My XPS 1330 Review

Hi All, Please have a look at my review of XPS 1330. Any comments/Suggestions most welcome.

 

Uhm, where is it? :laugh:

 

Thats excellent. No flaws, problems, squealing!!!!!

 

wikid review

 

sorry i am still trying to find my way around here. but its here finally

 

Ok so here it goes. After waiting for 41 days my dell XPS nightmare finally got over on Friday the 10th at 8:00 A.M when they finally delivered the product. I have spent two days with it and I think I am ready to write a review. Now I am not going to write a conventional review and I am not gonna measure the performance of the laptop. I think our friend Sesshomaru has done excellent job measuring overall performance of the system and you can read his review on http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=154532

I am gonna go for look and feel of this notebook and the other smaller features. Also another purpose for me to write this was to take some quality pictures and compare those with MacBook Pro and my old Sony Vaio.

(please click on the image for a larger view and then click again for the even larger view)






My Notebook Specs
XPS M1330 CORE 2 DUO T7500 2.20GHz,800,4M
Biometric Fingerprint Reader
13.3" WXGA (1280x800) White-LED Display with TrueLife
Crimson Red & 0.3 mega pixel Camera for White-LED Display
Memory Dual-Channel 2048MB (2x1024) 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
160GB (5,400 rpm) Sata Hard Drive
8xDVD+/-RW Slim Slot-Load Drive,
Primary 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion Battery
128 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Intel® Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-PCI Card,
TrueMobile 355 internal Bluetooth Module
Vista Home Premium

(Dell has forgot to include my fingerprint scanner . So I cant check that feature. I was very keen on that but I guess I have to wait till I receive a replacement. I will update this review once I get my hands on that.)


First Impression/Look & Feel: one thing I have to say that it is indeed jaw droppingly beautiful. I have the red one and I am so glad I chose red. This is a personal choice but I think black is a very common colour for notebooks and it doesn’t scream XPS loud enough for me. My old laptop is Sony Vaio 17 inch monster and after holding that, this feels feather light. The overall build quality feels sturdy and it doesn’t feel fragile. So you can grab it by the corner and pick it up without hesitation. The inside is silver brushed aluminium casing which goes really well with red. Although the chasis is aluminium, the keyboard is not. Its made of plastic.

Now its very easy to drool all over this beautiful machine but I would be careful if I were you. The back of the laptop is a matte finish. Its not exactly rubbery but it feels like it sometimes. Although it’s a matte finish its not immune to the fingerprints. To be honest I have a bit of a problem with this. In a glossy finish if you touch it with oily or dirty hands its easy to just wipe it clean with a wet cloth or wet wipes but since this is kind of rubbery matte exterior, the smudges are hard to get rid of. Infact I m so scared to ruin it I consciously keep my hand very clean while using this laptop (ha ha ) which is kinda weird. Obviously I havent tried touching it with oily/Grubby hands but if any one of you are brave enough to do that please let me know.




The keyboard is quite good, definitely better than my previous laptop. The response is good when you press a key and they are well placed for your fingers. The touchpad looks a tad bit smaller than other laptops but after using it doesn’t make any difference at all. You can tweak the responsiveness as you like and it works well.

The media keys are touch sensitive and give a cool blue glow when you touch them. One common problem people will have is with the volume up and down key. if you hammer the volume up/down key in quick succession it wont keep up with your tapping and wont respond very well. You just have to keep you finger on it until you achieve desired level of sound and let go. It works every time that way.
Also the eject key can cause problems sometime. Because its software based it wont work while booting, also if the disk is bit dodgy I will keep spinning until it gives up on it. During that no matter how many times you hit the eject button it wont come out. So I would say keep patience.
There is no needle hole anywhere so that you can stick a needle into it and force an eject. But it works fine most of the times and only give problems with badly scratched or dodgy disks.


Ready to use out of the box??

Well pretty much. First time you turn it one it greets you with vista welcome screen and it follows the normal path. You fill in your name, location, set time, set password and you are all set to go. Once vista started and after I dodged couple of pop ups (nothing too serious) I wanted to try the wifi.

