fine for taking notes for like 1500 bucks. Sweet.

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I also suspect that the fingerprint reader will be stupid, but when I ordered the system, it was not an option. I mean, how complicated is it to type in a password, for real?

I’m also hoping that the graphics problems are only with the descrete graphics option, because I got the integrated graphics option. I don’t game, plus who wants to on a 13 inch screen. Still a cool option, though.

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I just ordered an M1330: Core 2 Duo 8300, 128 Gig SSD, 4 Gig Memory, 128 Meg nVidia 8400, Windows Vista Ultimate, 4 year warranty/accidental damage, etc. $2200 out the door. I should be receiving it today. I am definitely looking forward to the SSD, but I read recently (after placing the order) that the 256 Gig SSD is on the horizon. It was either the M1330 or the M1730 (huge gaming beast - SLI video cards and raided HDs). I have a desktop gaming system, so I decided I would go for ultra portable.

My wife bought a more basic model of the M1330 (Core 2 Duo 7200, 160 Gig 7200 RPM HD w/Freefall, 3 Gig Memory, 128 Meg nVidia 8400, Windows Vista Home Premium, etc.) back in January and hasn’t had any problems with it yet.

This is my third Dell laptop (Inspiron 9100, Inspiron e1705, and now XPS M1330). I never had any problems with the 9100 and I even did a user upgrade of the video card from the ATI 9700 128 Meg to the ATI 9800 256 Meg video card (love wasting money on a 3 year warranty/accidental damage, but Murphy’s law is something will go wrong if you don’t purchase one).

I had a keyboard problem (keys wouldn’t work) a couple months after receiving the e1705, but contacted Dell online and had a replacement keyboard the next day (easy user install). Though now it looks like the video card (nVidia 7900 GS 256 Meg) or even LCD might be going. I have been using it as a gaming machine and recently been getting BSODs while playing LotRo (I believe from the video card overheating). I use compressed air to blow out the fans on a regular basis, but now there are a bunch of weird/dead pixels on the LCD screen. The laptop is still under warranty, so I am in the process of contacting Dell.

I will post an update of what I think of my M1330 when I have had a chance to use it.

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i Have a Dell XPS M1330
i want to remove Vista from it and install XP/Windows 2003 server, can anyone please guide me, how to do that?

pls mail me if u have a detail Steps babulr1981@gmail.com
Baji Babu on October 2, 2008 10:19 PM

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I have to say it’s never ceases to amaze me at what matters to some and not to others. I had an ultralight notebook Lenovo X61 Tablet and the one complaint I had was not having a built-in optical drive. I HATED having to pull out some external drive, it almost defeated the purposes. And being an IT guy we often need to burn a quick CD/DVD or even install some software. And I’ll be damn if I’m going to give my 8GB flash drive to Joe Shmuck and never get it back. :slight_smile:

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I have M1330 since 10 months. 2 weeks ago I started getting theese vertical stripes on my screen. Dell technician should be visiting me on in 2 days (troubleshooting didn’t help).
I’m scared off now and I think I will sell M1330 right after the repair and get a Vaio SZ series. It’s more expensive but biult quality looks so much better (cover and plastics are really poor in my M1330). I had a Toshiba Portege before so I guess I’m used to good stuff (Portege was and is a really good one I think).

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Kamil, there were issues with the nVidia video card on this model. There is a blog posting on this at Dell. Once the unit is serviced and the you install the latest BIOS (A12 or later) the issue should be resolved.

I have had my XPS M1330 for 6 months now. It’s the best computer I own but not without quirks.

Rene

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I purchased a m1330 in October of 2008, on 12/14/2008 the motherboard failed. I purchased the unit for aroound $1100 thru Dell.com. Dell states that the cost to repair is 499.00 since it is a month or so out of warranty. I should’ve bought a tower as my laptop has never left my home and rarely leaves the desk it sits on, at least then I could’ve done the work myself. I lack the tools and experience to complete this on my own. So I have to pay them $100 bucks to have them send me back my $1200 sleek, cool looking, completely worthless laptop. Last Dell product I will ever buy. Save you’re money and buy something else

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Hello all,

I need some advice, please. I bought a dell xps 1330 barely three weeks ago. It worked great for the first few days, but now I had to leave the US for family vacation and I tried turning it on and the computer randomly turns off–no error message whatsoever, it just turns off and reboots right away, and it keeps on doing that until i manually turn it off.

This is very, very odd. Has anyone heard of antything like this before? It worked great while in the US, but now that I had to leave outside the country, it does not work. I cannot imagine a computer that only works inside the US territory. Could it be some kind of software pre installed perhaps?

Thanks a lot for any help or advice, everyone.

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I’ve had my xps 1330 for about three months and i absolutely love it although vista has been a pain up the jack-seat at times and the aero theme sucks power especially when gaming of doing intensive work such as re-formatting usb drives. Also there is a distinct lack of usb ports and the trackpad is puny. ive started carrying a mouse because it is so annoying.

When i first got my laptop i had to format because i ran some XP games that were not in compatibility mode, although I never ran into this problem before.

@ Rod

First i would check the fan… i’ve had several blue screens because the fan intake was covered by something. If this is not the problem then i recommend scanning with AVG free… it is fast, light-weight, simple and up to date. Also see if there are some unknown programs in your program’s list. this is usually in c:\program files by default unless you changed it.

Second, check your hard-drive. if you carry your laptop around with you a lot the hard-drive can get damadged fairly easily if it is not shut down (by shut down i mean power OFF, not sleep mode/hibernate). What usually happens is that the arm hits the disk while you are using the hard drive which causes instant shut down in some cheaper drives. This might be the case in your laptop. Dell uses Hitatci hard drived which are really cheap.

