Official Vostro Owner's Lounge

I got my vostro 1500 yesterday, and I as well am very pleased with it so far. Its construction seems far more solid and sturdy than my 4 year old hp pavillion. It's very sleek and minimalist (something I like), and it's both thinner and lighter than I expected it to be.

I bought the orange box, and play portal and hl2 on the highest possible settings, and other than lag from my hdd sometimes, it's great. There were some problems in hl2 with weird black jagged "things" and some parts of rooms behind a wall visible, but updating to the 169.04 driver fixed them, for now atleast.

EDIT:
p.s. Does anyone else have a small gap between the body panels in the front of the laptop where the IR sensor is, under the buttons? It bugs me, but I don't want to break the thing trying to fix it...

 

I have a very, very slight gap...didn't notice it until you mentioned it. It is not completely flush as say, on the left and right sides. Doesn't bother me even after seeing it. Overall my Vostro 1500 has a very good fit and finish, and if it was a couple of pounds lighter it would be IMO perfect for my needs. I carry it around quite a bit, and the size doesn't bother me but I do notice the weight a little.

 

What bothers me about the gap is that when using the buttons, light from their led's seeps through and makes it look like a big hole...

 

I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I've taken a real shine to the Vostro series, specifically the Vostro 1000. I know it's the cheapest model, but to be honest I don't have a lot of money and it seems to do everything I want, which is internet, email, typing and iTunes. I have a 360 for gaming, so I'm set there.

I'm posting because I want to know if anyone has any experience with this particular model. There's no real reviews up for it, so I was hoping someone could speak from experience.

I've looked at the Compaq C700NR and the Sony Vaio NR series, but those are loaded with Vista and bloatware. Hope you can help!

 

Sinister I have the normal one with true life native res is 1440 x 900 which I think is perfect for a 17inch

 

cool theirechoes i opted for the 1900 x 1200 native res screen i hope it looks just as good as yours cant for the PICS man.

 

How come Vostro 1500 doesn't get any bios update while 1400 gets 2 already... isn't 1500 more demanding anyways..

 

Just got my Vostro 1400 about 2 weeks ago and I thought I'd just add my impressions and experiences of it to this thread.... so far, overall pretty good, especially bang for the buck.

T5470 C2D 1.6GHz
1GB RAM
80GB HD
nVidia 8400M GS
CDRW/DVD-ROM
1440x900 TL WXGA+
Dell 355 Bluetooth
9 cell battery
Dell 1390 802.11b/g wireless
Windows Vista Baisc
NO webcam

$629 + $10ebay 30% coupon = $639 + tax

The first thing I do with any new computer I get is update the BIOS and reinstall the OS so I can great the partitions to my liking. The Vista DVD made reinstalling the OS a breeze, and with instructions online, I even preserved the Media Direct functionality without any issues. Vista drivers were easily found and installed easily for all the components. Vista is a memory hog, will probably need to upgrade to 2GB soon.

After booting up for the first time, the first thing I noticed of course was the screen. I ended up getting the AUO . As most people mentioned, I can notice some graininess, but not enough to bother me. In fact, the glossiness and poor vertical viewing angles are more bothersome IMO. With the screen at full brightness, it actually looks very nice, but I don't run it at full brightness often to conserve battery. But what bothered me the most about my screen, was that it had 2 white/light smudge marks on it, looks like it was "baked" into the glossy coating.... they weren't dead/stuck pixels. I promptly called Dell about this, the shipped me a new LCD screen (also AUO ) and I received it less than 48 hours after I called in. I was pretty impressed by the turn around time. Also, with the instructions online, the LCD was pretty easy to replace on my own. Even though the new LCD was still AUO, at least it didn't have the white/light marks on it, so for this budget laptop, I'll deal with the other issues.

My battery is pretty tight, it wiggles less than 1mm, so I have no complaints about that. the 9cell does stick out, but not enough to be a pain... it just looks funny. Battery life is really good. Unless I'm busy using the CD drive a lot (like installing apps) or using a lot of the processor (playing games), I can't see myself getting less than 3 hours of battery life before it warns me to charge.

