Vostro 1220 Owner's Cafe

it works well enough. It's a fast machine so it works equally well. I had to install Vista drivers to get it to work. I ended up working with Dell to get my Camera and fingerprint reader to work with Windows 7 (32 bit). I have an encrypted hard drive and that works well also. I think the main driver of your decision is whether Windows 7 fits with your computing environment. If going to 64 bit do you have 64 bit drivers for your hardware. Windows 7 makes installing new hardware easier (as long as there is a driver for it). It also is easier to network the machine and connect to shares and share your stuff. It's more secure than XP. I'd suggest you do a hard disk full image backup before proceeding. Find out if your apps and hardware will work with Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) before proceeding.

 

I use Windows 7 it's basically a better looking and functioning XP....I think it's worth it, for sure. But that's subjective.

 

I posted a question on the forum but have not received a response from anyone regarding the Dell Vostro 1220. I'm hoping to reach out to other owners on the forum to find out if they have a 4 cell 1220 and to find out what kind of battery life they are receiving. I'm receiving about 1 and half hours with presentation mode on playing video or streaming video. The dell web site states I should receive alot more time and some reviewers are conducting the same test and getting over 3 hours on the 4 cell battery. Could I trouble you for some feedback so I can troubleshoot the short battery life.
Thanks
Jim Stavropoulos

 

Do you have a 6 cell battery ?
Have you ever tried running it in presentation mode and just playing video locally or streaming video to see how long it lasts ?
What's your processor speed ? (mine is T9550 2.66 ghz so it's really fast. But I would imagine it throttles down when it does not need to run the cpu at 100%).

 

I would help you on the 4 cell, but I didn't even know you could get one with the 1220 I have the p8600 2.4....I can run Sins of Solar Empire on a Dell external monitor at 1440.900 and it's smooth...really amazing given the intel graphics chip....but yes, they all are designed to throttle and keep temps down...there's an intel utilty, a desktop gadget, that will display the throttling on a graph. I've never used it for a presentation and can' say how long it will go unplugged on battery...but it should be 3 hours with a 4 cell (I'm really guessing here....with the 6 cell I can get 5 hours or so web surfing, etc.)

 

@jstavropoulos

Yes, my Vostro1220 can easily achieve 5 hours battery life on default settings. and it is super fast.

Like everything else in life, balance is important.

You went ahead and configured your V1220 with a power hungry 35W CPU and a small 4-cell battery, now you are upset that you don't get a long battery life.

If you had selected a 25W CPU like P8600 OR P8700 and a 6-cell battery, you probably would be much happier now.

Seeing how important battery life is to you, I suggest you try and return your V1220 if you still can, and get a different configuration that is more battery friendly.

 

Does anyone know if the Vostro 1220 can take an Intel 6300 wireless card? I mean it should....I've never even had it apart to take a look at the layout. I put one in my m6500 and was impressed enough with it to want one in my Vostro.

thanks

 

Hi - when my X1 died I persuaded the IT dept to replace it with a 1220; they wanted to get a Latitude E4200, which was about twice the price for a similar spec. They wouldn't give me the difference

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it - it's got a P8700, 4Gb RAM and a 320Gb disk; definitely quicker than the X1's 1.1GHz Pentium M! I need a small machine so I can work on the train on the 3 days a week I'm in the office - it's an hour each way - and for that it's great.

The minor problems are due to the OS - we run CentOS5, which is Redhat based, and the audio and video drivers don't seem to fully support the 1220. That is:

• plugging in headphones doesn't disable the speaker
• closing/opening the lid when in use screws things up
• lots of screen flashing when powering down
• can't get higher resolution if using external monitor

However these are just irritations, and hopefully will be fixed in future CentOS updates. CentOS is supposed to be very stable, so it tends to be a bit behind the times eg. Firefox is on v3.0.18.

The only major problem I had was I broke the display I had just got on the train and got the 1220 out of the bag, and must have got my thumb between the keyboard and screen. When I switched it on, there was a thumb-shaped area of black on the right hand side, and eventually the screen just went haywire.

Fortunately the laptop is covered for accidental damage, so a Dell engineer just came in and fitted a new one. I was a bit surprised because I didn't think I had pushed hard on the screen - anyone else managed to do this?

Cheers
matt

 

I've gone through two screens on the Vostro 1220. Have had laptops for over 10 years and never broken one before. But in fairness I did drop the machine both times .

Still really enjoying the machine and if Dell revise the same model with better graphics and sound I would upgrade straight away.

 

Hi guys

I just bought 2 1220 notebooks and 2 solid state drives, just to find that there is no way you can replace the current HDD without disassembling the whole thing.

My question is, does anyone know a guide to disassemble it?

i got pretty far on my own, but i cant get the front opened, and i am afraid i will break something if i push it harder.