You must have noticed that my last post was on the 1st of April. And it has been 9 days since. Where was I? Was I locked in Sona? Was I stranded on an uninhabited island ala LOST? Naah! My previous laptop was a work laptop which had to go. And I was waiting for my Dell Vostro 1500 to arrive. I ordered it through a friend in the US and the configuration specs of my Black Mean Machine is as follows.* Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5470 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
* Genuine Windows® XP Home
* 15.4 in Wide Screen XGA+LCD (1280×800) Display w/TrueLife™
* 2GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz, 2 DIMM
* Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
* 250G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
* Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
* 8X CD/DVD Burner w/ double-layer DVD+R write capability
* High Definition Audio 2.0
* Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Wi-Fi Mini Card
* 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
* Dell Wireless 355 BlueTooth Module, (2.0+EDR), for WindowsXP
* 2.0 Megapixel Integrated Webcam

So here’s the deal. I added an extra 60$ for upgrading from the default processor of 1.4 GHz. Added the Bluetooth hardware for another 20$, and the Webcam for 30$. It costed me a total of 725$ inclusive of all taxes and free shipping to NY in the next 3-5 days. And now that I have my machine for quite a few days, here’s my review of my New Dell Vostro 1500.

First Impression-BUILD AND DESIGN:-

It is colored in IBM Black and that is a welcome change from the dirty grey Dell Inspiron . The build is sleek, smooth and rugged. It looks quite big compared to my previous Thinkpad T42, primarily because the screen size here is 15.4″ compared to the previous 14″. This weighs somewhat similar to the R-series of Thinkpad series . Enough with the first look, let’s open the lid.

Complaint 1: The Lid doesn’t close tight enough to make the Laptop feel like one piece. The monitor still has some space to move (however very small) even after the lid is closed. But leaving that aside, just another glance at the build, this one’s really a Black Beast. I can’t stop commenting on the color which makes it look as sleek as a Business end-user laptop and not as flashy as the VAIO shiny ornaments. The black matt surface on the back of the screen and the shiny silver buttons aren’t flashy at all, and add to the overall style statement. However the lower half of the laptop is the one which feels thick, and you know where the weight is coming from.

Complaint 2: As mentioned in this review , the surface at the back of the screen is very fingerprint prone. I mean, VERY. They could have made it a bit more matte and probably added some other material for the finished coating of the surface. No matter how hard you try, the back surface ends up looking like a crime scene evidence. Apart from that, I really don’t have anything else to complain about the build. There’s the wireless card switch, the audio plugs and the Express Card slot on the left. The right has an Ethernet , SD/MMC/MS Pro reader, DVD Burner and 2 USB ports. The back has 2 more USB ports, modem, power plug and an S-Video plug. The front has the speakers, the media control buttons in shiny silver and infrared window.

Complaint 3: The Screen I opted for is a True-Life one, which supposedly enhances the viewing experience. Bullshit! I should have gone for the non-glossy finish for the screen. This reflects so much that it is almost impossible to watch in a room with a window on your back. If you have your laptop shut, this could well act as your mirror. Yes, but watching movies at night, or watching bright images is definitely good. Another related complaint is that the screen attracts a lot of dust and cleaning it has to be a frequent affair. And yeah, the bright screen projects the presence of dust much more. The flip side of the bright screen is the wider viewing angle. I can say, at least 4 guys can sit and watch a DVD on this one at a time.

Keyboards are as Lovely to handle with as it was in my previous Thinkpad T42 which pleased me a lot. Coz I blog a lot duh! But it took me some time to get acquainted with the positioning of the Del-Home-Pg Up-Pg Dwn-End keys on the extreme right. I have no complaints here. The Function keys are pretty standard- F1 for Stand By, F3 for battery status, F8 to switch between the LCD and the CRT output, and then the up-down arrows to adjust the brightness. As far as the touchpad goes, I have remained a spoilt addict of the red pointer patent to IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads. Dell just cannot substitute its functionality in any other way. However, the scroll zone on the touchpad comes in handy. The Touchpad in itself is quite a standard one and is easy to use.

