New D630 today! First impressions...

Yay! Both the D630 and my extra RAM chip came on the same day! I have spent an hour or so with my new machine and I have the following observations. First, be kind as this is my first mini-review ever.

First: Ordered July 29th, arrived August 10. Now THAT is the Dell I know and love. Very impressive.

Second: My goals were Quality, reliability, SILENCE, design, power, price. In approximately that order except maybe price was also first. At first I was enamored with the flash of the m1330. Did not want to wait, and figured there just might be some issues with heat or sound that would make me crazy. So, the specs.

Integrated video, 1GB RAM, 5400 80GB drive, bluetooth, fingerprint scanner, basic cd burner, Vista Business, Dell G Wireless card. 90 Watt AC adapter, and 9 cell battery, which sticks out the front.

So, out of the box and turn it on. This is really my first chance to bond with Vista on a CLEAN machine. Boots up fine, does the Vista thing, and very soon I am at the desktop. OK, I shut it down, charge the battery, and take a nap. The pressure was too much

After dinner, boot up and get it online. Problem, but that was fixed after I realized that I had the MAC address protection feature of my router turned on. Good protection, stopped it dead. Once I turned that setting off, connected like a wet dream. Ok, did whatever updates it wanted to do.

In the meantime, I noticed that the screen, a WXGA, had NO VERTICAL VIEWING ANGLE AT ALL. Damn, I was ready to send it back. Instead, I sat back and adjusted the angle. Problem solved, sort of. Found myself wishing I had gotten the m1330 with LED screen. Anyways, I moved on to other things. first, the screen is plenty bright. And I really like that sidebar, it is way pretty. I have never seen one that comes close in prettiness, even on a MAC. Vista is looking good and all applets and stuff I open pops up good and fast. there is nothing like a fresh machine. Oh yes, almost NO CRAPWARE. I tip my hat to Dell on this. I deleted anything that said Google, and moved on.

AWESOME: Fingerprint scanner. In a matter of minutes, I had both boot and login fingerprints scanned in and I really really like that feature. A BIG WINNER!

I have not tested bluetooth, and use a wireless mouse I have. I am going to get on of those Logitech mice that have the micro sized adapter as soon as possible. I also really like that dial on the sidebar for chip and RAM. Oh yeah!

What else do I love? I LOVE THE KEYBOARD. Best key travel I have ever had on a laptop. 10 points on that!

Overall build quality feels REALLY solid, precisely what I wanted. Simply no issues. Assuming I myself do not cause any when I attempt to upgrade the RAM

What else do I love??? IT IS SILENT. NO CHIP WHINE AT ALL. Fan is very low and does not come on much. I am going to do a defrag now and see what happens.

What else do I love? It RUNS COOL. Nowhere have I found any hot spots at all. Although I have not done much either except defender scan and now a defrag.

That winds up the CPU meter a bit, I am IN LOVE with that meter and sidebar. reason alone to upgrade to Vista in my opinion. I do not use much wacky software, email/outlook., firefox, Dreamweaver, photo impact and a bunch of utilities and Acronis 10. So I expect NO PROBLEMS along those lines with Vista. I am just so darn happy to have a clean install. My main machine has had a buildup of crap over the past year or 2 that is second to none, and just feels slower than it should be. A format and reinstall would takes days and I am not willing.

What else do I love??? The peace of mind of my FULL 3 year Complete Care Warranty, so that is anything does go amiss with my new baby, I will be properly taken care of.

This is a lean mean business machine, which is again PRECISELY what I wanted.

I intend to put in an SSD drive as soon as that is even semi affordable. So far, the Vista install takes up 9.5 GB, with the restore taking about a half GB. I bet a 7200 RPM drive would make this POP even better, but I figure I'll put that $100 towards a SSD drive. They are out and coming down VERY fast.

Screen hinges are SUPER TIGHT, perfect.

What do I not like??? Vertical viewing angle... sucks. there is no other way to say it. But you know what, I can live with it. If I do any HEAVY use with it I will simply plug in a nice big fat LCD

What else do I not like? Hmmm, smaller stuff like the battery that sticks out the front. I actually think I would like it better if it followed the FULL LENGTH of the front, rather than the center 3/4 of the length. This way it would function as a better wrist rest.

I will get some photos up asap, may be tomorrow tho.

In summation... SILENT, COOL, SOLID, FAST, A HOME RUN FOR DELL, I tip my hat.

Tomorrow I will look into adding the RAM, bringing it to 3GB and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for reading,

Dave (very happy)

 

Nice review. I'll be waiting for the pictures.

 

Very exciting review, although one thing I couldn't have done was SLEEP after receiving a new laptop!

When my wife said she was getting me a computer for my birthday, I was up late for a week configuring the notebook, up late for another week waiting for the device, and up late for ANOTHER week personalizing my machine when I got it. I ended up with a cold, but all that excitement sure was worth it.

Congratulations and glad you like it. I agree with almost all your comments on the D630, particularly the keyboard. Pure joy banging away at this thing.

Regards,
P

 

Thanks for your comments. A mini update. I am eternally grateful that Dell put the initial 1GB in the hard to get to place. this was actually a TEST for them to see if they had any brains So, it was super simple for me to add the @ GB in the easy to get to slot and away I went. My video score went from 3.0 to 3.4. Al other score are very high 4's. 4.8, 4.9, etc.

