Vostro 1500 Review - Even Better!
June 23rd, 2008
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.
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