XPS Build Quality - Help Choosing (XPS, Macbook, Studio)

Hey guys,

I'm posting this here at the XPS is the one I am currently leaning towards and the one that I am least clear on in terms of specs and their build quality, as I have never even seen one in person before, let alone use one.

On the dell website it says the XPS is made from premium materials and gives the impression they are the best quild quality of all their laptops (I've seen a lot of the recent Inspiron models which as far as I can tell are really good quality anyway). Also could somebody tell me do they use a Gloss Screen or a Matte Screen?

Anyway for £604 I can get an XPS with simiar spec to the base Macbook (13.3" WS), except the Dell would have a DVD Burner and the Mac would have only a DVD-ROM with CD Burner. I get the Base Macbook for £601 with University discount (If I buy before end of August)

They both have integrated graphics for the amount I approximately want to spend (Around £600). I'd like something small hence the choice between the two.

The third possible option (The wildcard) is a 15.4" Dell Studio laptop, which for abiut £610 I could get one with the same CPU as the Macbook and XPS, but with a dedicated graphics card, 200GB extra HDD space, and 3GB RAM.

I would prefer a smaller laptop as I have had a 15.4" for the last 2 years (Acer) and I find them a bit cumbersome. I also have a 17" monitor on my desk for when i'm using the laptop at home.

Advantage of the Mac:

From what I have tried in their store the built quality is superb, and I could run both Mac OS X and Windows XP / Vista. I NEED to run a version of Windows as I do programming using Visual Studio 2005 / 2008 and also design websites in this

Advantages of the XPS:

- DVD Burner

- Better prices for upgrade options at the point of sale (£20 for an extra 1GB of RAM as opposed to £60!! from Apple), I think the XPS also has built in

- Bluetooth is standard ????

Advantages of the Studio:

- Massive Spec for the money compared to the XPS or Macbook

- I'm not sure but I think the dedicated graphics card is better than the cheapest dedicated one available in the XPS?


Main uses for the laptop are photoshop (External Monitor for this), website design in VS and Dreamweaver, Application programming in Visual Studio. and the regular stuff like browsing the web etc. Games aren't really important as I usually just stick to my PS3, or 360 (sometimes Wii), but don't really play games much anyway.

I did hear that the next version of Photoshop is going to somehow make use of Integrated graphics though, but maybe thats just a rumour.

Any help, advice, or opinions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Daniel

 

I think you'll be happier with the 1330 than with the MacBook. Physically, its just a better computer.

 

By that do you mean the build quality, materials, and the feel of it etc?

I have tried loads of Dell Laptops including some in work and the Macbook was better than them, but the XPS 13.3" versions seem like the most suitable direct competition to the Macbooks as they are similarly priced and spec'd, and Dell seem to be going for the "This is our top quality stuff" sort of approach on their website.

I mean even the name "XPS" sounds 'cool' and high quality to me lol. It would be good to see an XPS in the plastic/metal to get an idea of what they are like, but Dell don't sell in shops lol.

My girlfriends mum bought two Inspirons a year ago and unfortunately they came with loads of Bloatware, does Dell still do this? Why would I ever need Dell Network assistance etc lol. I'm hoping the XPS are aimed more towards "IT Professionals" who don't really have a need for any of this junk!

 

It comes with some bloatware. You can easily clean install. Dell Precision series are geared more towards professionals like engineers. XPS has more 'fun' features such as HDMI.

I spec'd my 1530 out to match the macbookpro..ended up 800 dollars cheaper. Its easier to find coupons and deals with Dells.

Bluetooth is not standard, fairly cheap however (20 US dollars). XPS has a better dedicated video card for the 15 inch as far as I know

 

Dell sells XPS's at Best Buy, Costco, Sam's Club and Wal Mart I believe.

As for the materials in the computer, the inside of the XPS m1530 (the palmrest area) uses brushed aluminum while the outside casing has magnesium alloy (same material used in the MacBook) and a microsatin colored finish on the lid.

 

If build quality is important don't get the XPS. I've used Asus, Dell, Acer, HP, Compaq, Lenovo/IBM, Apple laptops and Dell has to me the worst build quality and QC. It would take some luck to get a "perfect" XPS. Apple in comparison has much much better build quality, so if price is no object get the Apple. I got my XPS bcos its soo much cheaper compared to a similar macbook pro.

 

@Thomas, I don't know what makes you say that unless you have ordered enough Dell computers to truly know. My uncle has an office with 2 or 3 hundred Dell desktops, as well as a couple hundred latitudes and some blade servers. They haven't had a problem with any of them when it comes to build quality. Yes, people here can complain about certain things but for the most part Dell does a very good job.

