Its Here! - DELL XPS M1530 - User Review (in progress)

I am going to get the 1530 when the higher res screens come out next year. Like everything that I have read so far on the reviews, but a loud hard drive would drive me nuts. Look forward to your benchmarks.

 

How unbearable is that glossy screen? I bought a portable dvd player with a glossy screen and I totally regret it. I really want to get the 1530 now though. Especially since the price is still low and theres a 200 dollar off coupon. But I think I should just wait for the matte finish screen.

Dont get me wrong I love the glossy screen on plasmas and all because the colors are also very good but with a laptop I just dont think I can go places without getting so much glare.

 

I currently have an old Dell 9300, needed to get something a little more portable, and the 1530 looks like it fits the bill. An overly loud hard drive would have made me rethink that. Just waiting for the higher res screens, look forward to the benchmarks.

 

Wear headphones? Listen to music? Pinch your toes? There are plenty of ways you can overcome it, and I'm sure it's not insanely loud.

I just ordered my 1530!
I'll be posting the specs in the sig right about now...

 

They went out of there way in the official review to point out that the hard drive was abnormaly loud. I am not anal about system noise unless it is distracting. I appreciate these user reviews, little things that might be important to one person, can be answered fairly quickly.

I need the machine fairly quickly, so I am chomping on the bit a little to get it ordered. I am going to be getting a 22" widescreen for my office, so I might be willing to go with lower res on the road.

Anyone know a good thread on here talking about monitors?

 

I haven't heard a peep out of my hard drive (it is a 200GB 7200RPM Hitachi). In fact, you wouldn't know it is spinning unless you look at the HDD indicator light.


I think a review on a pre-production unit needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It was an unfinished product and my 1530 is perfect......

 

You will only notice glossy reflection if you do not have rapid eye movment(games) & are not multi tasking.
Its not in any way as bad as a CRT, i have to cover my 19"CRT over a it is that annoying.

I tested it in the day with overhead lights on & a window right behind me and it did hinder at all.

Hope to be trying this Xp installation with this guide when i get home about 4PM MST


**its 2:40am and im editing my club photos, the quality & sharpness & saturation of the photos is AMAAAZING

my photos have not looked as good in the 3+ years i have been doing club work and truly shows how great this monitor is regardless of the *lower resolution*.

 

Now that you've had it for a little while, have you had the time to test the battery life? Also, did you get the single 9-cell or the 9-cell + 6-cell? If so, have you tried out the battery life of the 6-cell as well? I'm wondering if it's worth the extra $40 to get two 9-cells.

One final thing, did you get that Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy HD Software Addition thing? Does anybody know if there's any actual hardware involved with that or is it entirely something that you could download (from a perfectly legal source of course ) and most importantly, does it make a big difference over not having it?

 

No upgraded sound, do not know too much about the audigy, for me i use headphones & stereo speakers so i do not need high quality sound.

I have the 9cell, right now i am testing right now with dual monitors,
1 USB hub with - 1hdd - cdrom (not active) & wireless mouse. Max Brightness on WIFI, everything full power.
Streaming 96KBPS audio & downloading it to my External HDD
30 min has gone by & i have 80% remaining with 2 hours 15 min left.
1 hour 10 min has gone by - 58% 1 hour 30 min left

 

Woaw! Superbe pics!
It really does look like a sexy laptop!

Thanks kanadianiceman

 

Nvidia Monitoring



Stability Test


Stats Page


OverClock Settings


Download Nvidia Tune
http://findfiles.com/list.php?strin...xp_international.exe&size=43265912&db=Mirrors

Get festive with your family who are far away with webcam tools!

 

did you try some gaming yet kanadianiceman?

Oh and merry christmas!

 

Tried a little bit of gaming.

I gotta say its a bit stunning how awesome the games look & play on this laptop, they are playable at high qualities, dont video lag at all. and i gotta say i am impressed with my wifi, i had 20-30 pings last few days playing games!!

Just tried gears of war, max everything, the game was playable, my frabs recorded 20-40 FPS in the training sections.

 

Sorry for getting off topic, but I want to know what camera you're using to take pictures of your laptop. It looks awesome. Thanks!

 

Have you played unreal tournament 3 on that? I tried playing gears on my 1520 and I had to bring the resolution down to 800x600 to get a stable frame rate.

I just sent my 1520 back today and ordered the m1530. The specs on my system is similiar to yours

 

The 8600m GT in the m1530 uses GDDR3 vRAM, where as the Inspiron 1520's 8600m GT uses GDDR2 vRAM.

 

that's why I had to send my 1520 back to dell Matt

 

he wants the pimpin stuff lol!!


CHEERS!!


mine was supposed to come the 31st but it shipped and now its coming tomorrow...5 DAYS THATS AMAZING!!

 

UT3 plays as smooth on my 1530 as my M1710

I have been extremely impressed with this system's performance.....

 

but still no review from sleey...

 

Patience is a virtue....

 

naa its not...especially not when mine comes TOMORROW

W00T!!

 

Now, that laptop is getting so much more appealing each day :...

VERY VERY APPEALING!!!!!

 

And the thing is, there is absolutley no reason why these games HAVE to be played at max quality

Fast moving games such as UT can be played at 1 stop down from super high quality. Call of duty and company of heros are quite a bit slower so you can take the hit in FPS for the look of the game.

I am a counterstrike boy, and really all ive been playing right now cause i dont have source is 1.6, sure its a waste of computer, but power is control right

 

Hi !