Battery Life is quite amazing for my tastes. I have a 6 cell Li-ion. I tested the battery’s full length backup to be an astounding 2 hours 40 min. And what did I do for all of this while. I actually installed my Windows, and made partitions, re-installed the drivers from scratch. Actually I had a partition emergency and which eventually turned out to be a massacre. But more of that in a later post. I must have restarted it almost 4 times during the entire procedure. The monitor was on full brightness. For a 6 cell battery, 2 hours and 40 mins is quite a thing. I am not a very mobile user who keeps moving the laptop every now and then, and neither am I a frequent flyer. So, I guess the 2 hours 40 mins are more than enough for you to watch a whole movie even when you don’t have a power supply. Just a single tip to groom your battery. Let it discharge totaly and then put on the AC input. Fully charge it and then again repeat the procedure. This utilises the entire capacity of the battery and results in a longer life of it.

Graphics: Now I will not be the right person to answer this. Because I don’t use any graphics based applications, or resource heavy applications. My Firefox browser tends to remain as the highest resource sucker in my Task Manager. With a 2GB DDR RAM, even running a heavy application such as Websphere App Developers or the Graphic designing suites will be a cakewalk. I even tried running Ubuntu “Gutsy Gibbon” and it runs smoothly with absolutely no hiccups (from the Bootable Disk that is. I didn’t try to install it coz I am waiting for Hardy Heron). I am not much into gaming, but NFS Most Wanted surely looks smooth on the provided Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator X3100. Of course, I haven’t tested it on the latest graphics hungry Quake 4 and Doom III. But then, I wouldn’t. But yes, using more of graphics heavy apps naturally means more processing work, and which means more heating. Playing NFS on your lap would not be possible for long coz the heat can get quite uncomfortable. But even with the heat, the machine never gets noisy. More than often I have my overnight download sessions and thanks to the zero noise machine, I hardly notice any difference between on and off, as far as the noise is concerned.

The Dell Vostro thankfully doesn’t come with the usual Dell Bloatware. I love it. The Windows installation drive has only 4.4 gigs occupied after all the drivers installation etc. And that is really something. The CDs that are included are the OS CD of Windows XP Home SP2, the Dell Webcam Driver and Dell Webcam Manager CD, Dell Drivers and Utilities CD, and the Dell Media Direct Driver CD. Who knew all of these would come in handy on the 3rd day itself (on the previously mentioned partition massacre). I haven’t been able to check the Wireless card as yet as I don’t have any Wi-Fi router at my place. As far as processing speed is concerned , I do almost nothing to challenge the limits of my Core 2 Duo. But at 1.6 gigs, I can correctly guess that multi-tasking would be as smooth as you could imagine. The 250 GB hard drive is a gift from the gods for me as I handle way too much data. The 2 megapixel camera gives quite a crisp picture output and video output. However, at higher resolutions it does suffer from lag in movement captures. Video capture through the webcam is best at 640X480 resolution. And the Dell Webcam Manager is a very cool driver loaded with lots of functionalities to play around with. Dell Media Direct is what I didn’t install when I re-installed Windows. That’s because I hate the stupid auto-play every time I insert a DVD. And the user interface of Dell Media Direct is way too flashy for my taste.

The speakers might seem to be located in a quite odd place, when they could have been embedded in the space just below the monitor. However, they just don’t make any difference. The speakers are pretty loud and although are low on bass(typical to in-built ones), but are just more than enough to catch a Naruto episode unless you are really into the crappy title song that plays now.

Conclusion: I think even with certain flaws and complaints that I have with this, I think I couldn’t have got so much for 725$. The build is something to just stare on and on. Dislike the back surface finish and the glossy reflecting surface. Love the keyboard, the webcam, the driver and OS CD provided, the zero noise fan and the scroll zone on the touchpad. Proud to own a Vostro.

Thumbnails of High Resolution Dell Vostro Images below.