I also fired up Media Player and the music is just fine for my needs. Life is so simple not being a gamer, but, that said, I am pissed at Microsoft for not including ANY games with Business XP. WAY CHEAP MICROSOFT! I miss solitaire and the others! This is not good

Yeah, I know what you mean about being excited and not sleeping, but I was so excited for days when I thought it might come I think I just needed the release

I had worked myself up into such a frenzy by "studying" all the problems of all various sorts on this board that I was half expecting a bag of broken parts from old laptops when I opened the box

I am hoping this beauty makes me some good money as I run a remote backup service and am also an informal Dell Value Added reseller. Meaning I recommend them to clients whenever possible. Now they do not wonder why I myself have an HP Actually, I do not think they ever even knew the difference

Dave

 

hay cape consultant, to enable game in vista business, just open the Control Panel > Programs and Features > LHS pane, click Turn Windows Features on or off > in the Window that pops up tick the games you want..that should do the trick

 

Hey rhn, thanks for the awesome tip. That really helps as I have played some of those games since Windows 3.0 Thanks, Dave

 

Awesome! Thanks for the impressions. I'm waiting for my D630 and this makes me very excited indeed.

Out of curiosity, when did they say your laptop was going to be shipped? I assume it came earlier than expected?

Edit: oh yeah, how are the speakers? Good enough for listening to MP3s? Thinking about getting an external pair.

 

Yes, I THINK it had a ship date of 8/10 initially. And it shipped around the 6 or 7th. But that is looking back at an invoice, which is electronic and may have changed. I SEEM to remember a ship date of 8/20 in the beginning.

Speakers are super fine for me, but one would want an external pair no matter which lapotop one had for doing any serious listening, I would think.

PHOTOS COMING THIS AFTERNOON at 4PM or thereabouts.

Another update, I have the machine in between my 2 20 inch Dell LCD's and it actually seems BRIGHTER than those. So, Excellent brightness to help make up for the lack of vertical viewing angle. I have not tried to change the brightness so I do not yet know the scale of brightness. It may be on full, it may not.

Dave

 

OK, photos are in! They came out so so. Dave

More photos in other thread, they are a bit better.

 

Hey tnx for the pics. They're awesome, as the machine itself. I like the design: less is more. Sophisticated!

I will order one soon with WXGA+. I have been opting for a Vostro 1400, but after having read all the comments, I ran away from it, straight into the arms of this 'cool MF'.

 

D630....nothing really bad about it

Enjoying mine.

It took me a little bit of fiddling to set up the security/finger printing, etc..but after that, it is a breeze. Well that...and waiting for better graphics drivers..

 

I wish my Vostro came with a finger print scanner. I would feel so James Bond.

 

I been reading vertical angle and horizontal angle.

Vertical angle is moving your eyes up and down?

Horizontal is moving your eyes left and right?

 

Yes Chong67, that is correct. I am very sensitive to stuff like that, however, I am used to the screen already. I really do like its brightness. Elmo18, please advise if there are better video drivers somewhere. Dave

 

I like the design: less is more. Sophisticated! My thoughts exactly! Dave

 

Dave,

Elmo may have an answer, but so far I haven't found any better drivers for the 135m than the 101.43, which upped my WEI from 3.2 to 3.6. I've been using them since the beginning of July, and have been very stable after regular use and a few synthetic stress/burn-in programs.

I'm currently experimenting with nTune (via the NVIDIA Control Panel), thanks to another thread here, and have successfully raised the WEI score to 4.1. If you ever get adventurous, I have mine at a conservative 600/755.

It seems to be running the same (butt-dyno) temperature, and stability has not been affected, albeit the increased WEI score.

Enjoy your machine - I will report back in a couple weeks on the currently OC settings.

Regards,
P

 

Great review Dave! I've had my D630 for a couple weeks now--and agree with you on pretty much everything.

Mace2--My estimated ship date was 8/2/07--actually received machine on 7/24 (9 days before it was supposed to have shipped.)

Also--the on board speakers are the only disappointment I've found with the system so far. You'll need external speakers or headphones if you want to enjoy listening to your mp3's.

dordale

 

Thanks for the info dordale! Much appreciated.

 

Thanks for the info!

What is the "Normal" or "Standard" clock speeds XXX/YYY ?

You have yours at 600/755, what is your current GPU temps under heavy loads, and CPU core temps?

I'm sorry if I'm getting this thread off topic

 

I happen to have the Intel 31000 graphics card. I thought I had heard somewhere that there were better drivers for it, but it is not a big issue for me. If it was, I would have gotten the upgraded card

As long as it can play Solitaire, I am OK. And I am going to test that tonight!

Dave

 

I have had my D630 for about a months and I really like it. I also got the fingerprint reader, but I can't seem to get it to work for logins. Any help?
Thanks

 

Needs to be enabled in the BIOS and also software wise in the Wave Systems Folder..in Vista/XP.

 

I noticed it comes with a smart card reader... Is that only for security when logging onto the system? Or is there anything else I can do with it?