Dell XPS M1330

reygjabla · 10 Sep 2010 at 22:03

Just got myself a used Dell XPS M1330 with the following specs;

XPS M1330 CORE 2 DUO T7250 2.00GHz,
13.3" WXGA (1280x800) White-LED Display with TrueLife¿ (thinner, brighter & lighter)
Biometric Fingerprint Reader 1
Crimson Red & 0.3 mega pixel Camera for White-LED Display
English/Irish Ship Accessories - Power Cord 1
English Documentation XPS M1330
Memory Dual-Channel 4096MB (2x2048) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
160GB Intel X25-M Mainstream SSD Hard Drive
8xDVD+/-RW Slim Slot-Load Drive, including SW
AC Adapter (65W) 1
Primary 9-cell 85WHr Li-Ion Battery 1
Carry Case
128 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Dell TrueMobile 355 internal Bluetooth Module
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-PCI Card, EUR
Uk/Irish Internal Lightweight Keyboard (QWERTY

Total cost after Intel SSD Gen2 160GB and Memory upgrade from 2 Gig to 4 Gig is £520

Installed W7 HP64 and Office 2007 Standard plus some aps and boot time is simply amazing.

Not bad for a used lappy, don't you think?

Bubba · 10 Sep 2010 at 22:20

Sorry to burst your bubble but those laptops are notorisouly unreliable and break all the time due to the nvidia graphics chip that is used. If you really want to keep it make sure you keep it as cool as possible, regularly clean the fans and apply all latest bios updates.

reygjabla · 10 Sep 2010 at 22:38

Its actually a sort of a test bed for me. I've already made some research on the possibility of a CPU and GPU upgrade as well as some modification on the set-up itself to minimize if not entirely avoid overheating. Thanks for the reminders though. At the moment it does'nt seems to suffer the reported issues. Besides, the base unit only cost me £250.

Bubba · 10 Sep 2010 at 22:58

Yours will fail though, they all do, we are fixing dozens of these problems every week with the nvidia graphics chips, usually lasts a lot longer than a "new" board if you are referring to the ones on ebay, I have used these before and failed within weeks.

Also you cant upgrade the GPU.

Sootie · 10 Sep 2010 at 23:13

Nice SSD for the price though!

reygjabla · 11 Sep 2010 at 09:36

Bubba said:
Yours will fail though, they all do, we are fixing dozens of these problems every week with the nvidia graphics chips, usually lasts a lot longer than a "new" board if you are referring to the ones on ebay, I have used these before and failed within weeks.

Also you cant upgrade the GPU.

All things fail at some point in time, so, i'm not too bothered with that. If it gives me a year or two, that would be fine, if not, then, I'll just take out the SSD and memory and re-sell the unit as spares. This unit came from one of the member here who upgraded to a MAC Pro and owned this unit for 2 years without any problem. Ebay ones goes for more than 300 notes.

DAnDan · 11 Sep 2010 at 14:15

Bubba said:
Yours will fail though, they all do, we are fixing dozens of these problems every week with the nvidia graphics chips, usually lasts a lot longer than a "new" board if you are referring to the ones on ebay, I have used these before and failed within weeks.

Also you cant upgrade the GPU.

Well that's a flat out lie.

Yes, the 8x00 GPUs used in the XPS line had a higher failure rate than anyone would like, but to say they all fail is just plain lies. I've had mine for just over 2 years now and it's not failed, as have a few friends I know.

reygjabla · 11 Sep 2010 at 14:43

You just made me feel relieved mate. Cheers.

DrBombcrater · 11 Sep 2010 at 15:37

DAnDan said:
Well that's a flat out lie.

Yes, the 8x00 GPUs used in the XPS line had a higher failure rate than anyone would like, but to say they all fail is just plain lies. I've had mine for just over 2 years now and it's not failed, as have a few friends I know.

They all fail. If you get a particularly good chip or don't put too many heat cycles through it then, yes, it may last a couple of years. But they all break, it's an inevitable consequence of the solder/underfill problem with these chips. Not just the GPUs either, NVidia North Bridge chips are affected too. What's worse is that there's no reliable fix. You can send the broken laptop to have the chip reflowed, but it'll just break again. You can buy a new motherboard, but that'll break at some point too.

I work for a laptop repair company and nobody would be blasé about problems with NVidia chips if they saw our 'strip club' - piles of broken laptops waiting to be stripped of useful parts because they're beyond economical repair due to major board faults. I'd estimate about 85% of those machines are NVidia based. HPs (by far the worst), Dells, Acers, Gateways, you name it. The failure rate for Intel and AMD based systems is minuscule in comparison.

