Studio 1558 Safe to buy?

I find a lot of notebooks of this model with great config for a nice price in ebay... is this model safe to buy? The models I am looking at are equipped with i7 720qm and 740qm with ATI 5470 and 1080P LED Backlit Screen (with backlit keyboard, and bluetooth + webcam)...

How is the battery life on these? and are there any common problems?

thank you.

 

Hi Hk...

Check out that 1558 thread... there are 150 plus pages in it though. lol

so I filtered those using "720qm"

http://forum.notebookreview.com/search.php?searchid=5619225

*nevermind, my search skills were lacking . lol

 

I have an identical pair of these that I built from parts (see my signature for details). I think they're a very good system and it is a shame Dell doesn't offer this style any more.

If you can tell me what tasks you want benchmarked, I'll run one of these with a full battery until it shuts down and tell you how long that was.

I strongly suggest getting the 9-cell battery. Aside from longer battery runtime, this lifts the back of the system up and helps with cooling. The only issue is that the added thickness/bulge of the battery means the system won't fit in some carrying bags or slipcases.

I've seen some older reports of problems with these, including people returning multiple systems and eventually getting Dell to "lemon" replace them with a different model. I haven't had any problems with mine (despite being top-spec, maximum heat models) and I think the problems were limited to older units.

Assuming this from your signature is part of the question:

It depends on what you want to use the computer for. I'm a big fan of 7200RPM drives, or better yet - SSD's. There's nothing worse than whipping out your notebook and having to wait a couple minutes for it to finish booting. With a SSD, my 1558's are essentially "instant-on" - 20 seconds or so from the Windows startup animation to ready-to-use, all processes started.

The 1558 uses a slot-load optical drive. The last time I looked, the only slot-load Blu-ray burner was the Panasonic UJ-235A (which I installed in my 1558's). There are a number of drives that are read-only for Blu-ray and burn DVDs and CDs. The main issue with the 1558 is that you pretty much have to completely disassemble the system to swap the drive. It isn't hard (Dell has the user service manual on their web site) but you need to be patient - there are a lot of screws involved, as well as carefully popping many plastic latches.

Feel free to ask me anything about the 1558. You might also find a number of my blog posts informative.

 

Hey Terry,
I was wondering if you could tell me a little more info about the Blu Ray Burner. It looks like there are 2 different versions (looks like it has to do with the brackets on the side more than anything) of the UJ-235A:
hw1vc
ft19c

Do you know which specifically fit the Studio 1558?

Thank you.

 

As long as you have an optical drive in your 1558 already, you can re-use the brackets from it on the UJ-235A. The 235's I've purchased were pulls from various other Dell models with different brackets and I just swapped the old ones onto the new drive.