New Inspiron 14 is out!

http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/note...refid=laptop-inspiron-14&s=dhs&cs=19&ref=lthp

Discuss.

PS: If anyone gets this PM me, i got tons of questions

 

Configured nicely and close to what I have (except I put a T6600 instead of an AMD RM-70) it was about 1051.40 USD w/ Taxes and Free Shipping.

Specs:
-------
Inspiron 14
Windows Vista Hime Premium SP1 64bit
Intel C2D T6600 @ 2.2 GHz
4GB Shared DDR2 Dual Channel @ 800MHz
14.0 High Definition+ (900p) Bright LED w/ TrueLife
Intel GMA 4500MHD
320GB SATA HDD 5400 RPM
Obsidian Black
8x CD/DVD Burner
Soundblaster X-Fi Hi Def Audio software enabled
Intel WiFi Link 5100 802.11agn Half mini-card
Integrated 1.3 Pixel Webcam w/Facial Recognition
6 cell (56 Whr) Lithium Ion battery
Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth Internal (2.1)

Though the only complaints I have are the Graphics Cards (or the lack of), the Batteries, the Screens and the Processors as you have little in the way of options

Proc:
T4200
T6600
P8600

Video:
4500MHD

Battery:
4 Cell
6 Cell

Screen:
720p
900p

It could really have a few more options IMO seeing as this notebook seems targeted at the Universtiy population.

 

i thought this was supposed to have a dedicated graphics option

 

Nope, just looked at the Dell US site to build the above (WHICH I WILL NOT ORDER *HISS* ) and they did not have any dedicated graphics option.

 

Not impressed. Its an Inspiron 15 with a smaller screen and slightly better battery life.

With dedicated graphics at least, this thing would be interesting.

 

Meh...I'd rather go with the S14Z


Cin

 

As long as it does not give nearly as many problems as the Studio 1535/1536/1537 and 1735/1737, I would too!

 

They will be coming out the dedicated graphics :\ I guess just not yet lol. I really really really love the design :] ports are all nice (Tho the headphone and volume should be on the bottom instead of the side), Nice color options, nice keyboard layout :] Should be a little cheaper imo. Also i wonder how hard/easy it is to upgrade the ram and harddrive yourself.

 

it looks nice, but im worried the build quality won't be up to snuff... we'll see in the review

 

I was thinking that the ports : USB and Audio seem too close to the edge of the notebook and might if repeated abuse or dropping of the lappy would possibly crack the base in those specific areas.

I am not (even if I wanted to) going to suggest to anyone to go and get one the day they come out, I would personally wait a while and see what the reviews say....

 

Wow....even the mainstream 14" laptop has a disk drive.

I hope they offer a 512MB graphics option like stated in the specifications.

 

I see you've changed your sig again...what happened to your Inspiron 1420? Sold that too?

 

Wow....how'd they manage to put an optical drive on this and not on the studio 14z? Craziness.

Not sold on this, think if I was buying it would probably be the Studio 14z.

 

Haha, yes indeed. At this point I am "buying and trying" to see what I like. This hp mini is pretty sweet so far.

 

Better than the 14z
colors look great
I love the design because I really like the design of the mini

 

I like the looks and features of this laptop. I'm sure the build quality isn't top shelf but I don't think it's supposed to be. It's probably at least better than my 1525.

They'll probably add the dedicated graphics later on along with more powerful processors.

I'd pick it over the 14z for the optical drive. But I'd probably pick the HP dv3t over this based on features.

 

Heh, I notice you're getting smaller every time, too. 15.4" Studio 15 --> 14" Inspiron 1420 --> 10" HP Mini...what's next? The iPhone?

 

Me likey iPhone

 

LOL. Quite possibly the Sony PSP.

 

Strikingly similar to the 14z. At least the Radeon 4330 is a nice touch instead of 8400 GS on the last line of Inspiron 14s.

 

Lol, get the PSP Phat (100X series) as that would probably remind you of the good ol' days when your pc would run out of memory before loading a page!

 

Never posted here but long time lurker.
I will be buying one of these in the next week or so, one reason is the price is right. From looking at the Windows 7 upgrade page it looks like I can get Dell to put Windows 7 on it, which would be cool.

 

if you purchase before oct. 22, youll get vista on it, and theyll either send you a disk or a link to DL on (or near) oct. 22. your system will come shipped with vista though

 

Wish this had a Nvidia 9400 :\

 

Why? The 4330 is perfectly adequate for most things. To tell you the truth I don't think it would be better or worse than the 9400.

 

Well for one the 9400 is about 1200 mark05 higher :\

 

Those are synthetic benchmarks, and 05 is old anyway. Show me some differences in FPS in some games and then we'll see that in reality the differene is minimal.

 

if you say so :\

 

Well the 9400 is integrated and typically uses shared memory. It still uses a 64bit bus (same as 4330) and ok, the shaders are considerably faster than the 4330. But the 4330 uses it's own dedicated memory, has more pipelines (80 vs 16), and has the same core speed of 450MHz.

Rather than synthetic benchmarks, I did a quick google search and found this:
http://optimitza.cat/news/2008/10/16/nvidia-geforce-9400m-benchmarks/

Which shows the crysis FPS score for the 9400M on medium settings of 13.2FPS. My inspiron, which features the 4330, gets a score of 22 FPS at those exact same settings.

Before you make sweeping comments such as the 9400 is better than the 4330, you need to do some research.