Now to the question I had for so long before I got my XPS. what the hell is WiFi catcher? Well it’s a fancy name for dell’s WiFi switch. What It does is-once pressed it will show you all the Wifi connection in the area and their signal strength, but that’s that, you cant select any or log on to any. You have to use vista’s native wifi connection tool to select and log-in. connecting to internet was a doddle and it took me less than a minute to be online. Once you are online you are bombarded by McAfee/Windows/Dell popups all seeking your attention for updates. But once again it doesn’t give you any trouble and all seems to go pretty smoothly.



Wifi Connection:
Now I have been very impressed by this new Wifi N card. Although I don’t have a Wifi N router the jump in performance is staggering (well atleast for me)



A 20 MB quick time download took me seconds from Apple website. I have 1 PC and 2 other laptops in the house and they all use the same router. None of them achieved more than 2.5 MBPS in the speed test. So you can say its twice as much faster than others.

Since I have other laptops in the house to compare, I can definitely say its down to the new Wifi N card. I don’t know how but it just works great.



HDMI Out:
One of the main reason for me to buy this laptop was HDMI port. I have a Samsung LCD tv and I was very keen to hook it up to my XPS. HDMI carries sound as well so there is no need for any other cable.

When you connect it to external display Vista comes up with a popup and gives you option of using both displays same time (a mirror of your laptop on external screen) or you can use the external display as extra work space. I didn’t understand this before but the way it works is that you will have two desktops, one is on the notebook and other on external display. You can drag and drop any application to the external display and it works. So for example I can have a website open on my laptop screen and have media player playing my DVD on the external display which is great in my opinion.

The problem I had was with the resolution on the external display. I have tried every possible option but I cant seem to get my desktop fit to external screen (when in mirror mode) it cuts the top and bottom completely and on the sides it cuts around an inch or so. If anyone out there has managed to do this please share your experience with me.
I can turn the laptop screen off and use my TV as an external display and surprisingly there is no cropping, it fits real nice and works flawlessly.

So I am a bit disappointed (still nothing major) that I couldn’t get both displays working simultaneously. But i am working on it.

Also when you connect external display you can manage it using Vista’s own display property tab or use NVIDIA control panel. In my opinion Nvidia control panel has a much better interface and it detects your external display correctly. Also it gives you more option to tweak. You can select output of 720/1080p depending on your TV. The best resolution I managed to get on my external display is 1768 x 992. And it looks simply stunning.

Now onto a tricky situation with Media centre. When you use the media-centre mode of XPS and connect the external display(in mirror mode) the resolution comes up all crippled. So the dvd you are watching on you laptop looks like DVD on it but on the external display it looks like a dodgy pirated copy. I don’t know why this happens but I am disappointed with it. Unless I am doing something wrong, what it means is that I cant see my pictures and videos on highest resolution unless I boot vista.

To sum up :

If you choose to have same view on both display, the display on TV crops out about an inch from all sides.

You can choose to have both screen showing separate displays and use either of them as an extended display.

I have yet to find a way where it would show same view on both the screen without cropping

And at the moment media centre + external display via HDMI = crap.


Sound:
The speakers are decent and does the job well. There is nothing to write home about so I am gonna concentrate on HDMI sound output.

In the control panel you can go to sound - Manage Audio device and It gives you option for HDMI sound out and you can select it as a default device if you are going to use the external display. When you are using HDMI sound, your laptop sound will not work and vice versa. I guess there is a way to use both simultaneously but I haven’t found it yet.

Windows media player have some issues with HDMI sound output. It plays sound when you are listening to the music but if you are watching a DVD it just wouldn’t play sound through external display. It might a be Codec issue because when I used the DivX player it worked perfectly fine.

I have some good snaps of HDMI working in action (somewhere here). So make sure you check it out.

Other than that I am quite pleased with the HDMI port, it’s a very good feature. Right now I am writing this on my LCD TV screen and it feels great. The text looks perfect and there is no strain on eye. And since you have truck loads of space you can make fonts so big that even a blind man can read it. (ha ha)

Get yourself a wireless keyboard and mouse and you are all set to sit back and relax. I love surfing on the net like this.

The Screen:

Now much has been written about the WLED screen and how thin and bright it is. There is no denying about how thin it is but brightness is a big letdown for me. I come from Sony Viao A197 and it had WUXGA 1920 x 1200 resolution. don’t get me wrong on this the display is crisp and very good. But as Sesshomaru said in his review even at the maximum brighness you feel you want to increase it by a couple of notches.

