New Vostro Lineup (3350, 3450..)

What in the hell is Dell thinking making the 9-cell battery stick out the bottom of the laptop on the 3450s? Not only does it make the laptop more bulky and look ridiculous, but it's uncomfortable to actually, y'know... rest on your lap as well!

Sticking out the back >>>>> sticking out the bottom

Seriously, this is a dealbreaker for me. 8'(

 

It's much better for air circulation and makes the tilt on the keyboard more natural

 

Only if you're using it on a desk, which I would never do.

 

This question is about the 3550 regarding WWAN. The service manual shows a wwan card under the computer and the WLAN card below the keyboard. Does anyone know if the 3550 comes with a WWAN socket and antennas+simslot? I do not see any WWAN card in my order so i guess at least there is no WWAN-adapter present.

Removing The Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) Card

 

Hey, is this yours? Thats a WWAN card according to the service manual.

It this for real in the 3550?

 

In the 3350 WWAN card is under the keyboard and WLAN card is behind the bottom cover. This is the case for many Dell laptops, so I'm surprised it is the opposite for the 3550. I suppose it's due to space constraints - WWAN cards are full-high while WLAN cards are half-high. However, I would expect the same policy in regard to SIM card slot and antennas as with the 3350 - no WWAN on order means no hardware to support it in the future. Note: in the picture above a WWAN card is present, so you should rather look for a picture with empty WWAN slot. But since you've already ordered yours, you'll find out soon enough

 

If I may, what's the expected battery life of the 4-cell battery assuming heavy usage, screen at 100%, Wifi et al.? Basically, what is the "worst" battery life one would get with the 4-cell, i5-2410 and 3GB?

We just ordered a bunch of the 3350's, but the genius who placed the order missed the part about ordering all the units with 8-cell batteries, among other internal components, so I'm contemplating the benefit of causing a ruckus over it. (Idiot boy is quite literally the son of a higher-up, so it's a dilemma of risk vs. gain.)

Just want to know if it would be worthwhile to fork out extra $$$ to bulk purchase some 8-cells to supplement the 4-cells we will receive.

THanks!

 

On my 3350 (specs in my sig) with screen at 100%, Power Saver plan (which scales down the CPU to 800Mhz) and WWAN connection (WLAN and BT also powered on, but not in use) I get approximately 4 hours. I have no idea, how this would look with Performance power plan and the CPU under heavy load, though. I opted for a 4-cell battery, because a 8-cell sticks out very much and is uncomfortable, when using the laptop on laps...

 

thanks very much for that info. if < 4 hour is what you would get under those conditions, i suspect that, at least for my usage, i would be looking at maybe 5 hours. i think others around here would probably get 5 hours too. we don't do anything processor intensive, just compiling code and what not. that doesn't tax the processor for prolonged periods of time. most of the time it's typing and reading, akin to word processing.

4 hours seems to be quite decent i guess. may have to poll the others to see if they want to side-order 8-cells for themselves.

thanks again for the info

 

So i got my 3550 today.

i3 version, no ATI card.

I already love this machine. It was superimportant for me to have a quiet machine, well, this is really quiet. Now running Chrome with 10 pages and the fan is OFF. I ran a ie9-fishtank demo and the fan came on for 3 seconds.

NICE!

Really love that Dell actually used real metal on the lid and base, feels really nice.

I gave my Probook 4330s to my GF because of the always on fan, and the screen had really low contrast. None of these machines are expensive so my expectations are on the right level. This is by no means a MacBook pro, but i can buy 3x of these for the same price. The screen is OK, a bit course but much better than the Probook screen.

Laptop innards/keyboard is a bit flimsy, but this is a budget computer i feel its better than all others for this price.

All in all i am really happy with this one!