Inspiron 13z thoughts and questions after 24hrs

Ok i have i cant say ive had anytime to conclusivly test anything but first impressions are good.

Its coped very well with what i have done email/net/office etc etc no film or gameing checks done yet) and seems snappy, no noticable difference from my wifes 1535 running the same apps (upgraded to win 7 as well)

Yes the case can pick up fingerprints from 14ft away but to be honest i dont care

Its quiet

(ok the trackpad is off centre on my wifes 1535 as well strange i have never noticed before)

the screen is nice but its quite reflective though im using it on the train right now and havent had an issue but taking outside in bright sun may be a problem (cant test that right now as its winter here in blighty).

The screen doesnt fold all the way back but currently that hasnt been an issue

the perfect viewing angle has the screen far back enough as to possibly cause annoyance if sitting on a plane/train but only if your really picky

keyboard is nice to use no flex to note and its a good size to type on

trackpad is showing sighs of the jumping issue but im going to update teh drivers and check that again

Any questions and i will attempt to answer ?

thanks

Matt

 

mine should arrive in next few days (su7300/g105m) whats the heat/temps like under load? I saw a bit worrying part on notebookcheck where temps when >50C with load (due to fans not kicking in), that's like 10C higher than typical CULV notebook. Hopefully the specs add up to average joe's needs - massive HDD, 720p wled screen, playable dx9 games easy and dx10 games casually and 4-6 hours of real use (bit low due to no graphics switching like with ULxxVTs). Also how much do you notice the battery on this? 8 cell on a 13 inch must take up a lot of space.

 

the battery sticks out the bottom by approx 3/4 inch its designed as a stand giving the whole thing a slight angle. it hasn't caused any issues using @ home, work or on the train.

I'll check temps as ive noticed the fan now seem to be on permanently.

 

Cool, I think the bump of the 8 cell could help with air flow, but I dunno how natural it'll feel on the lap. I'm hoping to try out Nvidia Powermizer when I get mine to see if it clocks the g105m lower when idles and have a little more battery life.

Did it come with much bloatware? I think it only has some anti-virus, a dvd program and works 9.0 listed, so I dunno if I'll do a complete reinstall when I first get it or not.

When I'm happy with all of the basics I'll probably try to go undervolting (lower temps / less need for fans to kick in) or overclocking (upping FSB to 1066mhz hopefully) depending on whether it appears to have sufficient power or could do with a little more.

 

Apologies for vanishing but the family got hit by swine flu , all good now though .

Hope you have your 13z now and are having fun with it

 

Yeah, it's good enough for me - any extra processing power would have been a bonus rather than a requirement so this fits my needs exactly (this weekend having ~7hours battery life with mix of video watching and internet use - only difference to before is 195 nvidia drivers... pretty surprised from normal jump of 6ish hours use.

But this does videos fine, does L4D2 and Dragon Age Origins fine and they're the two most demanding things I'll play, the vertical viewing angle is a bit limited but still good enough to watch movies on train with another person.

 

you mean that by installing the 195 nvidia drivers you won one hour of autonomy ?
by the way do you have a link for those drivers ?

thx for the informations.

 

Hello. Sorry to just appear on your thread. No offence intended. I want to get a 13z (I am in the UK) but am concerned about the design of the battery not being integrated very well into the body of the laptop itself.

Could I ask a big favour? Could you post some pics of how it looks from different angles? The ones on this site's review of the 13z are the only ones on the net showing the 8 cell battery and they are not clear (too much shadow).

Also what are opinions on opting for the 4 cell without discreet graphics? How long surfing and typing battery life would I get? How long video playback? What videos would stutter?

Thank you in advance for your help with this. I know this forum is the place to ask.

 

Is there any word on when this will come to the states? I was going to get an HP DM3 but this sounds compelling.

 

I'll try upload some pics soon. Excluding the battery it's pretty thin, but it essentially doubles the thickness at the end - which I'm pretty 50:50 about - it reduces vertical viewing angle a bit more (so if you're cramped in trains you might be limited, but I've taken this on trains and buses with me last two weekends and still watched videos fine with it), but it gives a nice typing slope (incredibly nice to type on keyboard) and probably helps with airflow underneath it.

I'm not sure whether I got extra battery life from new Nvidia drivers, but from general use it feels like it might be a little better cutting g105m power usage down.