Some people said its due to Vista’s transparency display mode. But its not that. Even after turning that off there is something missing.








I compared the resolution with MacBook pro and I have to say MacBook pro is definitely brighter. So I don’t know whats all this 300 nits brightness talk is all about. Dell says it’s the brightest but still not as bright as MacBook Pro. Funny enough Macbook pro doesn’t even make any noise about WLED screen and how bright it is, it just says it saves battery power. The only plus of XPS is the colour reproduction. The colours definitely look sharper and better compared to any other display I have seen.

Having said all this, I only feel this way because I had a much higher resolution, if you have had any other notebook with similar resolution as XPS you will find XPS is indeed a good display.







As I mentioned earlier on a positive note the WLED displays colour in incredible detail. The red looks redder and green looks greener on this screen. If you don’t mind slightly lower brightness level you are going to love this screen. (I personally prefer MBP’s Screen)

Now on to viewing angles. There is definitely an issue here. I am no expert on viewing angles but in a layman’s terms once you tilt your screen to a certain points the colours start fading out. But its not just that. Even a slight tilt makes your screen look brighter or duller. So it takes some adjusting before you find your perfect viewing angel. The normal LCD (like Sony’s) doesn’t have this issue.

Also a direct comparison with MBP which also has a WLED screen, revealed that it has much better viewing angles. Also for some weird reason MBP’s glossy screen looks glossier compared to XPS. XPS screen looks like a glossy screen behind a matte finish screen protector. Anyone out there who has a sony PSP and uses a matte screen protector would understand what exactly I mean.


Is it vista?, is it the screen itself? I don’t know. The screen is just not there when you compare it with MBP.









Build quality issues:

There is a growing concern amongst all M1330 owners about the build quality. See Flamenko’s thread on it. ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=153905)

When you see that only 11% of the owners have absolutely no issues with their system, it raises a serious problem.

Mine’s not without minor flaws. I will list them down here

1.) the hard disk cover sticks out.
2.) the remote doesn’t go in fully so that too sticks out slightly.
3.) there is a slight bulge on the right hand side near track pad.
4.)there is a slight gap between right hinge and the body
5.) at the top of the screen on closer inspection you can see the teeth (it always makes me laugh, M1330’s Teeth?? Ha ha) so its not insulated properly.
6.) the colour on edges of backlid looks like a rushed job. Its not perfectly sympatric and the silver bit behind the colour shows off on a very close inspection. I am gonna try to capture this in pictures.



if you look closely on the max resolution you can see a cable sticking out beneath the media keys. its one of those flat cable they use for monitors. again nothing major but it shouldnt be sticking out like that.




these two pics are to compare the left and the right hinge. if you look closely the left hinge fits better thant the right one. the right hinge has a slight gap betweeen it and the body.

So as you can see nothing is major to alter your overall experience but when you think about the delays, horrible customer service and the price, its definitely not satisfactory. I have said this before and I will say it here again. If dell wants to know how to make a good product, look at Macbook Pro. Apart from the fact that apple has a mythical status when it comes to designing and producing awesome products just look at MBP. Even with a magnifying glass you wont find any of the above there. And anybody thinking that these glitches are bound to be there because of mass production should ask themselves, how does Apple do it?

Closing comments:
I know some of you might be thinking that if I am so keen on Apple why did I buy XPS M1330? Because I thought that with XPS everything is going to change at Dell’s. Before looking at XPS I didn’t have high regard for Dell. It always had an image of a Volkswagen of PC makers. A bit of a common man’s firm making cheap laptops/Pcs. It worked well but nothing special about it. With XPS I could sense that Dell is launching their version of Ferrari. But let me make it clear- Ferrari it aint.

A commendable effort?? Definitely yes but not quite there. And I am not even gonna start on the whole buying experience bit here. Too much has been written about it and over 8000 posts in one thread says it all.

With all that going on, everybody expected a top notch product. Dell raised a bar when they launched the XPS M1330 but so far it has failed miserably in terms of meeting the expectation and delivering the actual product.

Am I being too picky here? Looking at hairline cracks and errors in colouring job which is around 1 mm?? I don’t think so. Like me I am sure most of the people have spend a large amount of money on this laptop. Its definitely not cheap. I could buy a Vostro for almost £400 cheaper with all the same specs (except bit heavier and larger screen). People buy XPS because it is a premium product. You pay for the XPS brand and it leaves you wondering that is it worth it??

