Received 1640 - Review & Pros/Cons on common concerns & questions

Hi all,

I received my 1640 yesterday. Big props to Dell, since I bought it on Friday around 3pm (outlet "previously ordered new") and Fed-Ex attempted to deliver it on Monday at 10am (picked it up at the distribution center at night). I also received my 9-cell battery, but haven't had a chance to use it or review it, so this will focus on the 6-cell.

First - Boxing: Non-fancy tan cardboard box. The laptop was encased in foam and a foamy-sleeve. No bags were included with this laptop. I got a slim AC adapter (probably about 1/3rd weight of the previous bricks), some cds, and the laptop. Nothing else. Should I have gotten a sleeve of some sort?

Second - Initial impressions: This is one LONG laptop. The dimensional changes from the old 15.4" laptops are substantially noticeable. The laptop stretches width wise like a 17" laptop, but feels short. When you pick it up from one side, it feels heavy. When you pick it up from front or back, or with one hand, it feels very light.

Which brings me to build quality: Anyone who complains about build quality on the 1640 is either overly picky or has a defective unit. Mine feels like it was hewed from one long-chain polymer It feels great! And it emphasizes the decently lightweight feel when you pick it up, as it's not flexing AT ALL under it's own weight. Compared to my 5 year old Inspiron 8600 laptop, it's nicely lighter.

Here's a big one for those looking at a 1640: If you are worried about fingerprints - It's not nearly as bad as I was led to believe. I think I was worried, but it's really not a big deal. All that happens is that small smudges appear, and it's only really apparent under certain lighting conditions. My house doesn't have many of those lighting conditions, so there ya go

Third - Setup: NBR's software sections had tips and tricks, which was helpful. The Vista setup was a piece of cake. Within 1 hour of the first start-up, I was online, I had the computer de-crapified, tweaks to remove the computer from searching for a secondary monitor, a network, and many other minor tweaks. I had also downloaded and installed Open Office, all the latest windows updates, i-tunes, firefox, etc. Piece of cake.


Ok, so how does it run and what are the big concerns right now?

Biggest concern - Heat: Within 20 minutes of the computer running...i.e. vista loading, downloading, minor stuff like playing with gadgets, the laptop was REALLY hot at the VERY FRONT. Literally the edge of the laptop at the touchpad was the hottest part, and the area directly underneath the touchpad.

I have a 5-year old Inspiron 8600 whose ram area got boiling hot, but this is worse. On the inspiron, I could lift up the rear and get airflow. I could put a book under it when lying in bed. This area though won't benefit from being lifted, because the bottom of the laptop starts to tilt upwards here. So lifting the rear will only tilt this area further down. Further, the actual edge of the laptop is extremely hot.

The touchpad itself though is only warm, not hot. The rest of the underside of the laptop felt fine, even after using it to watch Seinfeld on full screen last night for 20-30 minutes. It was warm, sure, but not hot.

So, really, I'm not sure what using the 9-cell to lift up the rear would do to help this heat. Any recommendations are appreciated. I also am new to Vista, so if there is an on-board temperature monitor I can access to report temps, let me know.

First, here's my key stuff - P8600, GPU 4670 1gb, 250gb 7200 rpm HDD, 4gb RAM, 1366x768 screen, 5100 wireless.

Ok, so individual stuff:

Battery life - The 6-cell came with about 40-55% battery (I didn't check right away). It took about 90 minutes to fully charge for the first time, and then after 20-25 minutes of downloading and multi-tasking, it only drained to 91%. Pretty good, IMHO.

Screen - Beautiful and really vibrant. I don't remember if the 1366 needs any calibration, but it initially looks very nice. I haven't noticed missing the extra extra on the new widescreen setting, and the desktop space with this is simply phenomenally wide and nice looking. But check this out: 60% brightness is pretty much TOO much. I've got it set to 50-55% when plugged in, and about 25% when unplugged, and it's plenty. Awesome.

DVD Player - Only used it for one CD so far. It feels "stiff" to push a cd into it uuntil it grabs....I had to push the CD in until only about 1-1.5" were exposed, and then the XPS pulled it the rest of the way. A sharp noise initially, and then a gentle whir when being used. The sound is distinct and was audible from 15-20 feet away in a quiet townhome. I'll be curious what it sounds like once I play NWN 2.

