OK. Haven't had much time to play with the Vostro 3560 but as a couple of you were interested i'll jot down my initial thoughts and some performance figures.
So here are the specs again :
Base Standard Base Vostro 3560
Operating System English Windows® 7 Professional (64 BIT)
Processor 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i5-3210M (2.50GHz)
LCD 15.6" Full High Definition (1080p) LED Display with AntiGlare Vostro
Memory 6144MB (2 Dimm, 1x2048 + 1x4096) 1600MHz DDR3
Keyboard Internal UK/Irish Qwerty Backlit Keyboard with Multi-touch Touchpad
Video Card AMD Radeon HD 7670M 1GB Discrete Graphic Card
Hard Drive 500GB (7,200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive
Optical Devices 8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+/-R write capability
Wireless Dell Wireless 1704 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.0+LE
Extended Service 3Yr ProSupport and Next Business Day On-Site Service
Primary Battery Primary 6-cell 48W/HR LI-ION
Then some badly taken pictures :
I really like the simple elegant look of the laptop. Seems quite light and slim to me although my previous was a very bulky 17" Vostro 1700. But had it on my lap for a hour or so and wasn't uncomfortable at all.
The surface finish is really lovely. It has a rubberised coating around the keyboard/trackpad and the screen and also at the top of the screen on the back. So you get a bit of grip for typing and no fingerprints around the keyboard or when you pull the screen up/down.
The screen is excellent. No backlight bleed and colours look nice and vibrant. Its a matt finish as standard so shouldn't suffer from reflections. 1080p suits the 15.6" screen perfectly in my opinion.
Keyboard is a good size and has soft touch keys with decent spacing very similar to my logitech K750 and plenty of room to rest your palms for typing. Not sure if its standard but the backlight works very well so I'd say thats a must have. Touchpad is nice and big and supports 2 and 3 finger gestures (Not actually sure what 3 fingers do phnarr phnarrr)
Something that niggled me about the XPS was that the HD led was on the back so you couldn't see it with the screen up which seemed daft. Thankfully the LEDs for Power/HD/Battery & Wifi are on the front.
It has plenty of connectors. 4x USB3.0 with one on the lefthand side marked as powered (I'm assuming that means it supplies more than the standard spec for iPODs etc ?). HDMI, VGA, Gigabit network, headphone & microphone jacks. My only gripe about these is that there are no connectors on the back which makes it a little untidy and a bit awkward when for example using a mouse as the cable can get in the way. Not a big issue but would have liked at least the power/network and 1-2 USB ports on the back. It also has a fingerprint reader which appears to do what it says on the tin.
Speakers are adequate. Theres no subwoofer so don't expect this to sound good in games or for playing music. Either use headphones or get some external ones. The XPS speakers + subwoofer were very impressive in comparison.
Not sure on battery life. Looks like it will last about 3.5 hours just doing normal desktop stuff.
The original 500GB hard drive supplied was a Western Digital Scorpio Black so not a bad drive really. I expected something more mundane. Although I still swapped it out for a Crucial M4. One thing to note was that the service cover underneath was very difficult to get off. Felt like I was almost going to snap it trying to get the plastic lugs to pop.
Performance
Couldn't tell you what the original build is like as I swapped the HD for a Crucial M4 SSD and reinstalled Winows 7 Pro from the supplied disc. Got all the necessary drivers from the Dell website and had no problems getting everything working. Bit disappointed that I couldn't use the latest ATI drivers but I believe there are ways around this which I still have to investigate. - Edit : Have now installed Catalyst 12.7 Beta drivers
3DMark11 basic gives :
Overall : P1230
Graphics : 1108
Physics : 3717
Combined : 1049
I did run Unigine Heaven 3.0 at 1920x1080 with 4x AA as per the benchmark thread in the GFX forum and it was limping along at about 8FPS
Windows Experience Index gives :
Processor : 7.1
Memory : 7.5
Graphics : 6.4
Gaming Grpahics : 6.5
Hard Disk : 7.9 (Crucial M4 so no surprise)
I ran Dungeons & Dragons Online which due to being an old engine runs very well even at some of the highest settings.
I also tried out Battlefield 3 and running at 1080p was getting averages of about 23FPS on Low and about 18FPS on Medium settings.
If you set it down to 1366x768 that goes up to about 33FPS on low and 26FPS on Medium so just about playable.
During benchmarking and playing games the fan does come on but its not too loud or whiny. The CPU and ATI card were both in the low 70's temperature
To summarise.
Pros :
Nice subtle looking.
Rubberised coating a great idea.
Screen is excellent.
Enough power to play most games at decent settings.
Quiet fan
Comfortable on a lap
Cons :
No ports on the back.
Speakers aren't great.
Service cover very difficult to get off.
