Impressions of the Vostro 1400 and 1500.

Well after 1 month lurking/price checking/harassing Dell/pain of waiting. I'm finally happy.

I originally had an inspiron 1520 fully loaded with everything (had dellcare premium etc.) for about 1400$, I was unhappy cause of the graininess on the screen which eventually forced me to try and get a replacement. The replacement also had the same problem and timely enough, thats when the 25% coupons for small business showed up. So, the usual, I wanted to see if these were a better deal than what I had before. To my suprise they were. Since my inspiron was still under the 21 day, I just decided to return it for a full refund. And boy I'm glad I did. In exchange I bought a vostro 1400 priced at 614$ and a 1500 priced at 715. Specs are in my sig and the only difference between them is the vid card and bluetooth. 1400 has a 8400gs and 1500 has no bluetooth. Otherwise the exact same specs. Anyways so that's my story, I pretty much have experience with all 3 types of laptops now so I know what to look for.

Heres my first impressions:

-I ordered anti-glare on both of them and all I have to say is... WOW! The difference between these screens vs the WSXGA+ is night and day, no more graininess, no dirt like effect, no shimmering, just crystal clear and perfect, barely any light leakage(which is near the bottom). For the 1500 I had a LPLC500 and for the 1400 I had a CMO1426 panel. I have the say, I don't know what brand the LPLC is but man, this thing almost replicates some of dell ultrasharp lcds I have some at work, I'm very impressed with this screen. Now the CMO panel is not as great the the LPLC but it's still leaps and bounds better than the crappy SEC3350 on the WSXGA+ end. And you have to remember its on a 14.1 screen instead of a 15.4. All in all, this way the dealbreaker for me on the 1520 and the vostros didn't fail.

-In style, the 1400 wins though, it looks more sleeker and less "chunkier" than its 15.4 inch counterpart. It's still pretty heavy compared to other 14 inchers but not too much.

-The 1500 came with an XP disc but my 1400 didn't come with vista one... what gives

-What's cool about the 1400 is that both slots for ram are at the bottom of the laptop, unlike the 1500 which has one under the keyboard. So I took out the 512 stick on the 1400 and replaced it with a 2GIG stick. I put the other 512 on my 1500 which thankfully had the bottom slot empty so now I have 2g on the 1400 and 1g on the 1500 with xp. Work pretty well don'tcha think?

-XP on the 1500 was pretty smooth even with the 512 stick it originally started with, I'm quite happy that dell allowed this option for it.

-I don't notice any CPU humms yet, maybe the lower end core 2's don't have this problem I had the t7100 on my 1520

-There is a slight noise on headphone jack but the 1400's is weaker than the 1500 probably due to the placement of the jack. It's really no big deal. It was much worse on the 1520 when the actual distortion actually went with the cpu humm.

-Both systems suffer from the "loose battery" since they are both 6 cell, this didn't happen on my 9 cell. But it's not as bad as people make it out to be.

That's all I can think of for now, feel free to ask questions

 

Thanks for the write-up. I hope I like the screen on my 1400 (ordered 8/2, shipped today). The 1400 review discussion in the Notebook review forum is pretty negative about the screen: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=2278693

 

I think LPL screens are LG/Phillips, the one I had on my HP was beautiful.

I'm trying to decide if I should get the Vostro 1400, and I'm looking for opinions on heat output, especially when its on your lap. The HP I had was just way too hot.

 

wow man you got a great deal on those