Vostro 3400 - who else?

i was debationg waiting for the latitude but decided for the vostro due to fact it is lower cost. and b/c for the fingerprint reader there is no wave its digital persona!

 

Does the fan turn on periodically, or is it always running? I'm guessing under load it spins up?

 

yes it does spin periodically. while using it with outlook 2010 beta, 3 IE windows, firefox and itunes open it runs on low pretty much constantly. but with only ie it turns on bout every minute or two for a minute or two.

 

Thanks for the review. One thing though, I thought wireless N had three antenna. You only stated it had two...

 

Thanks very much for the replies. +rep

 

there are three versions of N wifi. the 130/150MBps, 300MBps, and 450MBps 130 and 300 are the primary versions 450 isnt in use much it requires i beleive 4 antenias the 130/150 requires 2 the 300MBps requires 3 with 3 stream. all the dell N cards and intel 5100/6200 are 130/150MBps max cards. the 5300/6300 is 300 capable.

 

Hi! I'm considering this laptop or a 13" or 15" Mac book Pro, but since Apple is taking so damned long to update their laptops - I'm getting a little impatient.

With that said, I have a few questions about this laptop.

1) How easy is it to take it apart? I have a plan to replace the optical drive with a second hard drive instead. I would imagine the hard drive caddy wouldn't be flush with the outside because the bezel kinda curves downward, but maybe you can replace / jerry rig the outside bezel on the hard drive caddy with the bezel from the original laptop. Opinions?

2) Is it easy to get to the wireless card too?

3) How cool does the laptop stay?

4) What kind of battery life are you guys getting? Which batteries did you get with your laptop?

5) Does the screen have much flex? It looks like the case is sturdy, being made out of aluminum, like Apple. Which is something I like to see.

It would be nice if they had switchable graphics with this laptop - to conserve on battery while not using graphic intensive programs, but that might have brought up the price a little, maybe?

 

well its probably more that this way there is less to go wrong with the optimus what happens if something dosnt work perfectly its a first gen tech sure thry have it in the m11x alienware but that is a netbook woth a high end video card. if i had to guess it will be in the next gen vostros

 

Mine is still being worked on.

Order Date: 3/25/2010
Order Status: In Production
Estimated Delivery Date: 4/30/2010

I really hope to get it soon, but who knows...

 

An external is kind of inconvenient to carry around, and I rarely use the CD drive. Plus, I plan to use the eSata when I back up my data to my external already.

So looks like battery life isn't that great on this laptop compared to the MacBook, unless you get a 9 cell - which I might do anyway. You can get 5+ hours on a mac.

However, the price is more attractive on this machine.