Apple does have more consistent build quality, but the price is not worth the upgrade to the MacBook to me. You can get an extremely high quality Dell with great parts for the same price or less.

 

I can get the base spec Macbook for £600, but I think if I get the XPS I could probably get similar spec but with a DVD-RW drive and some more HDD space for the same price.

I'll spec up an XPS tonight, but wouldn't want to spend much more than £600. I couldn't afford a Macbook Pro even if I wanted to at the moment (I could get the money easily but couldn't justify it in the slightest at the moment).

For the XPS I would get a 13" version probably, but may look into the price difference between 13" and 15". I'll post up the specs later of the XPS, Studio, and Mac that I am going to decide between so people can comment.

Thanks for all the opinions so far guys!

Dan

EDIT: P.S The only laptops i've really seen with worse materials and build quality than the Acers are the "Advent" brand. Which is the brand owned by Currys, Dixons and PC World in the UK The Acer still isn't terrible but they are getting more and more expensive as time goes on for something that's just passable.

 

I have a friend with the MacBook (the white one) and the build quality is good when it's new. But now after a year of use, the palm rests are now yellow/brown and dirty looking. It really looks horrible. Also the plastics on the MacBook look and feel like crap. The XPS M1330/M1530 look and feel of much higher quality materials. The MacBook Pro however, is very well built, but the MacBook is junk.

 

That's true. The gloss and paint on the white MacBook rubs off so quick. It takes a couple of months to a year before your keyboard looks like it came from the black MacBook. It's kinda disgusting. My advice: if you want to get a MacBook and keep it looking nice, keep it near a bathroom where you can wash your hands every time before you touch it.

 

Or you could just buy a black Macbook. lol.

 

Right, with the XPS and Macbook at base spec, and the studio slightly spec'd up, here is what they look like. I'd prefer to stick to spending around £600 ish really, but may spend a little more, for now here are base.

With the Macbook or XPS I would upgrade the RAM to 3-4GB, this would be easier with the dell as their memory prices are reasonable when configuring, but apple charge £60 for an extra 1GB, So I would just change it myself if I got this as its just as simple as any other laptop.

Macbook (£600 - With student discount)

2.1ghz C2D (3MB L2 Cache)
1GB DDR2 RAM
13.3" WS - 1280 x 800
120gb SATA 5400RPM HDD
DVD-ROM / CD-RW Drive (Doesn't burn DVDs)
---------------

Dell XPS (£589)

2.0ghz C2D (667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
1GB DDR2 RAM
13.3" WS - 1280 x 800
120gb SATA 5400RPM HDD
CD-RW/DVD-RW
Fingerprint Reader Std

NB: I wanted to add the 8400GM Graphics card for £40 but this also requires a battery upgrade which costs £47, making it an £87 upgrade. I'm comparing at £600 ish for now though
---------------------------------

Dell Studio (£589) (Wildcard, doesn't meet the size criteria)

2.1ghz C2D (800 MHz FSB, 3 MB L2 Cache) - Same CPU as Macbook?
3GB DDR2 RAM
15.4" WS
320GB SATA 5400RPM HDD
CD-RW / DVD-RW
256MB ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3450
Integrated Webcam
------------------------


Clearly for Spec:£ ratio the studio comes out on top, but I would guess it uses the cheapest materials of the 3 and is overall the less aesthetically pleasing one. Also it isn't as small as the others (I would prefer something smaller as I can keep my 15.4" Acer as a backup laptop), But the spec on the studio is quite tempting.

Advantage of the Mac is I can run both windows and Mac OS X (But ive never used OS X before so not like i'd miss it if I got the dell).

The studio is actually posted at base spec, so I could get a bit more ram in there to bring it up to just over £600. I think it is heavier though.

Can anybody really vouch that the XPS is made out of really good materials? I like the idea that it has some metal parts, like somebody said brushed aluminium palm rest?

 

Oh I forgot to ask, anybody know why the XPS M1530 says its from £589 (Same as the 13") on the site, but when you try to configure its about £100 more. I don't expect them to be the same price, just wondered really.

EDIT: If you go to the main page with the 3-4 standard 15" configurations its £100 more, but if you just click "add to basket" instead of customise when the advert pops up it comes in at £589...Any idea why?

 

Probably because when you hit configure it's loaded with different base specs than Dell offers for 589. The 1330 and 1530 are the same base price.

 

I'm not sure where your located at, but if you have a BestBuy close to you I'd check them out. The ones located here in Oregon have Dells XPS plus Macs, so you can compare them side-by-side. Granted they wont be spec'd the way you'd probably order it, but it still would give you a physical comparison of each.