I'd imagine that I'd get 3-4 hours tops typing & web surfing usage on 4 cell battery (maybe 2-3 under cpu/gpu intensive things) so I'd add a little onto that for x4500 and estimate a more reliable 3.5-4.5 hours typing & web surfing (wifi enabled / decent screen brightness). You could probably tweak it to get 5+ hours, but I'd rather not suggest things like that without firsthand experience.

On 8 Cell battery, with wifi on and decent brightness (not in sunny room though) I was getting around 6-7 hours usage with mixture of videos & web browsing (GPU gets downclocked pretty low when not used so don't know how much more you'd gain from integrated battery-wise).

One thing I would warn you on is the glossy screen - it really is a pain in sunny rooms and you'll have trouble getting past your own reflection if it's got strong sunlight coming at it (no problems with normal room lights). So if you'd like to use your laptop near sunfacing windows / outdoors I'd not recommend this laptop (typical recommendation of Matte Screen Laptop).

No idea about US release, Dell isn't the best with giving reliable release dates for these things - they still haven't released the Studio 14z here which I'd believe works at similar level (better CPU / integrated GPU / thin, but no DVD, similar potential battery life under stress). If you can't get a release date from a Dell rep it's possible it's not getting released in the US

 

Thanks for your help so far. Pics of how it looks with the sticking-out battery would really help me, so thanks again for saying you can do that.

 

Took these a second ago (messy studio I know...)







Horrible image quality I'm sorry (iPhone 3G + no image editting programs atm), but Hope these pics help.

 

Yes that is helpful. I'm disappointed to say that I think that is really poor design. It looks like the laptop has got a growth on it. Such a shame because apart from that it's a lovely looking machine.

 

yeah i guess that slim 8-cell laptops are normally at the cost of DVD drive or something like that. If you were interested in this level of performance with slim factor, it might be worth looking into a little more expensive Asus UL30VT. same size pretty much, but no sticky-out battery and still insane battery life with switchable graphics - yet decent portable power with turbo33+switchable graphics (I know i stated that twice, but it's a great combo on paper).

The Dell is pretty much all plastic unlike the DM3 or UL30, but it feels firm and no keyboard flex (and incredibly good to type on). I was unsure on the 4-cell as that ruined the battery life selling-point to me, but would make it a lot sleaker.

One note is that coming from an old Pentium M 15" laptop, the widescreen aspect of this 13.3" and the Bezel makes this essentially as wide as the previous laptop, so I can carry it around with me, but it does seem larger than I expected (thought it'd be closer size to the 12.1" HP my dad uses).

While I'm very happy with this laptop, there's a good chance I'd end up giving it to my gf halfway through next year and getting some Arrandale + ATI 5000 series combo (even if it's ULV i7 + the 5000 series 4330 equivalent). The extra function keys can be useful, but they switch the screen whenever I press them, disrupting games if I ever mistype. I could probably disable that somewhere, but I don't know how and it doesn't happen too often yet.

 

Perhaps the answer for my needs is to get the low spec configuration for £479 and put XP SP3 on it? I'm quite happy with XP, but would I be stuck for drivers for it?

 

Depends what you want. If you're happy with prob somewhere between 3-5 hours usage then the 4-cell x4500 option could work for you - but there's plenty of competitors at same spec and similar prices.

If you're looking for the longer-life, slightly weaker spec it might be worth going to a Carphone Warehouse store and checking out a cheap Asus UL30 there, the processor is 1mb less cache and 0.1 ghz slower than SU4100, but I think that only ends up ~10-15% slow at most - and I believe it has an 8 cell 4400 or 5600mah battery (store lists 9 hours use - but they after querying them they don't know exact specs... - so I'd guess it was 4400mah). But that's ~£449 and might suit your needs, just read up on forum about it (I read that UL80's had some keyboard clicking, but I don't know whether same applies to non-dvd drive UL30s). Anyway point is that below SU7300 and dedicated graphics there are zillions of laptops with similar specs about (almost new 'vanilla' of laptops like n270, 1gb ram, 1024x600 was for netbooks) - so I'd look about, read up the forums and maybe enter a form on the 'What laptop should I buy' to get input from a far larger user base.

Personally I'd avoid using XP as drivers and general hardware use on Win7 are getting better and better than you'd be shooting yourself in the foot using such an old OS if you had anything above netbook specs.

