I just got my Vostro 1500!

First, I want to say, this is my first laptop, so I am reviewing with no way to compare to past experiences.




When I opened the box, I saw a manual, the earbuds (with a case), the power cord/adapter, the microsoft works CD, and lastly (and most importantly, the laptop.

One thing that bugs me is they don't include a Vista re-installation disc. I'll try calling them sometime to see if they will ship one to me.

After unpacking the laptop, I tried pushing the power button, and to my surprise, it turned on!

The first thing I noticed was the length of time it took to power up. (over 2 minutes)

After setting up Vista, I was finally able to play around with my laptop.

One thing I noticed is my laptop is very slow compared to my 3 year old desktop. (I guess it's because I haven't upgraded to 2 GB of ram yet) Things just seem sluggish.

The screen is beautiful, barely any grain at all. (I have to look at the screen from 6 inches away to see any). It's nice and bright, no dead or stuck pixels that I can see, and everything is very sharp compared to the CRTs I am used to. One problem though is some light leakage on the lower part of the screen when a all black image is displayed. It's not bad, and only noticeable in a dark room.

The laptop itself feels very sturdy and it looks very beefy or tough. I think the palm rest is plastic, but the rest of the laptop seems to be made of metal.

I tried to boot up into my ubuntu live CD, but I got an error: /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off (initramfs).

I didn't feel like trying to figure out what the problem was, so I went back into vista, but then vista said there was a problem and started trying to fix itself. After 10 minutes, it said it couldn't fix itself, so it rebooted. (successfully)

After getting back on to Vista, things seemed to be a bit faster and more responsive.

I noticed that I am not good at typing on the new keyboard because I keep on misspelling everything and hitting the "=" key instead of the backspace key. I guess I will get used to it though.

The keyboard itself feels sturdy and well built.

The laptop didn't come with a remote control.

Please feel free to ask questions.

 

Thanks for the first impressions.
Could you make some pictures from different viewing angles? thanks

I don't understand why Dell doesn't include the vista installation discs, wtf

 

PICS or GTFO... i'm kidding, but yeah, pix plox and don't forget to post the specs.

 

Any problem with the high pitched noise from the headphone jack?

 

Definitely hear interference in the headphone jack with both the included earbuds (which are nice, considering they're free), and my own.

Will have pictures soon. (I'm editing them now)

 

Does your fan run continously, like some 1400 owners mentioned here?

 

Is there a program where you create a recovery disc yourself?
If not how can you recover if you run into a fatal error?

 

sluggish? what processor and ram did you get?

 

Here's some pics:

First one shows everything that was in the box. (notice the lack of a Vista re-installation disc)

Second: Peelin' off the cloths...

Third: front view

Fourth: keyboard with nickel for size comparison.

Fifth: viewing angle. (they are very good. The picture is where the viewing angles start to mess with the contrast too much)

5 more pics coming...

 

Here's some more pics:

First: side view

Second: other side view

Third: front view

Fourth: back view (notice the fingerprints)

Fifth: Sorry, I lied. There is no fifth picture (yet)

 

If you have the means to hook up the laptop to a set of external speakers, could you do that and let me know if there is any feedback/static noise similar to the headphones issue? Also does it run quietly?

 

sporff: It is not sluggish anymore. I guess it was just slow because it was the first time being run.

I got a T7300, 1 GB RAM, 8400 GS, WXGA+, and Vista Business.


K1234: There is a recovery partition. So don't delete it.


zwoerdkop: Yes, my fan is running continuously. My laptop is pretty hot on the bottom and a little warm on the palm rest. It is nowhere near as hot as my Xbox 360 though. I guess it's hot enough to be uncomfortable if you put it on your lap for more than an hour.

 

barticusz: when hooked up to my amp, there is almost no interference. I have to turn the volume up to 100% to hear any. The interference is not noticeable at normal volumes even without any music playing.

 

seems like no one who ordered the vostro with xp seems to have gotten it yet.Intriguing, I think Ill hire Sherlock Holmes for this one...

 

I am getting a bit worried now, because everyone that has received a Vostro so far has not received the Vista installation CD and has had the headphone jack interference.

Has anyone had any luck getting the Vista DVD from Dell?

 

My Vostro just shipped today. It beat the 8/2/07 ship date and it's preloaded with XP Home.

 

Seems like the jet black lid attracts many fingerprints...

 

A quick fix for the headphone jack problem is to use headphones that need a lot of power to run. I tried using my massive headphones and I can't hear nearly as much interference. One problem with doing that though is it requires more electricity to run them, so the battery won't last as long.

I guess the science behind that is the interference is at a constant voltage, but the music is at a variable voltage (higher equals louder). If your headphones require lots of juice to produce sound, then the music will overpower the interference.

 

how'd you get free earbuds?

 

u add em 2 ur order when ur building ur vostro for $0. lol

 

damn. i didn't see that. i wonder if support will add them for me. ah i don't really need earbuds though.

did you get the Creative ones?

 

Ergonomic soft silicon in-ear earbud - Creative EP-630 [add $27]

it seems like it's not free from dell USA for the vostro 1400.

 

What screen did you get ?

From the look of it it has really good viewing angles...

 

I actually like the free earbuds. They are good at blocking out sound and they sound decent when they are hooked up to something that doesn't have interference problems. They certainly blow the ipod earbuds out of the water.

The only problem with them is the wires are very thin, so if you get it snagged on something, the wires may break.

 

i'm going into customer support now to try and get the remote/earbud combo for free. already got the free next-day shipping doing that

 

Are you calling them or is there an online chat? If calling what number did you call for the free next day shipping and how did you go about it?

 

thanks for the pics. ordering mine today :]

 

That sucks that they don't include re-installation disk :/

Congrats on your new lappy!

 

i called 1-800-456-3355 for free next day shipping.

 

Just tried calling and no go on getting free next day, I am gonna try calling again later.

 

i went on the support chat on their site to get the free shipping upgrade

just go in there and whine a bunch and ask if there's anything they can do to expedite you receiving it. they offered the shipping upgrade like right away. i only specified the free 3-5 day shipping when i ordered and now i have next-day for free


i tried going in again and whining even more to get free earbuds/remote but it didn't work haha. that's ok as i don't need either. i think i just wanted to see if i could get free stuff

 

sounds like heating issues are arising
this is not assuring at all

 

I got mine yesterday. I'm in NYC. The machine was ordered on 7/12.

Everthing works fine except blurry images in IE (XP). I was going to call Dell and hen found this message, haven't tried it but will. If it is not fixing the problem, I'll have to return the machine.

"Blurry Images in IE on Wide Screen Dell Notebook
I have a new Dell notebook with wide screen display at work (dell latitude d810 running on ati radeon mobility X600). This notebook
was shipped with default 120 dpi font size to make the fonts more readable (wide screen display is really cool, but now and than you want to read something on it as well ;-).

Anyway, if you use the default dell settings you may experience the problem with blurry images in Internet Explorer. This effect is due to the automatic scaling in IE6 and above. IE tries to resize the images so that everything looks the same as when everything is at smaller dpi, but does a terrible job at it, resulting in blurry and unreadable images.

Change the following registry setting from 1 to 0 in order to disable this "feature":

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\UseHR"

 

Thanks, I just got a brand new Vostro 1500 and couldn't figure out what was going on with the images in IE. Not that it really matters since I use Firefox (which had no issue). But on principal, it's nice to have found the registry fix for this.

I don't quite know why Dell shipped the machine with this issue.