WTB Dell Studio 15, please review specs

[3t3P]

Hi all need a laptop for uni, moving the 'rig' around is a bit of a mission on placements
After combing the net and stores I have actually decided I might buy a dell studio 15 cos the current deal till the 6/1/2010 is actually very good for £530 here's what I can get:

CPU:Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T4300 (2.1GHz, 800MHz, 1MB cache) ' T4300 is 1mb cache, T6600 is 2mb cache that is a £70 upgrade T6600 2.2GHZ, worth it?, I don't think it is?)

GPU: ATI 4570 512mb

RAM: 4GB 800mhz DDR2

HD: 500GB 5,400rpm

LCD: 15.6in Widescreen High Definition (1366x768) WLED with TrueLife

DVD: Slot-loading DOOV-D burning drive yada yada

Keyboard: Backlit for £30 I feel is worth it



Usual price £744! I can find an Acer with similar specs but read its touchpad is dodge, with dell I have used their keyboards and touchpads and at least know they work!

So what do you guys think? Dell 'recommends' 1920x1080 res upgrade on the screen but I feel this is overkill and would strain my eyes and make games performance worse!

 

[3t3P]

Thanks for that re pentium dual cores

I was looking at the 15Z but can't justify its £600 price tag for those specs, the inspirons now seem to have worse specs than studios for the money too

£429 that's an E-value code from a flyer isn't it? I just whacked it in online and probs don't mind the smaller HD tbh, would rather save £££'s

 

[3t3P]

What does everyone think about the stock resolution of the screen? yay or nay

 

[3t3P]

I can spend £70 either on:

higher res screen
upgrade the processor or
upgrade to a 9cell battery which I hope only points down not out the back of the lappy,

who would get what?

oh and do I need to upgrade the wireless card at all? I have seen some people doing this, it's £15-30

 

[3t3P]

what worries me now is screen flex and heat on this lappy, apparently its at the chassis cooling limits according to some reviews and the fan is audible a lot?

 

[3t3P]

put the order through by phone, this way you can upgrade to a 7,200rpm HD which you CAN'T do on the website

£503.98 in total for 320GB 7,200rpm HD and backlit keyboard as only changes to base model spec

 

[3t3P]

hmm not sure if it comes with the remote or not, nice if it did but won't be doom and gloom if it doesn't

Now I need a good bag for it and possibly a desktop cooler (if only for typing angle), any recommendations?

 

[3t3P]

mine is 25th but might be cos it's not completely base spec

 

[3t3P]

It's shipped!
but my road is covered in snow/ice atm...
However if its leaving from China as indicated it will stilll be a few days but way sooner than the 25th
I'll post some pics up when it arrives but I also gotta be revising

 

[3t3P]

dell used to have GPU options on their laptops, seems to be removed to simplify production
would be great if you knew what you wanted and could whack in a card that was more powerful but not necessarily a fully fledged gaming GPU like a 260m

 

[3t3P]

'extra' as in additional to existing HD?
or replace the HD and put in a solid state...
thought only 17'' laptops from dell took two drives

 

[3t3P]

Mine is same as Nymins but opted for 7,200rpm 320gb drive (via phone) and backlit keyboard

I'm gonna watch out for the sound volume/quality issue out the speakers, easiest to explain by reading this blog entry really:

http://niranjanthilak.com/tip-increasing-the-dell-studio-15-series-laptops-sound/

 

[3t3P]

got mine yesterday
Had a play with it (batt came fully charged) then reinstalled windows 7 with a 100GB OS partition and 200GB left for storage purposes.

The chainlink finish is really nice IMO, considering its stock (didn't want to pay £30 for any of the colours) it looks really nice.

Build quality, its definately solid enough despite being plastic and its lighter than I thought it would be! dunno what muppets think this thing is 'heavy'

First off the screen is gorgeous to look at, in some ways better than my desktop PC, the white looks really pure and the brightness it can go up to is insane, I am running it at 1/4 in a dark room or just over 1/3 of max in a lit room. I tested it with The dark knight on DVD and wanted to watch the whole damn thing it looks really great for films/photos etc
Keyboard is functional enough and the backlighting is cool/useful

Battery life is proving excellent for both a laptop of this size and the non-neutered components it harbours 'under the hood' It really will do 3+ hrs of browsing

The laptop does however tend to get warm and the fan will come on even when just browsing or watching youtube. During gaming (mirrors edge) it really pumped out the air at the back.
I played on medium settings at native resolution and got a playable 22-23fps with x2AA, then I turned off anti aliasing and set textures and 'graphics' to high and got the same framerate, this is what I now play it on. Everynow and then the GPU seems to throttle and you get stuttering/chopiness but this seems to be at the start of the game when the fan hasn't fully responded to the increase in temps and thus the GPU overheats and throttles, once in the 'gaming session' it generally remains perfectly playable and looks awesome on this screen

The speakers aren't half bad, sure bass is lacking but once I deleted the stock 'IDT' drivers and allowed windows to install its own high definition audio driver the sound quality noticeably imporved, overall I am happy with the sound and could hear more subtleties to music I played on it than I expected

Desktop is fast enough and the trackpad actually has a nice feel to it, was worried about he 'slightly rough' texture comments i'd read in reviews but its very mild just a bit more than being completely smooth and so far is reponding very nicely.

Slot loading drive works fine, you have to push the disc in very far till it just about disappears (unlike car versions) but is otherwise functional if a little slow at initial disc reading/autorunning on desktop.

Wifi I had a problem at first and had to enter IPV4 addresses manually (from run:cmd then ipconfig /all) into the wireless card settings then I could connect to the internet and acheived 1150kb/s sustained download rate of itunes

In conclusion for the money I paid I am pleased with both form and function.
Yes it does get warm and I am considering buying a cooler for desktop use.

Would I buy it again compared to other notebooks i've seen?
Yes

 

[3t3P]

there's a quick spiel nymins, I will need to clear my desk and setup the cam for some pics later but am 'revising' right now lol

 

[3t3P]

No probs anything else you want to know?

TBH the bloatware wasn't all that bad, Dell support center, Dell 'datasafe' thingy and maybe one other thing at a push, its more streamlined than in the past I think.

I'm a purist so took the win 7 disc (+1 to dell) and did a format in no time at all.
there is a 39mb 'OEM partition' if you decide to format you will see this, I left it alone and am doing fine for now...

Honestly if you cba formatting you could leave it and it would be just as fast. Also I just felt ill at ease with having one massive HD with no division. Now I can keep the data on the 200GB partiton even If I need to format

 

[3t3P]

HD was one ~300GB partition yeh, no splitting as you say

It was dispatched from China then eventually ended up at a depot in UK. Then dell phoned me (automated) and you confirm their suggested delivery date/time.
Then on the website I saw it ended up at the local depot early in the morning ready to be taken to its local destination.
Mine was 8am to 1pm morning delivery and it came at 12:45 lol

 

[3t3P]

hmm it's crazy ur basemodel is taking longer than mine did, lets hope your right about it turning up spontaneously

 

[3t3P]

probs thought it was card fraud?

 

[3t3P]

sorry bout lack of pics, revising for finals atm, the culmination of 6yrs at uni, its time to get outta here
i'll give it a punt when I can, but you will hopefully just get yours anyway!

 

[3t3P]

what you gonna use the laptop for?