Vostro 1500 Q&A Thread...

Yea its Vista Business... **** and I actually like vista, unless its whats causing all this slowness...

Nizzy, was yours acting like i described mine was as above as well before you did your re-install?

 

Hey guys i have a few questions about the vostro 1500.

First how is the heat dissipation? I bought a cheap toshiba and the touchpad and palm rest area gets warmer than i'd like. I have about a week to take this thing back.

Second is does it have a firewire port.

Third, How is is the graphics capability of the NVIDIA 8400M GS and is there a considerable difference between it and the 8600gt and would it affect the heat output of the laptop in non gaming situations? (Web and office, etc)

Thank you,

Ulti

 

Heat dissipation is good. Much better than my older Dell Latitude D610. It does have a firewire port. The Nvidia card has good graphics capability for the games I play (1 year old games)

 

Thanks for your prompt reply!

Do u feel any heat while using it (non-gaming) like from the touchpad or palm rest area?


Thanks in advance

 

Diddn't re-install vista. Instead, I changed sata operation in the bios to ATA instead of AHCI. You will also have to turn off the flash cache module to do this, but it fixed the problem. Is this weird or what? Why does it come in AHCI mode, yet it says default is ATA?

 

While not gaming, the palm rest doesnt heat up at all...there is just some hot air blowing out the side if I download or do some semi intensive app. but the system still stays cool (52 degrees is the highest Ive had it while downloading in limewire) (havent gamed yet though). Basically, on the palm rest I havent felt any uncomfortable heat.

 

I just got mine, base system with 1.6GHz cpu and 1024MB ram.

I see Dell's site has instructions on how to replace the CPU and RAM.

My questions:
What CPUs are compatible?
Socket M 667MHz FSB? How about Socket P 800MHz FSB? What are my options here?

What RAM Speeds should I be looking at?
DDR2-667MHz? PC2 5400? 5300? Is it OK to have 1x2GB and 1x512MB, or does the dual channel thing still apply -- meaning 2x1GB would actually be faster, even though it is less memory?

Thanks!

 

This is second hand info as my friend got an Inspiron 1520 (which is said to have pretty much the same internal cooling design as the Vostro 1500), and he said that the Keyboard side of the notebook stays cool and does not get hot at all, but the bottom as well as the opening for the fan gets really hot (not surprising if you're running a standalone GPU). I will confirm (or disprove) this information once I get my Vostro 1500 in a week's time (assuming Dell doesn't pull a Dellay again ).

 

No use mentioning hardware specs when you have Vista installed. It just eats all the resources you've got, whatever they are. Just dump Vista and reclaim your hardware with XP, 2000 or Linux.