So do I regret buying this?- definitely not.
Its still one of the most beautiful looking gadget I have owned. When you are out there it commands a presence like nothing else. And lets be honest, people around you are not going to notice those teeth (ha ha)of XPS M1330 because they would simply be too jealous to notice that.
In terms of performance the numbers speak for themselves (see Sesshomaru’s review) it packs a punch in a very compact size. There is nothing out there which matches XPS M1330. No wonder nobody has yet found a perfect XPS M1330 substitution.

In terms of features, Inclusion of HDMI port/Fingerprint Scanner/ Wireless N card/LED screen all are a major plus. Its also very light and great to hold and carry around. It comes with a very nice carry case and it fits snugly.

So even if its not a Ferrari it will definitely get you noticed both in terms of performance and looks. Lets hope Dell will learn from its mistakes and we wont see the problems seen here in future XPS products.


some more pics comparing with my Vaio.






P.S. Sorry for going overboard with Megan Fox wallpapers (ha ha )
Thanks to Nick for lending me his MBP.

********************************************************************************

First Mini update

Forgot to mention a long saught after feature. somehow nobody seems to have mentioned it before, or simply not noticed.

the XPS M1330 has a battery indicator like MBP. its on the battery itself and there is a button on it. when pressed it shows the current battery status. its got 5 tiny lights on it and they will light up appropriately to show you the battery status. i think this is a really cool feature specially if the machine is in hibernation/sleep mode and you want to check roughly how much batterly is left.

I havent done battery life test but once fully charged it gives me about 3 hours of battery life when used for general web surfing, word processing on full brightness level.which i think is pretty decent.




Also forgot to mention the Remote control. it works quite well in media centre. also i noticed that it works in vista as well to some extent. for example if you are on the net, you can scroll webpage up and down and also go back using backspace button. but its not very practical.
i havent got office but i guess it would work quite well with powerpoint which is great.

 

Excellent work on this review Kernal. I really appreciate the time you put in to write this. The pictures you took will help give me some support in my endless wait for my 1330.

 

Nice review!! Thanks!

I'm still trying to convince myself, that choosing the M1330 over a Macbook Pro with BootCamp (i need windows, unfortunately....) is a good choice. I've been using a 17" hp pavillion for 1½ years now, and i'm sick and tired of the more than 10 pounds of hardware and incredible loud fans (there's 3 of them!). I'm thinking, that 13.3" is the way to go because of more portability... but i am a bit worried though, from your pictures, that the difference between the 13.3" of the XPS and the 15.4" of the MBP isn't that obvious irl...

Ah well, if further delay from DELL occurs, that will decide the matter for me, and i'll go for the mac+bootcamp ;-)

/popgoblin

XPS M1330, black, 2.2ghz, w. WLED screen.
Ordered 29 july, EDD: 12. sept.

 

now that you've mentioned it have a look at this picture


from bottom up the hight of XPS is exactly same as MBP. Hows that possible?? blame it on the thick end of XPS.

as you can see from the one of picutres bootcamp works pretty well. the only problem for which i cant find solution is to find a driver for MBP's 8600M graphic card which will work in Vista.

 

Very nice review and excellent photos. Well I will be getting mine tomorrow and yes - it's a red one as well. But for the time I've waited and the responses I've had to endure with Dell, the little bugs and defects you've mentioned are simply not right... Well... we'll have to see.

Well written and informed review though!

 

Very nice review! Sounds like you're not very pleased with it overall, though.

For the external TV, I'd do a quick Google on 'overscan' with HDTVs. I've got a HTPC hooked up to an HDTV and I've had to use the nvidia control panel to create a custom profile to get the entire desktop to fit on the TV. You should be able to do the same.

 

Hmm. Thats amazing... almost no size difference (height-wise) between 15.4" mbp and 13.3" M1330....

How's the weight difference? Noise levels?

btw. Bootcamp has recently been upgraded to v. 1.14 - that might help on the Vista grx driver issue?!