First of all, sorry for my bad english

I have a little question : when I go there : http://www1.ca.dell.com/content/pro.../xpsnb_m1530?c=ca&cs=cadhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

In Hot Offers, it says that it expires 20/12/07, does it means that the offer will be off at 20/12/07 midnight ?

 

Yeah, probably at 11:59 pm to be exact.

Though it says the offer will be ending at that time, it just means that a new slightly modified list of customization prices will be available tomorrow (the 21st) which will be for the most part identical to the current prices.

One thing that should be noted is the current dell coupon for the XPS m1530 (which also expires today, the 20th) is no longer useable because it has already been used 3000 times (its use limit). While I don't know how often dell coupons are released, I'm assuming that they will be released along with the next list of prices, therefore, tomorrow. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't been following the coupons for very long)

Basically what I'm saying is that if you're thinking to getting in on the current deal, it's probably worth waiting until the next set of coupons is released.

 

Zooska, is there actually any difference between the two? when I configure the base configuration to be the same, its no different in price....

 

The M1530 has now been reviewed by Trusted Reviews:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/12/21/Dell-XPS-M1530/p1

 

Does the Aero interface on Vista work properly with the 3GB RAM configuration (1*2GB and 1*1GB) as it is not Dual channel?

I heard that Aero may have problems with non dual channel memory configs.

Btw, thanks for your inital review..can't wait to get my hands on mine

 

You added pics!!

It's so awesome!
Wow!

 

Nice review, thanks!

 

Sorry, I know this is old, but I just had to respond. "Except a couple of programs that wouldn't run" - You've got your own answer there. Why would I want to use an operating system that is slower on the same hardware, won't run some of my existing software, irritates with more security road blocks, and many familiar things have been rearranged and moved so that using the operating system is harder than before? And with all that, provides no beneficial features to offset the troubles and problems.

 

Hi guys,
received my m1530 last week and I really love the laptop except for this point

I played UT3 on it and no lag at all, looks awsome, very quiet machine, great performance. I love the finger print reader and the integreted webcam.

I am really thinking of having it exchange because of the screen, but overall it is a great machine! Dell did a great job on this laptop.

BTW, when you ask for a replacement, do you have to ship your laptop, wait for them to receive it and check what is the problem and they ship your the same one or they send you a new one when you call and you send your old one in the meantime ? I live in Canada

 

I have a question: Is that ****ty thing the laptop bag? Doesn't look very durable.

 

Nice one dude.. but I got a problem with my webcam on M1530. Computer says no camera attached, plug in to start? Whats that all about? What is the actual control for the Webcam is it launch Webcam Manager and follow the lead or is there a hard switch/button I am meant to press to enbale the camera to switch on?

Regards,
Charlie

 

I disagree! I run XP on my desktop and Vista on the XPS. The XPS is made for VISTA. Vista is the future and XP is NOT.

BTW, Nice review. I enjoyed it. Reminds me of when I did my review, (in sig).

 

Hey i'm about to get the Dell XPS M1530 but I have no idea what color to choose

I used to make sure everything I had was glossy black... but I just got a 22" LCD with glossy black base but with gray panel, and a white printer... So I kinda tried to save money instead of making everything match like I used to.

Now, we've all bought things on the internet that didn't look quite as we expected. Well, for my part, I don't want to mess up on the color part. I haven't seen it in the store (I should, but hell), but I know, or imagine the major parts.

I would like some people to post pictures of their XPS. I am basically looking at Blue, Red, and Black.

I will probably get black, but I think it looks weird from the photoshop-edit pics we find on Dell.com and google.

Thanks for your support.

 

I hate you.

I -really- -really- -really- -REALLY- want my XPS now.

 

My photo's are in my link/sig, first link is the black, but in the second link, it 's custom red ruby metallic paint.
Why?
Because Dell chose to go with the flat black, red & blue... a bit dull and no shine. I couldn't stand that, so I painted mine.

 

Nice pics Kanadianiceman but tell me, where did you get the chair?

 

Hi The Owner of this topic. Please let me know about XPS ear'sbud. Did you order it or you have it in standard things? The Dell service said it is standard but i couldn't find out it in my box
thanks
Sorry if this disturb any.

 

the earbuds should come standard, maybe they didn't get packed, uhoh...

 

will i received it last Friday and the screen was grainy + the HDD not working so they told me they will send a new laptop to me, they sent the new laptop with a lot of downgrades and that pissed me off big time cuz i paid for a laptop that was maxed out and i got a basic laptop
now i will send them the two laptops and i hope they will send me a new laptop maxed out or i will get my money + i'll give Dell my beautiful middle finger

 

it means they missed it when sent the laptop to me. So unlucky I am, cause i am not in the US to ask them send back . The one who i ask to buy for me just scare to ask Dell for the miss thing cause he thinks it is the extra ordered thing :|. If someone know any proof about that standard, please send to me. So, I can forward to that one to help him have brave to ask Dell for the missing thing. BTW the red of XPS is really lovely .

 

Well i dont come from US, i come from Israel, and as much as i know they are standard accessory that should be in the disc case with the cleaning sheet.

 

This one has a bulge in the keybard....maybe that didn't bother him because he didn't write anythign about it in the CONS

 

Thanks for all the answers. I still cant have that ear's bud cause the one help me to buy it not agree to send the feedback of missing thing for Dell. :|. have a nice day to all