My Spring Green Studio...pics and first impression

Well, I placed my order on 17th July (in India, Bangalore) the first ETA was 23rd July which Dell changed first to 4th Aug and then back to 30th Jul. Till yesterday morning (i.e. 30th July) it was still showing "Ship from Factory". When I called the local rep and shouted, I was told that they had actually tried to deliver it on 28th July (which of course was BS, as my wife, for whom this has been bought, was at home all day). After all this drama they delivered it yesterday late evening and the funny thing is that the Dell portal still shows it "Ship from Factory" with a comment saying "Estimate Delivery Date: To be advised. Please check this site at later time. For further inquiries please e-mail: [email protected]. "

Here's my system config
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T8100 1
Spring Green Colour with Black U-Trim 1
6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery 1
Dell(TM) Travel Remote Control 1
Noise Isolation Ear Buds 1
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 1
Dell Wireless 1397 802.11b/g Half Mini Card 1
15.4 " Widescreen WXGA CCFL (1280X800) TFT Display with TrueLife(TM) w/ Camera 1
250GB SATA Hard Drive 1
Dell(TM) Backlit Keyboard with Touchpad (English) 1
3GB (1 X 2 GB + 1 X 1 GB) 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM 1
Genuine Windows Vista(R) Home Premium 32 bit SP1(English/Hindi) DVD Media 1
Internal 8X DVD + /-RW Combination Drive with dual layer write capabilities 1
90W AC Adapter 1
Integrated Stereo Sound 1
Dell(TM) Wireless 370 Bluetooth Module 1
Dell Bluetooth Wireless Headset 1


Now the pics....pretty crappy pictures (since Flash was used) but I intend to post better if anybody wants any specific picture, so do let me know










This is an interesting picture. The manual says the only Studio "1536" has 1 e-SATA port + 1 USB port on the right side. Mine is Studio "1535" and yet it has one e-SATA port (Upper one is e-SATA and wouldn't take the normal USB Cable like the bottom one). As per manual 1536 is a Studio with AMD processors, which I am not even sure exist !!


First impressions

1) Lots of flex in the keyboard (this is my first home laptop and all these years I have used IBM T series in office which has ZERO flex). A bit worried as my kids are likely to spend a lot of time on this lappy.

2) Crappy crappy speaker...really horrible. My wife Nokia E51 phone has louder and better sound !!!

3) Superb screen (and its not even WLED)

4) Back lit keyboard was a big hit with wife and kids

5) This is my first Vista use and it looks not as bad as I was given to believe. The Aero interface is really"Wow".

6) The web cam in the night under normal bulb light was horrible. (Totally grainy pictures, worse than any cell phone I have seen). In the day light this morning it was far better.

7) The slot loading DVD: The kind of noise it makes when I slot in a DVD is really unnerving. More than the noise, I feel that the DVD surface is really getting scratched when I push it in. Once its in, its OK but the entry is no where near as smooth as in my Wii or even in my car stereo. Rather disappointing !!

8) The laptop is lighter than my T61 (same screen size) and is really quiet. This is good.

Questions

1) Why do I have two Vista DVD's with different key numbers (not counting the 3rd one which is in Hindi). These 2 even appear in Dell's order list twice

2) I see no real bloatware (except perhaps Dell Video Chat) in the machine. Several Dell utilities but I guess I will need them anyhow. So is re-formatting as "big" as everyone here would like me to believe? I do need to partition the C drive but that can be done even now easily, right?

3) Is there anyone who has made a Dell BT headset (BH200) work in "stereo" mode. I could not make it work beyond mono mode (both with Studio and with my wife's E51, which as A2DP) despite being connected under stereo profile under BT.

4) What use is MD4 now that its an app on top of Vista? Seems like a joke to me that when I press MD4 touch button it starts Vista!! I already have a power-on button for Vista, why would I need another touch screen one?? On the good side, somehow I felt that the DVD sound quality was better in MD4 than in Media Center.

 

Congrats on your new Studio!

I must admit the "Spring green" looks so ugly on Dell's site and than when you posted your "real" pics - it looks VERY acceptable and warm and just wanna touch it

 

tangerine is still better IMO

 

WTF!!!!!! I want eSATA too?? Have you tested it? Why did you get it??
I'm angry...
nice colour btw!!

 

Dell likes my name, perhaps

Color was my wife's choice so I take no credit/ discredit for it I think we must be the first Spring Green in the whole planet

Well, I have no chance to test it but its clearly not USB as USB cable doesn't fit in it at all. Perhaps I need to take a picture showing both connectors?

 

Hey, congrat's on your S15 purchase! Those were nice pic's you took and shared! It's looks really nice

 

That green is surprisingly nice. Beautiful pics.

