Soldato
As plenty of people are considering purchasing a Dell Vostro, I thought I'd give my initial impressions of my machine which I recieved yesterday. I purchased a Dell Vostro 1500 on the 2nd August, and it took 18 days to deliver.
I took a few pictures and you'll have to excuse the quality of them, I was clever enough to take them in a dark room with a camera that has dust over the lense. I couldn't be bothered to re-take them when I realised
. I also hadn't taken the protective covering off the laptop at this point hence the stickers.
Images can be found here.
My picture of the power bricks compares the Vostro one (top) to one from my Inspiron 5150.
My initial impressions are as follows:
Screen
I love the screen, I read a lot of rubbish about it being too reflective. But I usually sit on my laptop with it facing a window and I have no problems whatsoever.
Build Quality
Feels very solid. It's a touch heavier than my old laptop (Inspiron 5150) but not by much. The battery does indeed stick out the back by about 2cm but you won't notice that at all so I wouldn't let it worry you. I also read a lot about the battery not fitting snugly and being a bit loose, again this isn't a problem on mine so no complaints here.
Keyboard/Touchpad
Keyboard is very nice to use, not got a problem there at all. Touchpad is fine as well. My only gripe is the buttons, as they seem to press down a lot further than I'm used to. The media buttons on the front of the laptop are also quite useful and control music nicely through media player (they also light up blue which is cool
)
Sound
Now this is one thing that I was very impressed with. It's probably because I've not experienced it before on a laptop, but the volume is VERY loud on max settings and it's almost like having a Hi Fi in the room, which is brilliant for me as it means I can sing along to my music without anyone hearing
I'm yet to try any headphones through the laptop.
Battery life
I recieved the laptop at around 2.30pm yesterday, and had it plugged in until about 3.30 (presuming it came pre-charged as well). After that I had to unplug it to charge my other laptop. I spent from about then till 7.30 listening to music, surfing the net and copying across gb's of files from DVD's before it gave up on me. So personally I think 4 hours is pretty good for that. It'd probably go 5 - 5.5 had I not used the DVD drive or played music.
Vista Business
I know a lot of people are possibly put off by the fact that it includes Vista Business. I can't say much since this is the first time I've touched any version of Vista, but I don't see anything wrong with it at all. I'm not sure if this was possible in XP, but it has a feature to upload via ftp through windows explorer rather than having a seperate program which is a godsend for me.
Webcam
I've never had a webcam so I was pleasantly surprised when I started having a bash with it. In dark rooms it struggles but in well lit rooms its very good quality. Dell include a program which allows you to use the webcam as a camera/video camera and record to various resolutions which is useful. It also lets you use it as a motion detector, and it'll email you when the camera detects a motion
As well as that it lets you set it up as a security camera and will let you embed with video into a webpage. I tested the video recording last night and it picks up every sound brilliantly as well, the mic is very good quality.
Games
I'm yet to try any games, after I finish this I'm gonna reboot then download CSS so I'll let you know after how I get on.
Not sure what else to document. Overall I'm very pleased and for the money it's a brilliant purchase. My only gripe is that the power lead is a tad shorter than what I'm used to, apart from that I don't have anything which bugs me about it
I took a few pictures and you'll have to excuse the quality of them, I was clever enough to take them in a dark room with a camera that has dust over the lense. I couldn't be bothered to re-take them when I realised
. I also hadn't taken the protective covering off the laptop at this point hence the stickers.Images can be found here.
My picture of the power bricks compares the Vostro one (top) to one from my Inspiron 5150.
My initial impressions are as follows:
Screen
I love the screen, I read a lot of rubbish about it being too reflective. But I usually sit on my laptop with it facing a window and I have no problems whatsoever.
Build Quality
Feels very solid. It's a touch heavier than my old laptop (Inspiron 5150) but not by much. The battery does indeed stick out the back by about 2cm but you won't notice that at all so I wouldn't let it worry you. I also read a lot about the battery not fitting snugly and being a bit loose, again this isn't a problem on mine so no complaints here.
Keyboard/Touchpad
Keyboard is very nice to use, not got a problem there at all. Touchpad is fine as well. My only gripe is the buttons, as they seem to press down a lot further than I'm used to. The media buttons on the front of the laptop are also quite useful and control music nicely through media player (they also light up blue which is cool
)Sound
Now this is one thing that I was very impressed with. It's probably because I've not experienced it before on a laptop, but the volume is VERY loud on max settings and it's almost like having a Hi Fi in the room, which is brilliant for me as it means I can sing along to my music without anyone hearing
I'm yet to try any headphones through the laptop.Battery life
I recieved the laptop at around 2.30pm yesterday, and had it plugged in until about 3.30 (presuming it came pre-charged as well). After that I had to unplug it to charge my other laptop. I spent from about then till 7.30 listening to music, surfing the net and copying across gb's of files from DVD's before it gave up on me. So personally I think 4 hours is pretty good for that. It'd probably go 5 - 5.5 had I not used the DVD drive or played music.
Vista Business
I know a lot of people are possibly put off by the fact that it includes Vista Business. I can't say much since this is the first time I've touched any version of Vista, but I don't see anything wrong with it at all. I'm not sure if this was possible in XP, but it has a feature to upload via ftp through windows explorer rather than having a seperate program which is a godsend for me.
Webcam
I've never had a webcam so I was pleasantly surprised when I started having a bash with it. In dark rooms it struggles but in well lit rooms its very good quality. Dell include a program which allows you to use the webcam as a camera/video camera and record to various resolutions which is useful. It also lets you use it as a motion detector, and it'll email you when the camera detects a motion
As well as that it lets you set it up as a security camera and will let you embed with video into a webpage. I tested the video recording last night and it picks up every sound brilliantly as well, the mic is very good quality.Games
I'm yet to try any games, after I finish this I'm gonna reboot then download CSS so I'll let you know after how I get on.
Not sure what else to document. Overall I'm very pleased and for the money it's a brilliant purchase. My only gripe is that the power lead is a tad shorter than what I'm used to, apart from that I don't have anything which bugs me about it