/popgoblin

 

hmm is the 1330's depth the same as the 15.4 MBP? if so, then it seems that the MBP is nearly the same dimension, just a thumb wider

 

no perticular sound issue with MBP but then my XPS doesnt have any CPU whine either. unless i put my ear on the right hand side of the laptop in a very silen environment. i think roughly 50% of all XPS M1330 have sound issues luckily mine's not one of them (although i have a fare share of my own problems)

XPS is very light laptop (i have a 6 cell battery) but for a 15 inch laptop MBP is not bad either. its just not an ultraportable.

 

when fully opened, from the bottom to top the XPS M1330 is same size as MBP, width wise its about a thumb smaller.

 

thanks chuck, how do you create a custome profile???

 

Good review OP i particularly enjoyed reading the comparsion with the MBP. I myself have had two of those. The MBP does appear to be quite a bit brighter than the XPS but that does not bother me so much.
I selected the XPS over the Apple this time because i wanted something that was small and powerful.

How does the weight of both of the products compare to you?

I will say that Apple is not without its problems as well. Some of the problems that they had with the MB was well documented and i myself had a dodgy MBP.

Sorry that your XPS had those cosmetic problems and it is bad that Dell missed out adding in your fingerprint reader.

 

i havent weighed them on a scale but just by holding it there is obviously a noticable difference between them. but as i said in previous post for a 15 inch notebook MBP is not bad at all.

 

One comment about the brightness:

looking at the photos, the main thing I notice is not that the MBP is brighter than the M1330, it's rather than the MBP captures are over-exposed. It's brighter, but to me it's burned. Same for the VAIO. I know that the brightness is probably put to the max, but I don't really see the interest if the image is poor. If I had to choose one the computer just with theses photos, without any comments or other consideration than the screen quality, I would go for the M1330. Not the brightest for sure, but at least the image seems natural and balanced.

Nice review none the less, thanks!

 

ok... first off the mbp is obviously made with design in mind. the mbp is .2in deeper but 1.6in wider. XPS 9.4, 12.5/ MBP 9.6, 14.1 . the mbp also is lower at the back and the screen hinge is designed so that as it is opened it swings behind the body of the laptop creating almost no gap between the bottom of the screen and the surface of the keyboard. this is how apple manages to squeeze the 15.4" screen into a smaller box. However, in the pictures show in the review each one carefully taken on an angle, not 1 is completely straight on and the XPS is always slightly closer and therefore larger than the mbp.

 

Thanks for the review.

 

I'd like to see the two side by side with the MacBook brightness decreased a bit, so it matches that of the M1330.

 

Does MBP have it's wifi antenas in the lid? I can tell u, everything is packed real tight in the 1330 lid. I guess if dell could integrate somehow the antenna/webcam cables in the LCD panel, we could've seen a 14" LCD there easy... but as it is, the display design on 1330 is really efficient.

 

its hard to capture the real brightness on camera. so may be my pictures are not doing justice to this comparison. but those were the best pictures i could take.
but looking at both of them in action i would still say MBP display looks better. as you said they were indeed put on max brightness and the whole point here is i would like to have an option to increase the brightness atleast by a couple of notches in XPS M1330.

Its good but it could've been better.

 

Great details in comparison!

 

Hmm, How much more portable is the XPS 1330 over the MBP? It really doesn't seem that much judging the pictures and the specs for weight. I am thinking of buying one of these, I will be taking it to school every day so I want a pretty portable computer. I also do not have any desktop computer anymore so I do want some kind of graphics card (the 8400 is ok). It's more the poartability issue. I do not want to buy a Dell, find out it's almost as big as the MBP, then I could of bought a MBP and gotten better specs and more quality

 

Thanks Kernal for so informative review.
The screen on XPS1330 lacks a latch which usually keeps it in place when closed. Do you think it may be a problem? Or are the hinges tide enough to keep the screen securely closed?
I wonder how well the hinges will do the job after several thousands of open/close cycles.

Cheers!

 

In terms of size, it's not much smaller - just 1.5" narrower, but it is a good pound or so lighter as well.

 

"I have some good snaps of HDMI working in action (somewhere here). "

Hi, nice review but i couldnt see the pictures mentioned above ?

 

well i only managed one in the end (one with megan fox wallpaper on the Samsung LCD TV) others came too dark. but then you can see the crop in that picture.

 

the latch works well. doesnt give any problems at all. the hinges are not loose in anyway and holds well. but its a very good question, will it work the same after thousands of open/close cycle? hopefully yes.