 

Hey I don't have a best buy here unfortunately as I am in the UK. However on the Dell website I have spec'd up this as a fourth option, a 15" XPS. It may not have the small size of the 13" XPS or the Macbook but should be good built quality right?

Dell XPS 15" (£629)

T5750 (2.00 GHz, 667 MHz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
2GB DDR2 RAM
15.4" WS (1280 x 800)
160gb SATA 5400RPM HDD
CD-RW/DVD-RW
Fingerprint Reader Std
GeForce™ Go 8600M GT with 256MB

For some reason it gives me the choice of the 9-cell battery at no extra cost?!? Why would this be?

I didn't think the 15" version would be better value for money than the 13", but I guess you are paying a premium for the small size of the 13.3" version? I know this is the most expensive but you can't configure the 13" version to anywhere near this spec for the same money unless somebody cares to show me how? lol.

Is it common for the 15" to be cheaper than the 13" as its the most common screen size for laptops these days?

Also is the graphics card a lot better than the ATI in the Studio that I posted the spec for? I know it has less RAM and HDD space than the studio but overall should be a better built machine? I guess they use the same internal parts but it's the casing i'm mainly interested in between the two?

 

I'd get the Dell if I were you, especially if you're going to do Windows based programming on it - there might be some flaws with compatibility with you running Windows on a Mac, and also you might want to think about testing the software, on a Mac - no way!
You should buy some RAM from somewhere else not from Apple if you want to get the Mac - it's a lot cheaper, a lot!

 

I'm really close to deciding between the 13" and 15" XPS. With the 15" i'd get more spec for my money but the 13" would just be so handy and portable. Plus I just think they look a lot "cooler" than a bigger laptop.

I won't be playing any games on it but this needs to be a laptop with decent performance to last me about 2 years, so the lower spec graphics in the 13" may not be too good. The most I will want to play maybe is Half Life 2 because I bought it on release and never really played much past the start of the game lol. Just CS:S haha.

Games aren't important at all though. If I got a Mac it would be a bit of a pain to boot into windows just to write some ASP.NET pages for example.

The stock 13" XPS only has Intel Integrated Graphics though, I know I won't need them much but integrated graphics just make me personally feel like I am using a crippled PC, even tho the stuff I do wouldn't usually benefit from it. I guess it just comes from always have a desktop and avoiding integrated graphics and sound cards etc in any systems I built.

 

i dont like the dell utilities....

actually, does dell make a click noise when you adjust the volume. my HP does it and Apple makes that squish sound when you go up or down. little things like that make or break it.

Also, those dell's have really cheap looking keys i think, any1 have much exp. with them?

and i didnt see it answered, but the Dell LED option for the 1530, and 1330 too i believe, is that glossy? or matte?

 

As far as I can make out from the Dell site all of their "truelife" screens (inc those which are LED and those which aren't) are Glossy... I've got a glossy screen on my Acer, and I think budget laptops do it because at the time it was companies such as Sony that were doing it on all their laptops.

So at the time it could help make a laptop look more "expensive" in the shop. My GF has a Fujitsu-Siemens with a 14" Matte screen and I much prefer her laptop in general over my Acer. It even seems quicker and its quite a bit older with a 1.6 Pentium M processor compared to my 1.8Ghz AMD Turion. Plus its more compact and better made, but the wireless has broken.

I'll soon be back again in a month or two trying to research which laptop to suprise her with for her birthday I know she really wants a new one and it's her 21st so i'm gunna get her a really good one for her needs.


I hate the Dell Utilities also. I took them all of my GF's mums Dell as soon as she got it and it runs sweet now with no crap. Her sister also got the same laptop in the same order but she couldn't be bothered to let me have it for an hour or so to clear it so she still has Dell Network Assistant etc at startup, god knows why anybody would use that, Windows XP (and in some ways Vista) make it so simple to connect to a wireless network for internet access.

The dell doesn't make any cool or annoying sounds, just the regular windows sounds, but if you want you can choose which sound to play, on Windows its just the alert beep lol.

 

yea im talkin bout when you hit the buttons to adjust the volume. i like that... cause you know your actually making it do something.

 

well with the xps u'll touch an invisible volume button and it will light up blue =)

blue light > annoyin sounds

youtube really helped me with my purchase. u can see live reviews instead of a buncha still pix.

 

I wouldn't recommend getting an M1330 with a Geforce card until Dell fixes the problem with the failing video cards that is discussed in --> the Vertical Lines thread <--. The problem seems to be caused by inefficient cooling in the M1330, possibly combined with a batch of bad Nvidia video cards. Some people are modifying their M1330's cooling using a copper mod (described --> here). But if there is something wrong with the cards themselves (as described --> here) this may only delay the inevitable. No one who has gotten an M1330 with Intel graphics has had this problem.

