I’m feeling very happy-happy-joy-joy right now because my laptop came back from Dell today, fixed and (so far) as good as new. In addition to fixing the motherboard, which they were contractually obligated to do by the terms of the warranty, Dell also swapped out the LED screen and the optical drive, which they didn’t have to do. So I’m pretty happy right now, testing everything out and making sure things still work.

Kudos to Dell for going above and beyond on their warranty obligations.

Does anybody else think the Dell voice tree lady sounds like Lindsay Nagel’s younger sister?

… and gets jumped by ninja Apple fanboys.

Key quote:

In fact, the Dell XPS One is the first Windows all-in-one desktop I’ve tested that I believe matches or exceeds the iMac in hardware design.

Read the complete review here.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: Walter Mossberg, Dell, XPS One, Apple

My Dell XPS M1330 arrived yesterday. The original ship date was specified as October 30th, so getting it a week+ early was a nice surprise. Here are my initial thoughts after having it for just one day:

1. Boy is this thing light! I bought it mainly because I was tired of lugging around my huge Inspiron 9300, which required a special bag to fit. I haven’t weighed it but the XPS M1330 is probably half the weight, when you include the power adapter weight. The form factor is really pleasing as well. I ordered mine with the red lid (I think it’s called “Sapphire Red” and it looks very sharp.
2. Fit and finish issues: There were a couple issues with the production quality, but nothing major. First of all, the laptop had a little “wobble” when placed on a flat surface. I very gingerly rocked it a bit, and the wobble seems to have gone down. Second, there were some minor assymmetries in the gaps between components, such as the hinge and the top of the LED screen. The problem people have reported with components (such as the drive bay, or the Express Card slot) pushing out from the bottom are not present in my machine.
3. Screen resolution: better than I had thought. I’m used to the 1920×1200 WUXGA on the Inspiron 9300, and this isn’t bad. I was expecting something way worse in the way of usability and screen real estate. Added bonus: the LED is less “shiny” than the TrueLife display on the Inspiron.
4. Keyboard: a little less firm than what I had been used to, but still very usable. The Inspiron had the best keyboard I’ve ever seen on a laptop.
5. Touchpad: I saw some people were complaining about the size of the touchpad. The XPS M1330 touchpad is just fine.
6. Windows Experience Score: Base score of 4.0, but this is entirely due to graphics results. Everything else is in the 4.6 – 5.7 range. I think with updated NVIDIA drivers I can increase the output of the little 8400 GS by some noticeable percentage.

What a deal from Geeks.com:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2GBDDR2NB6400-MICSYS&cat=RAM. I purchased 4 GB for my new Dell XPS M1330, which is shipping today. Total cost including shipping: $156.46, or $39.12 per GB. Cost on the Dell.com website to upgrade from 2 GB to 4 GB: $375.00, or $187.50 per GB. Percent savings: 79.2%.

AND, the new memory is 800Mhz, whereas the Dell memory option is the slower 667Mhz.

Yay.

UPDATE: I just discovered that the Santa Rosa chipset, while showing a “800Mhz FSB” option, will underclock the 800Mhz memory down to 667Mhz. The FSB apparently is the bus to the CPU, and doesn’t refer to memory speeds. Who knew? Crucial.com shows me the 800Mhz option as the “Best” option for my M1330 using their online configurator.

This is what I just purchased today:

Set me back just over $3,000, but it’s swanked out with the top-of-the-line everything (except the solid state drive, which wasn’t large enough for what I needed).

Ships on October 30th. Can’t wait!