Bluetooth works just fine, I have a Dell bluetooth keyboard to play FFXI... more on FFXI later. The keyboard paired with it just fine, no issues at all. I also paired my cell phone to transfer games and pictures, piece of cake. Built in Vista drivers/stack work fine with it.

Wifi works fine with my Netgear WGR614v5. I haven't tried the WiFi finder thing on it yet.

I at first thought it came with a IR port. But instead, I saw an extra headphone jack where the IR port should have been. It turns out the IR port is an option if you buy the wireless remote control. Not only that, the IR port that the remote control option comes with is not a real IR/COM port, it only receives from the optional remote. Oh well, that's life I guess.

VGA out with the 8400M GS is great. I have it outputting 1360x768 to my Aquos TV to watch movies and TV shows. Works like a charm. Quality is more than decent.

Sound.... I do have some hissing and extra noise when listening through headphones, but if the music is loud enough, I can't hear the hissing/noise. But the good thing is, when I use the headphone jack as a lineout to my TV, I can hear no hissing at all, even if there is no music/sound playing.

Ok, about FFXI. If you are an FFXI fan, you probably know that it doesn't run well on Vista with a nVidia 8xxx series card. I can confirm this to be 100% true. It installs and runs, but when you get more than a few characters on the screen, frame rates drop to unplayable levels (like <5fps). So remember how I said I create my own partitions? Well I'm so glad I did because now I had some space to install XP and dual boot and see if FFXI runs on this laptop with XP. Let me tell you, loading XP on this thing was a PAIN. I have this old XP SP1 CD from a old Dell computer I don't even use anymore so I figure it would be a piece of cake.... WRONG. The XP SP1 install disc didn't have the right SATA drivers to even detect the hard drive to install. I had to slipstream the Intel ICH8 SATA drivers, as well as SP2, onto the disc with nLite (kick a$$ utility by the way). Ok, got XP to install... not to bad right? WRONG... a lot of the drivers, like the modem, sound, and bluetooth were definitely not straightforward to install. First of all, the modem is somehow related to the sound card, so if you don't successfully install the sound first, XP doesn't even detect the modem. The sound card drivers on the Dell website actually worked, but the install package was all messed up, so you had to run the install package, resulting in a failed install, but also resulting in a new system device with a yellow exclamation mark. Then you have to go back and manually install the sound drivers to the yellow exclamation mark device. And finally, default XP drivers don't know about the Dell 355 Bluetooth device either, although technically, it does support it. INF file hacking was necessary to get the Bluetooth working with the default MS BT stack. All this took me about a day total to figure out. Once that hump was overcome, I installed FFXI in XP and it WORKS GREAT! Frame rates are almost as good as my desktop 7600GS, the 8400M GS isn't too shabby for an old game like FFXI. The only drawback I have found is that either the CPU or GPU (I'm guessing GPU) goes into a power saving mode when the laptop isn't plugged in, so unless you have the laptop plugged into A/C power, you will still see some severe lag (not as bad as Vista though)

Sorry for the long post, but I'm hoping it might help some prospective Vostro 1400 owners, especially the ones who want to install XP and/or play FFXI!

 

No problem with the long post man i have also ordered a Vostro but the 1700 is what i was interested in thank you for the info it is very help full as i plan to install XP as well when i get mine and dual boot until either i get the hang of Vista or i feel the urge to fling the laptop out of a third story window. LOL

Seriously though i have been looking it up i have heard that their is some problems installing XP on the Vostro but nothing that cant be overcome.

 

I recieved my Vostro today! All is good, lightning fast and there was no problems finding a network. The only problem I can find with it is the screen. I unfortunately recieved an SEC something or other, it's incredibly grainy and oily/sparkly.

I contacted my Dell rep, wasn't able to get her so I called tech support directly and was only on the phone for a total of 10 minutes! I explained the problem, and she agreed to send a technician out to replace my LCD. She even guaranteed to me that I'd get an LG Phillips. We'll see about that.

So far everything is awesome though besides that!