 

Aesthetics mean a lot to me and I like the design of the 13z. Do you think that the low spec £479 version can play HD video?

I wonder if anyone can say what the real battery life of the 4 cell is. How would I get five hours as opposed to 3?

The Dell website "build your system" thing appears to offer a spare 6 or 4 cell battery, but it looks like it wouldn't fit. Odd.

 

I've read on the forums that people testing Flash 10.1 (with gpu acceleration) have had smoother playback of HD content with x4500 so I guess it could. My testing of 10.1 beta drivers has been pretty lacklustre results, but mine is very early beta...

The looks of the inspiron 13z are quite nice if you're not going for the brushed aluminium look of some competing models. I guestimated 3-5 hours as my laptop can get somewhere between 6-8 hours surfing the web from a few weeks of using it. In my case it means it's good for travelling and I don't need it hooked up to a power cord when I'm at home. If I can get 6-8 hours with real conditions (6 from streaming movies/tv, wifi on / 7-8 with normal browsing. Both without max brightness as screen has reasonably good brightness to start off with) then a 4-cell should get 3-4 hours use with my setup. The cheaper setup has less power drain from intel graphics (not sure how much as the g105m downclocks very quickly when not used) but the su4100 isn't as power efficient as the su7300 and half of the power usage is from the screen anyway, so adding a bit to that 3-4 hours (3.5-4.5? / 4-5? / ???) would be a reasonable guess.

I'd imagine without GPU acceleration with £479 version would handle 720p content fine, but might stutter in areas with 1080p content, but I could be wrong.

I was interested in 6-cell battery as I hoped that would be good compromise between ugly-sticking-out 8-cell and a 4-cell battery life (only saw it available as spare battery on dell site), but I've become accustomed to the better typing slope and belief of improved ventilation with the 'wedge'.

 

The 6 cell battery offered as you configure your system doesn't fit the 13z, which is odd. Or is the picture wrong and it would fit? It isn't listed as "compatible with" the 13z.

 

I need a place to vent my frustration. I've received my inspiron 13z - full spec.

The problem is the battery sticks out. That looks really AWFUL. I thinking of returning it back to dell since none of the pictures of the model on their web show the laptop with the 8-cell battery. You can only see pictures with the 4-cell battery. I wish I read the forum before buying the laptop.

The other really anoying thing are the function keys. If you simply want to press F1 you have to press Fn+F1. Could not find a way to disable that.

The Pause/Break button is missing.

Do not buy it if aestetic and functionality is of any importance to you

 

Yes the function buttons can get a bit annoying, but personally after 3 weeks of using it my typing on the keyboard doesn't go to the function keys by mistake anymore. The major annoyance from my point of view was that it (probably due to something in Win7) kept on taking me back to main screen if I tweaked Wifi/Screen Mode/Battery Mode or Capslock with function buttons - even if I was in a game, but this has become so infrequent that I haven't found it a big enough grief to look up how to turn that off.

For those unaware - it's that the F1-F12, etc keys are replaced with function keys as the dedicated use - so it's functions first, F1-F12 through use of the 'Fn' key. (Had a lot of L4D2 matches early on where I kept pressing Screen Mode / Wifi On/Off instead of F1 or F2 before I got used to it).

Whilst the dell site didn't show the battery - notebookcheck had pictures showing the battery jutting out - so anyone who did minor research on this before buying should have realised that 8-cell sticks out a bit on the 13z - it's ugly and I've posted pics as it essentially doubles the thickness, but many other users also, like me, list that it can help give it a nice typing slope & possibly improve airflow underneath laptop.

I don't use the P/Break buttons, I don't even know what they do - so I've not really lost anything to my knowledge from not having them personally.

I agree on the avoid if aesthetics are important to you (think dm3 is prettier myself) but functionality, this has improved most of my productivity to the typing slope. The only problem would be on a train if the person in front of me is leaning back (*$$hole!) then the already slightly limited vertical viewing angle is reduced a little more from this - but I have taken this on Buses and Trains a lot in the short time I've had it and I can still share a movie with my gf on long trips so I guess that was a lot of worry over nothing. Furthermore it doesn't pimp up the weight much and it still fits in the same laptop sleeve, so from my point of view the functionality of it has conveniantly worked out in my favour (typing slope + cooler underneath + 8-cell goodness vs aesthetics?).