Dell XPS M1330 Purchases Notebooks
November 21, 2008 | Dell, Electronics, Notebook | Comments OffAlthough I was not unhappy with my laptop ASUS W3J, which I owned a little over a year now, it was never quite the ultraportable to match my beloved, dear three Dell Inspiron 300M pounds. That is why I recently bought a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. I was eyeing laptops with LED displays and solid state disk drive for some time now, long before I ever saw the Dell M1330.
But the fact that … so pushed me over the edge. Plus there are all these accolades from the M1330 from PC Magazine, Notebook Review, and CNET. And I do mean rave reviews. It’s not often you see jaded flat PC Magazine reviews of this kind of praise:
* It offers the LED drive and SSD options
* And it is a sub-four books ultralight
* And it offers a non-integrated graphics solution, which is extremely rare for an ultralight
* And it is ridiculously good for a Dell
It was a moment that Dell issued a laptop that has inspired so many impressive features. The Dell XPS M1330 is a monumental step in that it takes the best things from other major Ultraportables and combines them into one entity. My only peeve is that the weight can be lifted with the nine-stack. Otherwise, this ultraportable should easily pass at the top of the list of purchases notebooks.
This is strange in a way, because the M1330 is not much of an upgrade of the W3J in terms of absolute hardware specifications. The display sizes are almost the same, both offer 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, and the M1330 is even a downgrade in one area: I ordered with a hard disk that is less than half the size of the W3J. It’s more of a sidegrade as a pure update. Experience Windows reference scores are almost the same for both laptops, too.
Of course, the first thing I did after getting the machine was format the hard drive. It is a sad fact of life in the PC ecosystem, but if you want a cleaning machine and unnecessary bloatware, paid installed Craplet approval (including Google Desktop, I might add), you must raze to the ground immediately after you unboxing it.
This is a particularly serious problem on the 32 GB solid state disk drive, because he had a 10 GB “restore” partition, and 6 GB “direct media” partition pre-installed from the factory . Nothing like booting a system with an already limited to 32 GB of storage device and find you have only 16 GB of free disk space. Way to go, Dell.
After formatting and start a clean installation of Vista, I ran into a little problem BLUESCREEN where the machine immediately after the start of the installation. I found the transition from the hard drive from the interface AHCI return to the standard set at this problem. According to the BIOS warning, this excludes the use Intel’s Robson flash memory onboard cache, but with a solid state disk to play, I do not think much of a loss. Update: it is better to install the right driver AHCI Vista during the installation process, because it is the only time you can change! Copy the “Intel SATA driver” to a USB flash drive, and specify another driver during the selection phase of the road. The only drivers you’ll need a clean 32-bit Vista are installing video, sound, networking and wireless – all available on the Dell XPS M1330 driver download page. Everything else is included in the default Vista. Beware, however, because 64-bit are not available for the video card yet.
I only had the machine since Tuesday, so I’m not really able to provide a comprehensive review. But after a little chance to receive their 1330, I agree with the laudatory comments. This is an exceptional machine for people like me who believe that laptops were designed for portability first and foremost. Perhaps the most striking about the machine is the 32 GB solid state disk drive. It is blazingly fast and totally silent. I was so used on bass, rumbling metronomic hard drives of computers at my work that is the total absence of sound in normal operation is rather strange. All you can hear some very quiet hum acute electronics, and only if you put your ear close to the machine.
The drawback, of course, is that only 32 GB in size. This is certainly a little tight. I was not too worried, because when I price for this option – and this is not a cheap option at $ 500 – I was already using less than 32 GB of disk space on my laptop ASUS W3J, which is fairly typical 80 GB portable hard drive. I tend to run a minimum laptop, with Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Office 2007, Streets and Trips, Photoshop Elements, and a few other things installed, I have almost 12 GB of free disk space on the 32 GB solid state disk. It is not quite as bad as it may seem, I carry a 100 GB external USB 2.5 “hard disk in my bag as a matter of course, to virtual machines and other issues. TreeSize has always been one of my key public services; on this machine, It is my new best friend.
how to format dell xps m1330 -