Touch controls & Backlit keyboard - In a word, gorgeous and functional. The backlighting turns off after no input for about 5 minutes and comes out of the box on it's brightest level. I'm not sure where to access the controls to fine tune the backlighting (I'd like to turn it down to about 1-minute-off and fine tune the level of light), but the keyboard allows 3 settings: Full bright, half-bright, off. Half-bright looks great at all times.

The touch controls work extremely well and I'm impressed by their sensitivity. When you touch one, it briefly lights up to show you it recognized your order. Wireless turns on/off instantly. Sound turns up and down instantly. Mute works instantly. I know this stuff sounds obvious, but it's nice and my old sound controls did not work nearly as well.

Sound - Clear and crisp and plentiful at 50% max volume. Didn't notice any real bass or subwoofer action, but it still sounded nice. Looking forward to trying out a game.

Wireless - Picked up tons of wireless networks in my neighborhood and connected effortlessly to mine. Now, my router is in my basement and is ~2-3 years old and is a basic netgear 802.11g router. I'm using comcast high-speed cable internet. My old laptop consistently connected at 54 mbps. When I was downloading stuff from open office, itunes, etc., I was getting about 100 kilobytes per second of transfer. However, graphic-intense websites loaded almost instantly, so I imagine I'm getting a few mb/sec for bursts

Now, I didn't play around enough to figure out what the computer was reporting the connection as being, and I might be limited by comcast as well, but I'm hoping that I have a decent enough, and stable enough, wireless signal to play online games like Diablo 3 when they come out. Nonetheless, the wireless connected instantly, effortlessly, and seems to work great overall.

HDD/Processor/RAM - First off, I can hear the HDD as a faint whirring/clicking sound when the laptop is on my lap. Very faint, but present. No big deal, but I'll look forward to using an SSD in maybe 2 years too. The Vista CPU meter never registered above 76% even when installing open office while downloading itunes and firefox simultaneously. Ram usage was rock solid at ~46%. Programs loaded fairly quickly, albeit a little slower than I would have liked....but I still have tweaking to do and McAfee is on the computer so who knows what that is doing.


So, that's about it. Any questions you'd like me to evaluate?

Here are my questions for the group:

1. How do I remove the requirement to enter a password everytime I log-in? I want it to boot straight into my desktop, if possible.

2. Any suggestions on below-touchpad heat mitigation? I was hoping not to buy a cooler. What is down there anyway?

3. Was I supposed to get a black bag or something from Dell?

4. How do I uniquely tweak the backlighting programming? For instance, I'd like to shorten the length of time from last command till they turn off, and I'd like to turn down the lighting on the touch controls.


Any recommendations based upon something i mentioned?

Thanks and hope you enjoyed. If I can contribute to the community, I will. On that note, based upon what I've experienced so far, I might be either selling my 9-cell (if it doesn't help cool down the touchpad area) or seeing if someone wants to swap their 6-cell for a 9-cell, as it'd be nice to have 2 6-cells.

Joe

 

Hey great review! Mine is still in production I can't wait to get it in. Since i don't have it yet I can't help with most of your questions. Although, after reading on here it seems like people who order their laptop through the outlet don't seem to get the black sleeve with theirs. I may be wrong, but thats just the impression I've gotten.

I hope you are enjoying it!

 

Great review.

1) Start => Run => netplwiz => Untick 'Users must enter a username and password'

2) Cooler is your only option really

3) Nope

4) Right click battery icon => Windows Mobility Center => Click keyboard backlighting thumbnail => Adjust activity time out

Also pressing the Fn key and the right arrow together also adjusts the backlight.

 

IaTa - First off, thank you. I'll remove the username and password which will be great, and adjusting the backlighting is really nice.

That stinks about the under-touchpad portion requiring a cooler. What component is there anywhere? It's like the one place on the underside that gets no air flow and has no air-holes to cool it....seems like a good place to put parts that don't heat up to me.

By the way, I meant to ask, where is the temperature sensor so I can tell what my components are heating up too?