Official Vostro Owner's Lounge

Got my 1400 today. I'm more than a bit disappointed. Overall build quality is great, very solid. Looseness with the battery has been brought up repeatedly but isn't that big of a deal I don't think. Here are my real issues...

1) This thing is heavy. Even without the 9-cell it is heavier than average for a 14"

2) Cheap-ass Dell switched to Alps touchpads. They suck compared to Synaptics. Even with the sensitivity at maximum the touchpad doesn't always recognize my taps, and the motion just isn't as smooth as a Synaptics and it's harder to use. There are also much fewer configuration options for the Alps. Bad move Dell.

3) 1440x900 TrueLife screen sucks. It needs at least another notch of brightness and the color balance is horrible. Even after tweaking the red/green/blue color controls I couldn't get a pleasing picture. The LCD on my crappy old 12" Averatec is gorgeous in comparison. Why did I pay extra for this? There should have been a discount.

4) Nvidia Vista drivers still not ready for prime-time. There have been improvements but I still can't use Digital Vibrance or Sharpening controls in the Nvidia color controls, and this LCD needs it! I tried 8 different drivers from laptopvideo2go and none of them offered full functionality. How long is it going to take?

I'm really glad that Dell is offering 100% refunds for Vostro returns because this thing is definitely going back.

 

1. never owned another 14 incher so can't comment
2. seems about the same as my other touchpads with synpatic
3. no comment
4. i got digital vibrance to work using the driver from laptopvideo2go,, but now i can't overclock using ntune

 

Which driver version are you using?

 

Modoc, did your Vostro come with a re-installation vista dvd?

 

vista 32bit 162.18

 

I plan on reinstalling the os when I get my 1500 (prob Vista business or XP pro, haven't decided yet). How do I go about finding the drivers (are they all included on the recovery partition)?

 

i got mine, see spec in sig. i love it and the screen is great. the palm rests seem to be covered with a type of plastic. it is a little thick but it is solid. and their isnt any bloatware. only problem is no OS cd included. going to have to harass dell later about this.

 

so far no one with WSXGA+ to comment on the screen... :-\


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does anyone know what forceware release works best with the 1400?

 

Thanks, that one does indeed work. Cranked up the Digital Vibrance and tweaked the colors again and the LCD is looking much better.