 

The green looked better than the ones from Dell websites

 

beautiful

 

e-sata you too? yippe india, as another guy on this forum had e-sata!!! order from india and get e-sata... i personally like graphite grey, but no ones posted pics

 

Yah someone posted pics of graphite grey a while back...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=269804&page=3

 

I kind of wish they had a option to change the trim color, like the option on the Grey ones. I would have loved to switch things up a bit and have a purple top with a Green trim or something like that.

The Green color is very nice. It was my second choice. It's not quite as frightening looking as the Sunshine Yellow. Yikes! I feel like I would go blind if I looked at it for too long.

 

It looks fantastic! Too bad 15.4" is too big for me. Do you think Dell will release a 13.3"?

 

Hey StrawberryCrush, I too wished for a color trim...or something that reminds the "user" what color he/she has. Currently only the person on the "other side" of laptop knows as from front all Studio's look alike !!

Chris2k5: I don't think Dell will do a 13.3" in Studio. That will perhaps a totally different product line - like Mini or something.

 

Thats a great looking laptop. I m from Pune , for how much did u buy it and from where?
I am having hard time finding this model at local vendors :S.

Cheers
EnLi

 

A majority of the people buy their Dell Laptops online on the official Dell website.

The price varies by what they choose to put inside it.

 

Can we bargain Dell laptops ? If yes how much do they drop say at avg. ?

 

With the rate Studio's are being sold, it will be a while before Dell offers any drop in them. I paid around 50K INR, with some upgrades (better CPU, backlit KB etc.), the tax is also high in Bangalore.

Edit: I ordered it semi-online. In India Dell lets you customize online and then send a formal quote by mail and after that a sales rep closes the loop by taking credit card details over phone (I was actually very hesitant to give my card details over phone but all went well)

 

No prices are final unless your country Dell has coupons.

 

Congrats on your new machine. That shade of green is nice, and I don't usually like painted notebooks, let alone green. LOL

About the slot-load drive: Macs have had those for a long time and they work fine. Don't worry about scratches or damage to your disks unless your particular drive actually has a defect. The slot-drives in my laptops have never damaged a disk; I've had at least seven machines that I can remember off the top of my head with these drives. I like them because you can't damage the tray by accidentally bumping it while it's open, which I've done several times with my desktops. lol

 

they put an e-sata port instead of a normal usb port in my lappy too.. though i would rather just have the usb instead because of no esata apps
it's just a lost port to me..
I'm from belgium btw

 

hey
I think I got the idea of the eSATA port, a friend of mine ordered his Studio 15 here in Colombia, he ordered it without the ATi Video Card, just the integrated Intel Graphics, he got the eSATA port as well!!!!
I think the people that order without the ATi video card get the port, since the motherboard is different, anyways, please tell me if I'm mistaken...
Bye!
edit: I'm mistaken, the owner of this thread got the ATi HD3450 and got the eSATA, I think they just got new motherbopards, after iI ordered mine, arrrghhhhhhh!!!!!

 

Green looks nice! Much better here than at dell.com
I just ordered mine.

Jet Black Studio 1535, Intel Core 2 Duo T5850, 2.16GHz, 667Mhz, 2M L2 Cache
3GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 Dimm
ATI MOBILITY RADEON HD 3450
320G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

Shipping Method: 3-5 Business Days
Est. Ship Date: 9/3/2008
Est. Delivery Date: 9/8/2008-9/10/2008
Carrier: Not Shipped
Tracking Number: Not Shipped

i can't wait!

 

Ruby Red Colour with Black U-Trim
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T9300 2.5GHz, 800MHz, 6M L2Cache
4GB ( 2 X 2048MB ) 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450
250GB SATA Hard Drive 5400RPM
15.4 " Widescreen WXGA CCFL (1280X800) TFT Display with TrueLife(TM) w/ Camera

Estimate Delivery Date: 10-Sep-2008
ordered :- 29-Aug-2008
But Still in :- Work in progress

I cant wait!!!

 

if i may add one more comment about slot load drives...

i found that certain media that has printable paper on them... gets stuck...
this happened to me when i was given a generic cd rom media that you can photoprint on the cover side and hence had a inkjet paper stuck to it... well, i had a tough time ejecting this...

 

Hey,

Congrats on the system purchase and I just had one comment about the eSATA ports. From the pictures it doesn't look like the port above the USB port is actually an eSATA port. Considering the symbol right next to the port, it looks you actually have a DBay port. The Dbay port is a Dell proprietary port that is used as a powered USB port for certain DBay devices. The bottom part of that port can be used as a regular USB port and the upper half supplies power.

More info is available here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd400/smen/pinouts.htm

Secondly, having used quite a few eSATA devices, I know for a fact that the eSATA connector is significantly wider than a typical usb connector (I am referring to the metallic contacts of the connector).

 

Very nice!


The 15" is so much nicer than the 17", I have problems typing on the 17".

I have to ask, what headphones do you use?