Vostro 1500 Review - Even Better!
I replaced my former Dell Vostro 1310 with a 1500. In the end, the smaller keyboard was too cramped. There weren't really any other problems with it, although I'll pretend it needed a more powerful video card.
My new Vostro 1500 cost about the same, and has similar specs. Main differences:
- T8100 CPU. Slower, just.
- Geforce 8600M 256mb GPU. Significantly better, but still won't play Crysis.
- 15.1" 1680x1050 screen. A little brighter, but the far better resolution has only been awesome so far.
- 9-cell battery. This lasts for a lot longer, despite the bigger screen. About 3.5hrs while doing stuff. Even more if I play with the power settings.
The keyboard is a lot better. Same size as my old Inspiron 1501. The only bad part is the the Home/End/PgUp/Down keys are full size keys added as an extra column on the far right, instead of half sized buttons along the top. Unusual placement, and the bottom two are hard to push anyway. Related: the arrow keys are full sized, but there's no spare space around them, which is also confusing.
Has Bluetooth, no fingerprint reader. Everything worked out of the box with Ubuntu 8.04.
Because I got a 9-cell battery you get a beefier power brick, which probably helps charging. BTW, the charger plug for all three of my Dell laptops is the same, they bricks are 100% interchangeable.
Socket layout on the laptop is saner than the 1310, but still not as nice as the 1501. Power cable is near the middle of the back, the ethernet is on the right side towards the back. Headphones are on the right, CDROM is on the right front. Only the ethernet port is annoying.
Either the CD Drive randomly ejects, or I am accidentally pushing the button a lot. The latter is probably what I'm doing, although the eject button on the drive is small. Will probably get used to this.
Overall: Smaller laptops have their place, but that place is not on my desk! My new near-desktop replacement was a wise choice.
Comment (0)Vostro 1310 Review - It Doesn't Suck
I recently brought myself a new Dell Vostro 1310 laptop. This is the from the 'new' series of Vostro laptops. Specs of mine:
- Intel Core2 T8300 2.4Ghz. The new 'Penryn' series of core2 chips. Single interesting new feature is SSE4.
- 3gb RAM.
- 250gb Hard Drive. My other option was a 160gb with 'free fall sensor', which reduces the chance the drive will die if you drop it. Nothing important / not backed up is going on this laptop, so I'm happier with more space.
- TrueLife screen. Sucks outside, which is where I use this on the weekend. It's usable outside, but only if you can angle the screen so it's reflecting something dark. Significantly better than non-truelife when used inside.
- 6-cell battery. The standard size is 4-cell. Ubuntu estimates the lifetime of my 6-cell at 2hrs, while idle.
- 8400GS Video Card. It plays Tux Racer, I’m happy. When I get around to it, it will also play Civilization IV for me and other games from that era or before.
- 15-day money back guarantee. What really convinced me to buy this laptop. If I find it’s too small for me, I can swap it after a week and get a 14 or 15” instead. w00t.
- All the other standard stuff that comes with every laptop.
The chassis is solid, not flimsy like some smaller laptops. It strongly reminds me of an IBM ThinkPad, which is not a bad thing at all -- hopefully some of the indestructibility has been carried over.
Various interesting things I noticed:
- Front top corners are hard edges. This means you can’t rest the side of your palms on the edge of the laptop. You won’t notice this while typing (I don’t, and I have big hands), but it’s just a weird design choice.
- Slot load optical drive rather than a tray.
- Really nice fan on the side. This fan is smaller than the one in my old 15” Inspiron I’m replacing, but it pushes out a lot more air. While the fan is running the machine is not exactly quiet, but it’s not an annoying sound. There’s another fan on the bottom for the video card, it didn’t spin up unless I was doing something 3d.
- Capacitance touch media buttons up the top, including one to eject the CD. Capacitance touch is cool and all, but they are (obviously) hypersensitive. While stretching out my fingers I mushed them more than a few times, doing weird things to my media playback and/or CD.
- Power plug is on the right hand side, Ethernet port on the rear left, headphones on the left side front. Are they trying to make me have to keep every side clear?! I much prefer the layout of my (admittedly bigger) Inspiron, which seemed saner in general.
- My Vostro came with Windows XP Home. On the Dell website, you can’t go lower than XP Professional, but when I called up they were more than happy to downgrade to Home.
I’ve installed Ubuntu 8.04 x64 and tested everything I can. Everything I tested works perfectly, unless noted below:
- Fingerprint Reader not tested
- Memory card reader didn’t read an ancient MMC card I have lying around. Works fine with SD.
- Microphone port not tested
- VGA out not tested
Raw hardware data from the machine after the jump.
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