If you have mechanical noise back up immediately. My dad has a m1210 with a screwed up hard drive Which he couldn’t boot from. He was forced to replace the hard disk.

Third, open Control Panel and find remove a program. Go through the list and remove any useless or suspicious programs. WARNING DO NOT…I REPEAT DO NOT REMOVE ANY KEY DRIVERS. THESE INCLUDE:

Advanced Audio FX engine (both of them)
Broadcom Gigabit Integrated…
any of the Cisco…Modules
Dell Toucpad
Dell Wireless WLAN Card
Finger Print Reader Suite…
Java tm…
Laptop integrated Webcam Driver
MSXL 4.0 SP2… (there are 4 of these)
NVIDIA Driver
RICOH R5C83x/84x Flash Media Controller…

if you have iTunes then do not un-install bonjour as it is key to running iTunes

If there is still a problem then you have probably have a glitch in your system. Either ask for a tekkie or re-install vista. do not forget to run the pre-configured drivers disk that comes with your laptop if you re install vista.

Note:

The inspiron’s by dell are designed for people who know nothing about computers and only check mail and surf the web once in a while. if you are using a laptop for anything more than light work and the odd game of pac man then the inspirons are ugly, heavy, expensive rip-offs with crappy track pads .

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Dell uses Hitatci hard drived…sorry i meant hard drives

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Hi guys,

ive been reading through the past few comments and noticed several things:

  1. some of you guys have no idea what you are talking about
  2. a lot of you guys have not figured out that dell has crappy customer service
  3. a lot of you want to dual boot XP or remove vista
  4. none of you seem to realise that vista needs some major computing power to run and is a HEAVY, flawed OS.

im going to talk about point 3 for a minute.

While vista has made some nice improvements in looks, it is also a real power sucker and has some fundamental issues (mostly i cant find applications any more because microsoft moved them). Damn idiots.

For those of you who know what you are doing will have also had similar thoughts and i understand that you may want the convenience of xp. For those lazy people and those people who have the distinct lack of the ability to use google follow this website’s instructions.

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_vista_and_xp_with_vista_installed_first__the_stepbystep_guide.htm

you need a legal copy of xp and i recommend you read first and PRINT the instructions.

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Hello All,

Seams weird, many people commented on the topic said they would till us about their experience with 1330 and non did but 1 or two.

I have headache for a month searching for the suitable machine. The 1330 seamed the right one fit with me. till i found tens of articles about the machine design flow with the nVidia card in [notebookreiew]http://forum.notebookreview.com/ and other sites. Unfortunately i couldn’t have the integrated video card option here in Egypt where i live. and dell is the only company that exists here directly with an agent.

Now we are about the new 2009, and Dell still sell the cursed card.

I hope Jeff, Benmarsha, JohnFC, jay,MIke, Derek, Andy, RiggerX, Shruti, and Brian to share us with their machines status now.

Thank you all for your time reading this and i’ll more thankful if i got your replies.

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Concerning poor SSD performance on dell 430- This was a major problem- as with all technologies, those of us who ran out and bought the 430 with 43gb ssd found out- for me, it was most obvious in outlook where I have a 2gb pst file. I wasted a lot of time on this problem with dell.

As it turns out, many of these drives were defective, and you can see the errors in the activity log of the drive.

I have found that dell will keep widespread problems under wraps. I recieved a new SSD drive and it worked flawlessly.

So the bottomline is, just have them replace the ssd.

This was a hairpulling problem.

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don’t buy this machine, it will fail in 6 months or so.

mine lasted 8 months.

And its not just the Nvidia GPU. I have the integrated graphics chip and mine still fried.

Got a new motherboard yesterday and it’s working again, but for how long I don’t know.

My warranty is up in two months so I imagine that in 6 months my machine will be expensive paperweight.

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I purchased XPS M1330 Dell October 2008, it was pink, I have had nothing but problems with it and Vista. Dell was very rude to me after I had paid over 1600 for this piece of crap. It has been to the repair shop twice at my cost because my warranty only worked after I had spent three hours on the phone with tech support then they wanted me to call them back. Last thing they said to me was get a screwdriver and take the back off your notebook. I hung up I was so mad. I had four HP’s previously and only went with Dell for the pink. I will never purchase Dell again and am definitely going back to HP. I hope I can get the windows XP on my …pink dell… If not I have a cute, pink paperweight for my desk.

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I have a M1330 also and one thing I did notice was that the touch pad was alittle small. They could have made it atleast 2cm taller and alot wider. Other than that I think its a great laptop. Graphics and sound are better than my desktop and and 500gb hard drive (included in price) lets me put everything I need on it. The 4gb ram helps with memory intensive apps such as photoshop, dreamweaver and games.

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I just ordered the Dell 1330 last night. The base price was $799 I upgraded it to $1460 and with 20% off coupon code and tax it came to $1200. I got the LED screen, 128 GB SSD, bluetooth, Sprint BB Card, 3 GB RAM. I have had the XPS 1210 for the last 2 years and love it. I paid $1700 for my current setup with sprint card ($200 at the time) I have only seen the blue screen 1 time in 2 years and that was in the first month before I put in 4 GB 800mhz Ram.

It is funny how people on this forum will buy a cheap Dell and then complain about Dell. In comparing with other laptop users my XPS runs with fewer problems than any laptop I have heard of including most of my family who use Macs. Price out a Mac. Then spend 70-80% of that cost on a Dell and you will not be disappointed.

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sad sad sad. to think the dell xps has just hit the streets in uganda!!! hey jeff, i just dissed someone cause i thought he called googledesktop bloatware. IT WAS YOU WHO SAID IT FIRST!!! going to buy me a dell xps to replace my sony vaio pcg-z1xmp.