Vostro 3300 - First Impressions

Pictures of this laptop would be awesome. I'm looking at buying it. No 6 cell battery option with this laptop? Any word on the actual weight of this laptop? I'm looking at this and the vostro 1220 with p8600..

 

First of all, Congratulations on your purchase!

Next, can you comment on the speaker loudness please? I know 3300 has only one speaker, is it loud enough? My Vostro 1310 has one speaker and it's not loud at all, pretty bad actually.

And pics please!

 

So, you're saying that the headphone out jack is not a stereo connection but instead a mono connection? Or did I not understand your comment?

Thanks.

 

Obviously, the headphone out jack IS stereo! He means there's only one speaker, so the sound you hear from your lap is mono.

Another question now: is the fan always on, like on the 3400?

 

sorry for being late.
Thanks for Douki, that's exactly what i meant.

 

Update so far:
I have spent some hours with the Vostro 3300 today.

When I did only light work (webbrowsing), the battery seems to be up to 3 hours. Fan is pretty quiet (almost unhearable), notebook stays cool.

But bear in mind that this is a powerful machine with quite a cpu. After some minutes of intensive work (e.g. installing software, virus scanning), the fan grew louder and the notebook got warmer.
I have not done any tests lasting more than half an hour. The fan WAS louder and the notebook WAS warmer, but it did not go up to the levels of my M6400, which can get VERY loud and hot.

 

Some other observations and answers to questions posted above:

- Keyboard ist good. My main notebook is a M6400, I had no problem adapting to the Vostro 3300. Function keys are half height. Cursor keys are full size. Loudness and other multimedia keys are no real physical keys.
- Sound is "nothing to write home about". Sound is not very loud und does sound, in fact, quite mono (although the windows driver mentions "Stereo"). Sounds seem to come from the left side, as if the orchestra would be residing inside the DVD-drive... Soundwise, I would rate my colleague's Studio 15 first, my own M6400 second and the Vostro 3300 third.
- Speed is very good.
- Battery is 41440 mWh
- Depending on the tasks and applications running, the battery status jumps very quickly between extremes (2:30, 1:45, 2:20). But maybe this is kind of normal behavior, I almost never use my other notebooks without power plugs.
- Screen is okay, colors are bright, viewing angle is limited. Colors are a little bit on the blueish side (just as my other colleague's Vostro 3700).

I would not recommend the 3300 as a multimedia notebook, as a beginner's notebook or as a notebook for "normal" office work. For this, the configuration with Core i5 and 6 GB is a little over the top.
I would recommend the 3300 as a business notebook for cpu-heavy work (software development, virtualisation...), or - as in my case - a low-cost, more mobile backup-notebook for my main M6400.
If I were to give this notebook a grade, I would rate it "B".

 

i agree except for the grade i would give it or a c+ or a b-.
This notebook is suitable for those need a fast cpu and a high amount of ram without spending too much (if you buy 8gb, you will spend much more so the 6gb offered for this model is the best gb/price ratio you will find, plus it is 1333 ) but you will have to sacrifice a bit of battery life if you start some mid-heavy task.
On battery life there are better models out there even with a similar spec, for the same price (although you will have to sacrifice the ram ratio, so either you get 8gb for much more money or 4gb for less money) and with two speakers, one example is the e6410, but also lenovo offers better life battery models.
However, i will repeat if those side effects don't count that much, well this is a good product.

 

The e6410 is another 200-300 dollars for similar specs. That's not a huge deal, I guess, but it could be a deal breaker for some.

 

FYI, for those of you asking for pictures and battery life for the Vostro 3300 I found this review posted today that includes a lot of pics

Dell Vostro 3300 Review link

I'm also interested in the 3300, only concern is the battery life, I wish the 8-cell were available right now but it looks like it could take weeks to get that and you have to order it separately right now.