M1530 owners! how is it?

I am close to buying a M1530.
I like to use it for casual to serious gaming... and as laptop that will last a long time.
(I'm still using my Inspiron 7000 from 9 years ago! woot!)

If you are a M1530 owner, can you tell me of any problems you have encountered?

I have read complaints that:
- The hard drive noise is loud
- The wrist area gets annoyingly hot.

Are either of these statements true?
I hear the hard drvie is under the left wrist. Is this the cause of the heat?
Will getting a different hard drive solve both the noise and heat problems?

One final question... Would you recommend a different laptop to someone looking at the m1530 (doesn't have to be a Dell)

Thanks for any comments!
Buzz

 

my harddrive is super quiet (atleast mine anyways). yes, a good amount of heat can occur around the left wrist area and the wlan compartment right under the mouse touchpad during extensive use, but not overly annoying. i have the 160gb 7200 rpm harddrive btw. I believe its a hitachi harddrive, but im not sure. my only small complaint is when putting a cd/dvd disk in the slot load, you have to push it nearly all the way in so it can accept it, and also it can attract a lot of dirt/lint easily, but it comes with a cleaning cloth. i wouldnt worry too much about the heat unless if you're really picky about it. i dont know what other laptop to recommend you since ive owned only dell laptops in the past.

good luck with your purchase.

 

Well, I have an M1530. The only problem that I encountered is that the motherboard died after 4 days. It was running fine, I shut it down and left to go out to eat, came back and there was no power. However, I'm willing to accept this because it really is a nice machine, and I realize I bought it pretty quickly after it went into production (it was ordered like December 5th, but it was a Christmas present so I only used it for 4 days).

Other than that, I had no issues. The hard drive wasn't audible unless I turned everything in the room off and listened for it. This is more personal preference, but I didn't think the wrist area got uncomfortably hot, even after being on for 12+ hours. In fact the entire unit as a whole stays quite cool, I was impressed. Yes, the hard drive is under the left wrist but I wouldn't say it ever got more than slightly warm.

Don't really have anything else to recommend, the only other laptop I was considering was the Macbook Pro before this came out, and after using OSX I decided I didn't want it.

 

Well, it's not as hot as people say. You can use it on your lap, and while you can feel the hard drive under the left wrist rest, it's not that bad.

The system is slim and light for a 15.4" notebook, and it feels very sturdy (no flex). The media keys are very nice, and the fingerprint reader works fantastically.

I had to update the driver for my graphics card (8600M GT) to get it to work properly, because the driver would crash occasionally when playing FEAR. It plays FEAR Combat at 1280x800 with everything Max, dynamic lights and soft shadows on, with FSAA are 2x and Anistropic Filtering at Trilinear. I haven't checked the frame rate yet, but it's more than just playable.

It also runs Crysis on medium settings with an acceptable frame rate.

Usually the hard drive is very quiet, even when getting large files or finding different fragmented files. However, just now, I don't know if it's because it's quiet in my house right now or what (I have four younger brothers and sisters, my parents, and two older siblings visiting for Christmas) I was able to hear it working, and it was noticeably louder than it usually is. So, no, usually the HDD is not very loud.

 

this laptop has been great....so far there hasn't been anything that I didn't like about it.......even the 1280x800 resolution is growing on me......I might send my mines back for higher resolution but since it works so well, I might decide to keep it

 

I like mine. I read the complaints about the loud HDD too. It's not. I have yet to notice a problem with heat in the wrist area either.

 

The only complaint I've read about a loud HDD was the official NBR review, but that's been the only person I've heard it from.

My 1530 is extremely quiet, the only time I hear the fan or the HDD clicking is in my room when my PC is turned off and everything else in the room is turned off (it can get VERY quiet in there), and still, it's barely audible. All it takes is someone's footsteps walking into the room to make it inaudible.

No heat as well from my laptop. I have a 7200RPM HDD and the palm rest is actually very cool. While playing games it gets a little warmer, but I shouldn't even mention that because it's still very cool.

 

I had my first one for 24 hours, it was very quiet... not sure about the heat because I didn't use it with games... I returned it because it has some damage...

 

well my whole lpatop gets really hot...GPU idle at 67C lol and processor at 56C...it gets uncomfortable having it on my lap sometimes...screen has some light leakage and the DVD drive is load but beyond that this computer is truly kick ass (and beautiful)

 

Does that have to do with your 'Free Fall Sensor'?

 

Thanks for the comments so far!
Any other M1530 owners want to chime in?

 

Loving the 1530. . . . No complaints

 

I've had mine for a week, travelled with it as well and it was usuable on a plane, though it is preety big (I'm coming from a 12" 700m). I use it in my lap, so the fan tends to kick on quite a bit due to the location and it is a bit noisy. DVD drive is not loud at all during use, loud/unload is noisy but no worse than a car CD player. Really like the keyboard.

All in all it's a nice laptop, not as light or thin as a MBP, but a better combination of features and price for me.

 

the m1530's are very nice laptops,just wish Dell would have better consistency using quality LCD Panels,I purchased 2 and one of them has very grainy screen,I must admit that I am still quite fond of the HP DV6000 series as well.

 

so far great but i just got it today.