Apparently some people with the M1530 with the Nvidia card have also seen excessively high GPU temperatures, but mostly it's an M1330 problem.

The Studio line uses ATI cards instead of Nvidia. Unless you are OK with the Intel graphics, you may want to consider a Studio.

One thing in favor of Macs is their screens. My luck with Dell screens has not been good, even with the M1330 LED screen, which is supposed to be better than the CCFL (but which was yellowish and grainy on the M1330 Dell sent me). The 15" LED screen in the M1530 and Studio 15 may be better, and people who own a Dell with the 15" LED screen seem happy, but I haven't seen one myself. If you're using an external monitor, the quality of the screen in the laptop may not matter to you. But if you do want a decent screen, I'd recommend either a 15" Dell with the LED screen or the MacBook.

One last thing...
I have a 4 year old white iBook. It still looks almost new. I never noticed the plastic had yellowed at all until I had my white 1720 next to it. The iBook is still very close to white -- even the keys and palmrest. However I have dry hands. The MacBook actually discourages you from resting your palms on it anyway, because there is not much room to lean on and the front edge of the MacBook is sharp and would cut into your palm. You know better than anyone else whether your hands are naturally oily or not, but having a white Mac get dirty and gross after a couple of months -- or even 4 years -- is not inevitable.

The palmrests on the M1330 and M1530 do look nice when new, but they can get pitting, as described in --> this thread.

 

Well most of my computing is done with an external USB keyboard at the moment as I don't really like laptop keyboards unless I really have to use one.

On weekends when I visit my girlfriend and when doing some freelance web design work I will take the laptop around with me and obviously at those times I just use the built in keyboard. I like the idea of a small laptop for those times when I am moving about I would prefer it to be a lot smaller and lighter to transport, and also when sitting on the desk, just generally taking up less space, especially since I am soon going to upgrade to about a 19" external monitor.

Would integrated graphics in the Macbook/M1330 handle this fine?

I'm really on the fence about graphics card as I know if I go for the Dell i'll end up just sticking with Vista, and so many laptops i've tried in stores have run terribly with Vista, maybe this is due to most in-store laptops seeming to have integrated graphics.

 

Most of the laptops I've seen in stores have a bunch of extra software on them that bogs them down. They frequently have low end processors too and sometimes only a GB of RAM (or less). Vista needs at least a GB of RAM to run smoothly.

Integrated graphics will be fine for web design. You only really need a video card if you're playing 3D games or using software that does 3D rendering in real time. Most other applications are processor intensive rather than GPU intensive.

 

What sort of Applications other than games make use of the graphics card? I know photoshop CS2 doesn't, I don't do any 3D rendering and no video editing either.

Would the integrated graphics show any sort of slow down when using an external monitor that is about 17" - 19" or does it not really matter? I tried connecting my Acer to my 32" HDTV via the VGA port and the computer ran like junk.

So far the only thing i've found that matches the Macbook in size and price/performance is the 13" XPS. They are very very similarly spec'd. From what I have tried in the apple stores I consider even the 13" macbook to be of good build quality (not near to the Pro though), can the 13" XPS match the macbook in terms of build quality?

If so then it will be between having a 1530 which is better spec'd out, or a 1330 which has integrated graphics.

It sucks that you need the 9-cell battery to get the 8400GS card in the 13", which costs an extra £60 ish, where as in the 15" you can get the 9-cell battery for FREE instead of the 6-cell, and get a better card.

 

CAD/CAM software would need good graphics card. Im not a fan of intergrated because it doesnt allow flexibility.

Build quality (my opinion): macbook < XPS < macbookpro

You need a 6-cell battery for the card. should cost half as much (and not as bulky).

you might get better specs with 1550..but your are paying for portability as well.

 

For some reason on the dell builder it won't let you have the 8400 GS with the 6-cell battery, you are forced to upgrade to the 9-cell battery which costs more on top of the card. This is on the 13" XPS

The 15" XPS however seems to let you choose either the 6-cell or 9-cell with the 8600 which uses more power than the 8400GS...so it doesn't male sense. Plus the 9-Cell battery costs no extra with the 15".

 

Maybe it depends on country..it allows USA market to choose 6-cell. Try talking to a Dell rep

 

for dell, m1330 plus x3100 plux 4-cell, but upgrading graphics card requires 6-cell..... though you can try to ignore the warnings and put your config to cart.....

call up dell UK and see if they have any deals?