[New] Vostro V13

Thanks to everybody who answered me on the sound quality!

There seems to be a lot of people who use this machine for photoshop. I'm a big fan of adobe lightroom, has anybody else tried it on a v13? What is the performance like? Take ages to render previews?

I understand that photoshop is hardware accelerated, but lightroom is not. So it's down to the CULV processor...

 

No lightroom experience but the benchmarks I looked at when I was researching this laptop showed the U7300 running @1.3Ghz benchmarks similar to a C2D 5500 or a 5600 @1.83Ghz.

After about a week with the system...

1) the hard drive sound is starting to get to me. It's a constant sound that is most noticeable when your palm is on the laptop on a hard surface like a table. Its not a high pitched sound, its more like a typical fan noise but its definitely the hard drive. I may swap in my spare WD Scorpio drive unless SSDs drop back down in price again. (The drive it came with is a Seagate) This is my only real disappointment.

2) front corners of the laptop are more pointy than I would like. I have fairly long fingers and when using the touchpad the palm of my hand naturally ends up on the front corner of the notebook. Its uncomfortable. This is requiring and adjustment from me.

3) the touchpad is very close to the front edge of the bezel. I find sometimes I am accidentally resting my left hand finger on the actual touchpad surface and so then when I try to drag my right finger to move the pointer, the pointer doesnt move. I think this has more to me not being so used to such a small laptop than anything.

4) I can still type faster and more accurately on my 1420 than this laptop. Again, just and adjustment on my part is needed I think. The 1420 weighs almost 6lbs, this notebook 3.5lbs. The keyboard doesn't type quite as nice but at nearly half the weight I can deal with it.

Still very happy with my purchase, just taking some getting used to.

 

Hello,

I buy the Dell V13 and the fan of the cpu never stops ! The sound is not very hight but i want to regulate the fan.

Do you know an hardware to control the fan for the V13 ?

Thanks.

 

The fan only comes on under high cpu load, are you sure its not the hard disk making the noise (its as loud as the fan)?

 

I agree with Hopester; if you are hearing noise, it is probably the 7200rpm hard drive. When SSD prices come down, I plan on swapping it out. Right now, the HD is the loudest part of the v13. Hold your hand over the back vent and see if you feel air blowing out. Does the bottom of your v13 feel hot? I have yet to run anything that make the unit run hot, so if your fan is kicking in, it may be defective.

 

First, my V13 is arrived today. Its really a great notebook. I just replaced the 7200rpm harddisk with my old 5200rpm... i know i know... but just have no time to reinstall all that. And it is much quieter
No money for SSD yet

 

Just a tip regarding the screen. Be sure to calibrate it using he Windows 7 color calibration program. I bumped the gamma down as well as the blue gain/bais and the image contrast improved significantly and became much warmer. Found the default too blue and washed out.

Planning to open it up tomorrow and dump the cheap thermal pad and replace it with some arctic silver.

 

Hello V13 owners,

Can you look at the screen of V13 through a smartphone (with camera enabled). Do you see screen flickering with thick lines going down? I'm considering buying one, but I saw this effect in some video review so I'm wondering if this is a consistent problem.

 

What difference would that make anyway - do you plan to use the computer while looking at it throught a cellphone?

The reason you saw that is the difference in refresh rates between the camera and the monitor.

 

Yep, this is normal on any computer. You won't notice it in person.