DAnDan · 11 Sep 2010 at 16:52

DrBombcrater said:
They all fail. If you get a particularly good chip or don't put too many heat cycles through it then, yes, it may last a couple of years. But they all break, it's an inevitable consequence of the solder/underfill problem with these chips. Not just the GPUs either, NVidia North Bridge chips are affected too. What's worse is that there's no reliable fix. You can send the broken laptop to have the chip reflowed, but it'll just break again. You can buy a new motherboard, but that'll break at some point too.

I work for a laptop repair company and nobody would be blasé about problems with NVidia chips if they saw our 'strip club' - piles of broken laptops waiting to be stripped of useful parts because they're beyond economical repair due to major board faults. I'd estimate about 85% of those machines are NVidia based. HPs (by far the worst), Dells, Acers, Gateways, you name it. The failure rate for Intel and AMD based systems is minuscule in comparison.

If you look at a long enough time period, anything and everything has a 100% fail rate. But to state that EVERY laptop with that series GPU chip in it fails (in a reasonable time frame) is a lie. Unless the company you work for has a record of every single laptop unit produced with one of those chips, and has seen every one produced come in for repair within a normal operating life's time, then I don't really feel that your comments are justified.

Jasebta · 11 Sep 2010 at 17:05

My girlfriend's family has two M1330's, one which is working strong still but has spent its life on a laptop cooler, and one that's graphics chip has broken with no use of a cooler. I think they were both purchased at the same time, so it shows there's definite problems with the graphics chip as I'd suspected but was unsure that it was a common problem possibly caused by heat as those things run HOT.

DAnDan · 11 Sep 2010 at 17:18

Jasebta said:
My girlfriend's family has two M1330's, one which is working strong still but has spent its life on a laptop cooler, and one that's graphics chip has broken with no use of a cooler. I think they were both purchased at the same time, so it shows there's definite problems with the graphics chip as I'd suspected but was unsure that it was a common problem possibly caused by heat as those things run HOT.

There's definitely a higher than normal failure rate on them, but from what I've read, it's not actually caused by the laptops running hot (most do anyway), but from the laptops heating/cooling very quickly. Later BIOS updates from Dell (and presumably other manufactures) have seemed to help the issue though. It seems to be a case of luck as to who's laptop fails or not.

reygjabla · 11 Sep 2010 at 20:12

Well, it seems that the latest M1330 bios, latest NVidia drivers and the SSD has all contributed to a somewhat cooler temp compared to when I first got it. Besides, if the issue is too widespread, then, I believed, either Dell or NVidia has already done a recall order on all the units affected. I've also checked the Dell's Support and found that certain M1330 service tags where given extended free warranty because of these issues. Fortunately, mine is not one of them, so, I presumed, it's not part of the affected batches of units.

mrmoose · 11 Sep 2010 at 22:41

Ive got one. I've had it back to them 3 times due to the problem mentioned above. Next time it failed I'll probably push for a totally new laptop. The support is good though.

xRowan · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:17

Never ever buy a dell. I made that mistake buying a m1530. Overheated like crazy, turned out there was so much (completley stupid amount) thermal paste applied to gpu and cpu. It was like rubber pads over my cpu it was completley covered. MX-3 lowered temps by 40+oC. I will never buy a dell again. Also they are a complete rip off

TheVoice · 12 Sep 2010 at 00:42

I've had two Dell notebooks myself and would happily own another. Didn't have any real problems with either of mine (Inspiron 630m and an M1330).

Not sure how you can consider them a rip off either, you can regularly get a far better spec from them than for the same money elsewhere.

Amp34 · 12 Sep 2010 at 02:49

Glad I bought the integrated GFX version then!

reygjabla · 12 Sep 2010 at 11:33

Which version is that and what are the specs?

DJDaz · 12 Sep 2010 at 11:47

xRowan said:
Never ever buy a dell. I made that mistake buying a m1530. Overheated like crazy, turned out there was so much (completley stupid amount) thermal paste applied to gpu and cpu. It was like rubber pads over my cpu it was completley covered. MX-3 lowered temps by 40+oC. I will never buy a dell again. Also they are a complete rip off

I'm the exact opposite. I've got a very old dell laptop, old as in it's 300mhz and 64mb ram and other than the battery it runs just as well now as it did years ago.

Also got a newish Dell Inspiron 1318 and thats been brilliant aswell.

Amp34 · 12 Sep 2010 at 12:40

reygjabla said:
Which version is that and what are the specs?

T7500
2GB RAM
200GB 7200RPM HDD
LED LCD Display
Integrated graphics
9 Cell battery

I don't need dedicated graphics as it was bought as a powerful photo processor for when I'm away from my desktop. Brilliant at uni too because it would last up to 7 hours without wifi on.