 

Latch is magnetic, there's a tiny but pretty strong magnet in the top of the lid, which "latches" on the palmrest, I guess. As for the hinges, you can check'em out for urself, just pop-off the hinge covers. I'd say they are very solid and strong, will serve well fo years to come Anyways, if u have extended warranty, u'll be able to replace the lid with hinges down the road easily

 

I agree! The M1330 image really does appear more natural and balanced. I wasn't fond of my M1330's screen at first, but now I wouldn't trade it for anything. Great pics

 

Hey Kernal, do you know which screen you got? Toshiba or CMO? I've heard a few people say their screen is real bright and other that it's not as bright as they would have liked. I'm thinking this could be the difference between Toshiba and CMO screens or like you said the difference in opinion from poeple who have used higher screen resolutions prior to this.

For me the screen is really bright and i feel if it were more so that it might be damaging to my eyesight, and i have the Toshiba screen. But then again, i came from using an HP 15.4" with 1280x800 resolution, so it might be as you said.

Maybe some of you can post your screen manufacturer and how you feel about the brightness so we compare and see if there's a trend.

 

Yeah, What discourages me is that the xps 1330 needs the 9 cell battery to match battery performance of the MBP, and then it seems it's hella thick at the back. It does not look portable at all then.

 

how do i check my screen manufacturer??

 

ok now i know its CMO, is that any good??

 

I don't know if the LED upgrade to the 15" MBP has changed battery life significantly, but two friends with Core 2 Duo MBPs can't get more than 3.5-4 hours on theirs, short of idling for extended periods of time. The 6-cell with the M1330 should give anywhere from 3 to 3.5 hours of battery life, so it's pretty close I'd say.

 

I have a Intel Core 2 Duo inside sticker instead of a Centrino Duo sticker!

 

you are completely screwed then. ha ha.

ok seriously, which processor did you order?? all the centrino duo's have processor begining with 71/73/75/77. anything else and its not a new santa rosa processor.

 

Same processor as you. T7500. Maybe Dell ran out of stickers

 

Thats because you probably dont have Wireless-N. You need it to have the "centrino" branding.

 

Well I just received my build today! And it looks fantastic from first impressions alone. But how am I able to tell that I have the White-LED screen and not the CCFL version - as mentioned, how do I check the manufacturer of the screen?

A few other questions - on boot-up, is the slot-in optical drive meant to make a loud mechanical noise? It's the same with ejecting... hope that's normal?

I also got a "Finger Print" reader with mine! Yet it wasn't in my specification. Dell seems to have made a little mess with the launch of this product.

 

I'm in Canada, and I got the Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n card. The Intel wireless card isn't available in Canada.

 

You got kernel's laptop!!! bastard.


Fine.. i just want mine to come

 

Oh well, i think you need the Intel processor and wireless (im not sure if yo need motherboard too) to have "centrino" on your computer, otherwise they just put a core 2 duo sticker on yours.

 

Centrino requires Intel processor, wireless and chipset (those appropriate for whatever series you have, e.g. Santa Rosa).
I have no idea why they are marketed like this - aren't they just three random pieces of hardware Intel make? I've never seen anything about them working amazingly together or allowing any extra features.

 

I've already pointed this out previously to you, but I guess I'll say it again. There are no Intel 'Santa Rosa' processors. There are 800MHz FSB processors, but they are still based on the same Merom architecture.

They don't work better at all together. It's a marketing tool is all - Intel has done a lot of work marketing the Centrino brand - a few years ago, Centrino was pretty much synonymous with Wi-Fi by the way Intel advertised it. Nowadays it's just a sticker and name laptop makers can associate with their machines to gleam a bit of branding power from. And Intel obviously benefits because you're not using a 3rd party chipset or a Broadcom/Atheros wireless chip.

 

go to control panel, device manager, monitors, click on the properties of your monitor. on the details tab select harware ids. it will show you the hardware value- that is your manufacturer. i have CMO and thats one of the LED manufactureres
but before you do all that, if you have led you will be able to tell the difference. its probably thinnest screen you have seen.

on boot up some noise is common. when you say loud, it depends how loud you mean.

 

thats what everybody here has, including me. its weird that they didnt put centrino duo sticker on it.