Now admittedly, there is more than just the GPU that goes into those scores, and especially as the 9400M uses shared memory, the type and speed of that memory will have an impact - but it would have to be a massive impact to be better than the 4300.

The main benefit you'd get from the 9400M is improved battery life, seeing that it uses less Watts than the 4330.

So, I do say so.

 

Ok geez calm down >.>

 

I'm not stressed; I'm just simply trying to ensure you have the correct information before posting something that is not true. Try not to be so sensitive.

 

:'( *sniffle*

 

Another alternative to the 14z. Might just shift my preferences to 14 inchers.

 

I hope the 4330 option comes out soon :\ I really like this notebook

 

Why did Dell take out the 4330 and defaulted it to a 4500MHD @ the website??

 

The 4330 has never been an option on this machine yet to the best of my knowledge; simply that some forum members believe that it will be an option.

EDIT: I take that back; getting confused from trying to read and reply to too many posts.

Don't know why, but I do know that Dell continually change their standard spec machines in accordance with marketing plans they have - i.e. one week you might see a machine with 2 years in home for free, but no standard WLED. The next it might be different.

 

... it says it will have the 4330 option right on the order page lol

 

Actually, the 80 unified shaders count like 16 shaders on Nvidia cards (5-dimensional versus 1-dimensional). Therefore the number of cores are pretty much the same.

I would say the 4330 is about 20-25% more powerful than the 9400m, according to synthetic benchmarks alone. The dedicated memory does make a difference. However, real-world performance would most likely be the same if you take into account ATIs driver support. But unlike the 9400m, the 4330 comes with DX10.1 which is preferable if you plan on upgrading to Windows 7.

Also, the power draw is about the same aswell. It might even draw less power than the 9400m tbh and I doubt you'd even notice the difference with these low-end cards. The 4330 is manufactured using a 55nm process whilst the 9400m is 65nm. ATI usually has better thermals too. So i'm actually glad they chose this one. Should hold me over till Arrandale and the G300-series is released.

 

Ah, I forgot about the whole unified shaders thing, but interesting about the power usage; I'd have thought the 9400 would be more power efficient; though admittedly not by much. The point I made is still true though, that the 4330 is better than the 9400, except possibly power consumption.

 

Does anyone know when the Inspiron 14 will have the 4330 option available for order? I'm very curious about what kind of price increase to expect.

 

Don't know yet. Maybe Dell cut the 4330 in the options due to supply. But if I'm not mistaken, the Radeon option is $100 from the 4500MHD.

 

It does indeed add $100 to the Inspiron 15, so can't imagine it would be much different when added to the Inspiron 14

 

I'm between this and the Dv3t for my next laptop purchase. I really would prefer a backlit keyboard option though on the Inspiron 14 though, since I type on a dorm room long after everyone is asleep. Word is, the new Inspiron 13 would be out soon. Catch is that it doesn't have a built in optical drive. Would just have to wait since I'd be buying by December.

 

has anyone here kept up with the progress on the ViDock? i think it's in the forums somewhere here. i might just stall on getting a discrete graphics card on w/e laptop i pick just to invest in that

 

I didn't think the vidock worked with the intel graphics chipsets due to the fact that Windows doesn't let you load more than one graphics driver. Might be wrong, where did I read that.....

Here's the link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/vidock-expresscard-graphics,1933-4.html

On page 2 it says

So maybe it is possible, but looks like you might lose DX10 essentially.

Also worth looking at page 4 (I think) where they have run some benchmarks. The Expresscard interface allows for much slower data transfer than the pcie x16 that the 4330 would use, and this does impact the gaming performance. I ran some Crysis benchmarks on my 4330 ( link - look toward the bottom of the page, those are benchmarks I gave drfelip on these forums) which might be interesting reading for you

 

Can you use ddr3 memory with this laptop? Since the 2.4ghz option has a 1066 fsb id like to put 4gb ddr3 1066 in it insted of the 800 ddr2

 

The 1066MHz FSB I'm afraid does not apply to the RAM per se. The RAM is limited by the chipset. The Inspiron 14 uses the Intel GM45 chipset (see link), and that limits the RAM to run at 667MHz for DDR3(see link - page 16 under system memory). I don't think that is right to be honest, especially when looking at the PM45 chipset on page 10 it supports up to 1066MHz; also they don't say anything about DDR2. Tut tut intel, poor documentation....!

Anyway, although that chipset supports DDR3 RAM, the motherboard more than likely does not. You see DDR2 & DDR3 RAM are actually physically different, there are more pins in DDR3 and the notch is in a different place; so the only way you could have either / both would be if your machine has both types of connectors. This is more than likely not the case.

Edit: See this document (page 59) where it only mentions DDR2 RAM. Says to me that it wont have DDR3 slots.

 

Nope, it's DDR2 only.

 

Hm, Has any1 bought this one yet?

 

Does anyone know if there are any other codes/discounts I could use to get a better price for the specs below:

Inspiron 1440
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Intel Core 2 Duo T6600
4GB RAM
720p LED Display
4500MHD Graphics (don't really need better graphics card)
320GB Hard drive
8x CD/DVD Burner
High definition audio 2.0
Intel 5100 802.11agn
6 cell 48Whr battery

The best price I could get was $744.59 (which seems pretty good), which includes tax, free shipping and EPP discount. I used one of the codes from the July e-catalog on Dell's website. Just seeing if there's an even better deal out there.

Eagerly awaiting reviews on this laptop, as they will determine whether I go for this or the 1318. My current laptop is slowly dying out.