New Studio 17 :-)

ikix said:
Just had mine delivered, at 5:15 (too close for comfort :P).

Looks:
First off the thing looks really nice. The black chainlink on the lid is barely noticeable and the silver on the main body is only noticeable when looking directly at it (i.e. its not glaring at you out of the corner of your eye). I had a scuff mark on the left of mine below a port but wasnt anything worth kicking up a fuss about. The keyboard and the touch buttons are very swish looking with their jet black colouring and bright vibrant white lighting.

Comfort:
I thought it would be a little thing to say but may be very important to some nonetheless. The 9 cell battery results in a little "bar" at the bottom back of the laptop. Its great for elevating the laptop a little when on a desk but its a bit uncomfortable when on your lap. I can imagine most people would want the 9 cell battery, especially for the i7 versions, but it would have been nice to atleast choose and option to have the 6 cell to avoid the lap problem.
The keyboard is very nice but the arrow keys are slightly squashed and will take a little getting used to for some, especially those used to full desktop keyboards, but again its only a small thing.

Screen:
Having an IPS screen for my main desktop rig i can clearly tell the screen isn't amazing but it is still quite a nice one and has no stand out colour problems etc. Good levels of brightness aswell.

Sound:
The sound is a lot better than i was expecting, i think its mainly that tiny little "sub" which has made the sound a lot nicer. Again for audiophiles it is probably nothing amazing but for most people it will be a nice pleasant set of speakers, particularly in comparison to most laptops.

Performance:
I have yet to put it through its paces in gaming, or anything serious but i have been doing plently of installations and running lots of programs as im used to doing on my desktop. Most laptops will work up a little sweat and slow a bit when doing lots of stuff but this one (i7 version) did very well and felt as if it could be pushed so much further.

Ambient Noise:
The cd drive makes a little noise but nothing different in comparison to most other laptops, so pretty average in those standings. As i said i havent done much stressful yet but the fans havent made too much noise, especially when music is on even at a relatively low volume.

Heat:
At best it has got warm. Nothing hot really, generally its actually quite nice having a little warmth emiting from it keeping your digits warm :D

I'll probably get some pics up soon (unfortunately only from an iPhone so not amazing quality)

Overall very pleased.
Click to expand...

thanks for the review brah

looking forward to the pics
 
spoke to soon guys,

its been sat in the depots holding bay for the past two weeks waiting for me to ring a special number to confirm delivery :rolleyes: if it wasn't for some randon guy on another forum I'd still be waiting.

Didn't have time to power it on last night but I am a mit miffed about something. I bought a HDD2 caddy from ebay so I can install my intel SSD into bay1 and move the original 500gb into bay2

Looks like dell have made some internal changes to the 1747 because the HDD2 caddy doesn't fit

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr, can't find one online either :mad:
 
well I've had all weekend to play on it. The build quality is so-so, what you'd expect from dell. I was amazed when the courier gave me the box. I'd have expected dell to ship the laptop within a plain secondary box with extra protection. It seems they just ship them now in a single lightweight flimsy box with a picture of what's inside. Lucky the couriers are so honest! He told me he had delivered one the other week. He was walking to the guys house when the plastic handle snapped. Come on dell, this is slightly OTT cost cutting.

The screen is ok, not a patch on the PVA/IPS standalone ones but useable. Tilt the screen slightly and the blacks turn to light grey. I have had a 1080p 17" laptop screen before and this time around decided on the lower res one. 1080p on such a small screen IMHO is not pleasurable. The text is just too small and I'm far to lazy to zoom in every application I use.

Performance is fantastic. I never used it with the dell image on though so I can't compare. The SSD was installed straight away and Win 7 64bit was installed with the drivers.

FOR THOSE INSTALLING INTEL X25 SSDs. DO NOT change the SATA controller to IDE mode. I know there's people on these forums who are telling people to change to IDE mode before updating the firmware. Doing so will lock the laptop. Keep the bios settings as is and it works fine without any errors.

Does anyone know what Mass Storage Controller and Unknown device might be after the installation? Since I'm running the SSD I think I'm right in saying I shouldn't install the intel chipset as it will install it's own HDD Controller driver which is a big no, no :confused:

It would seem the HDD2 Caddy is almost imposible to source. I have my american contacts working on it as we speak so if they can get one I'll let you know. Changed my mind about it anyway, I'm going to sell the 500gb and get a qnap with 1tb sat on the LAN. That way we can all access photos, music, docs etc etc which works well for us.

The sound system is better than last years studio model but it's your typical laptop sound so don't expect miracles. To be honest, they couldn't make it any worse as last years was DIRE :rolleyes:

Now...one little niggle I have. The eject keys don't work on mine. I'm sure they used to but now don't seem to do anything. I have to right click and select eject from within windows. Just a minor annoyance. I think it's a software issue rather than hardware.

The machine is nice and cool, had it sat on my lap for a couple of hours and didn't get my legs burnt. The fan comes on from time to time which is a bit noisy but nothing to really worry about.

WIRELESS N and BLUETOOTH. Not sure if anyone has a requirement for these but the UK i7 Studios don't have the option for Wireless N or Bluetooth. If you want them, you need to search the auction sites for Intel 5300 Wireless and Dell Bluetooth 570. I have ordered these and will install later this week.
 
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