XPS 1730 Owners...

I've been debating the 1530 and AW15x, but the 1730 is also interesting to me with Penryn and the Dual 8800 GTX....etc. The only concern I have is how BIG the 1730 is with the powerbrick. What are OWNERS impressions? Thoughts? Pictures of different colors?

Also, am I silly to ge it with dual 8700 GTs or a single 8700 GT?

My primary use is multimedia...AND video editing/photo editing.

What config would be best?

 

Hmmm, from what I know when it comes to video editing etc. GPU isn't so important its more the CPU. So dual 8800's might be a little overkill. You'd probably rather spend the extra money on the extreme processor and two nice fast harddisk's with 4 gig ram and just go with the dual 8700's.

I had a XPS M1730 with the dual 8700's back at Christmas, but ended up sending it back. I wasn't hugely impressed with the performance of the machine, and decided to wait for the 8800 gtx. But the actual laptop itself I thought was really good.

Initially from the pictures I saw on the web, I thought it was ugly, and wan't a huge fan of the funky gaming design. But when I finally received it, I changed my mind. Its BIG, and quite heavy (weighs in at around 5kg's). But it has a solid build too it, plus the lights actually grew on me over time. I loved the backlit keyboard. The machine looked ok during the day, but at night, it looked awesome!

The power brick that comes with it is absolutely huge. About the same size as the Xbox 360's... The large notebook, coupled with the huge power brick really make this machine more of a desktop replacement than a machine you'd want to be walking around with all day...

I had the samsung panel (only panel type available in Australia) and I was blown away by the screen. Loved the brightness and sharpness of the image, plus the colours looked rich and fully saturated. Only small problem with it was a small amount of light leakage from the bottom of the screen.

Performance was good, all app's ran smooth, it played all the latest games on high res's (except for Crysis :S). And the speakers I thought were the best I've heard on a laptop. Excellent clarity and sound level, with little distortion.

So yeah, pretty good machine overall. Apparently Dell Australia release the 8800 gtx in SLI tomorrow, so I'll be picking one up ASAP. The 8800's should cure my performance woe's and I'll be a happy camper

 

I'm no owner, but I'll comment anyway

Based on your main usage, no. Photo and video editing are actually more CPU-intensive. I doubt you'll need more high-end graphics for that. Though you'll also need lots of RAM for photo editing, but you can always upgrade RAM yourself.

Although this is probably more personal than anything but it's a bit strange to choose a gaming machine for multimedia purposes. But yeah that's just me.