Dell Studio opinions?

Monkeynut

Monkeynut

Monkeynut

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Getting a £500 15-inch model for chrimbo, wondering how well made they are.

Also, how good is the mobile 3450 compared to it's desktop cousin? The most demanding game will be oblivion.
 
I've had mine for a few days, it hasn't broken yet :o. The screen hinge seems really stable unlike my old Acer.
 
I Had mine for approx 3 weeks and it is stunning

My spec

2.0 D2C
3GB Ram
ATI 3450 256MB
1440 X 900, Had this installed by mistake:-)
Vista 32Bit
250GB HDD

The laptop is stunning to look at the screen is crisp and clear, watching DVDs is awesome. As for gaming etc it works really well at the moment i have

All the Medal of Honor series running at full res
Doom 3 at full res and it looks stunning
UT2004
UT3 at 1280 x 1024 with medium effects etc and it plays really nice.
COD4 at 1280 x 1024 with medium effects and also plays well.


Other than that though the laptop is a solid and good quality build. I would recommend them.
 
I was really supprised by the graphics card when I tried out Splinter Cell to test if it worked with my main PC on LAN. I had no idea it would run things like Doom 3 too, though I know id games tend to focus more on CPU than GPU power.
 
Pho said:
I was really supprised by the graphics card when I tried out Splinter Cell to test if it worked with my main PC on LAN. I had no idea it would run things like Doom 3 too, though I know id games tend to focus more on CPU than GPU power.
Click to expand...


After i ordered the laptop and started looking around i was getting very worried about the choice i made epecially when it came to the graphics card, as other websites were saying it won't do this and it won't do that, but im well pleased with mine tbh and it plays all the games i want it to at a nice fps as well ;)
 
I saw the same thing and asumed it would be rubbish too :D.

Out of interest, does yours have a plastic cover around the touchpad area covering all of the silver section below and to the side of the keyboard? I'm not sure whether it's meant to peal off or not as there's holes cut out for the touchpad and stickers etc, however the person who stuck the stickers on missed them :D.
 
Pho said:
I saw the same thing and asumed it would be rubbish too :D.

Out of interest, does yours have a plastic cover around the touchpad area covering all of the silver section below and to the side of the keyboard? I'm not sure whether it's meant to peal off or not as there's holes cut out for the touchpad and stickers etc, however the person who stuck the stickers on missed them :D.
Click to expand...


Ye i thought the same but it is a protective cover which can be removed. I have left mine on for now extra protection. ;)



Monkeynut you will be well pleased with it they are really good. :D;)
 
Oh ok :). Mine seems to be peeling itsself off slowly mind, I keep having to press out the air bubbles :D.
 
Just bought a Studio 3-4 weeks ago now I love it, there are a few niggles with it. I got the WUXGA screen which has light bleed along the bottom edge. Also the touch sensitive play, skip, volume etc (multimedia keys?) at the top of the keyboard sometimes does not respond. It happens quite a bit where the eject touch button just stays highlighted and the rest of the keys do not work. I will give Dell a call but cannot do without my laptop for the moment.

My Spec:
C2D P8400 (2.26GHz)
3GB RAM
320GB (Replaced with Patriot Warp V2 64GB)
3450
1920x1200 Screen
FP Reader
Backlit K/B

The laptop is surprisingly responsive I do a fair bit of Photoshop work and programming and at first it seemed a bit sluggish loading programs compared my desktop. After replacing the drive, it loads stuff a lot faster than my desktop most of the time and is much snappier. I did play Left 4 Dead the other night on it at 1280x800 at medium settings fine. I was not expecting it to play anything after reading a few reviews. The 3450 is doing much better than I had expected.

The build quality is good but not excellent. There is the odd thing again but it is probably just me being fussy. When first opening it, it came with slight scuff to the border around the screen, I think I was just unlucky. The wrist pad seems to creek and click on the right side. Just doesn’t seem to be as well built as some HP business laptops I’ve used around the same value.

Apart from the minor stuff I have listed above it’s a brilliant laptop. Got the matt black finish on the lid and it gives the laptop a real look of quality.

Sorry for a the long post not sure if this will be helpful considering you have already ordered one, wanted to post a couple days ago registration took a while. If anyone else has the weird issue with the multimedia keys would be nice to know either way.
 
amaru said:
I Had mine for approx 3 weeks and it is stunning

My spec

2.0 D2C
3GB Ram
ATI 3450 256MB
1440 X 900, Had this installed by mistake:-)
Vista 32Bit
250GB HDD

The laptop is stunning to look at the screen is crisp and clear, watching DVDs is awesome. As for gaming etc it works really well at the moment i have

All the Medal of Honor series running at full res
Doom 3 at full res and it looks stunning
UT2004
UT3 at 1280 x 1024 with medium effects etc and it plays really nice.
COD4 at 1280 x 1024 with medium effects and also plays well.


Other than that though the laptop is a solid and good quality build. I would recommend them.
Click to expand...
I have the same spec but lower res screen and can't get COD4 to be properly smooth on low. It's playable but doesn't run well.


Love it otherwise. Make sure you buy the remote with it (wasn't on their site, so had to ask over the phone). Really nice and replaces the blank plastic you get in the pcimia(?) slot.

Also, update the touchpad drivers through the dell site. It gets you rotating scroll, so you touch a scroll bar then just start drawing a circle on the touchpad and it scrolls; clockwise for down, counter for up.


I have that eject key problem too. Usually goes away after a couple of minutes but I don't know how to solve it. Post here if you get an answer though, please :)
Not had the unresponsive keys problem, except when the eject one is stuck.
 
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Ok. Only got a rubbish camera phone here at uni though. 1sec


Oh yeah, not tried it again yet, but turning on the wifi switch, lighting up the wifi light stopped the eject key being stuck.



Mine's got the backlit keyboard, red sides and topo pattern (which goes over the trackpad too).
 
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I will try and post some pictures later. Its a bit late to go digging around the garage for my camera. Actually, I should probably be sleeping.
 
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