XPS M140 Initial Impressions

I just got my M140 today (ordered on the evening of the 21st, so less than 9 days from order to arrival). I've been using it for a few hours now, and so far I like it.

I got the "TrueLife" screen and it's nice. There doesn't seem to be any problem with glare or reflections. There seems to be a fair amount of light leaking at the bottom though, depending on what angle you're viewing the screen at. It does not really bother me at all, but I'm not picky about that particular issue. There are NO bad pixels!

The thing came loaded with the usual bloat of software. With the XPS you get a 15-month security software subscription for free and I opted for Norton. I don't know why I did this because I dislike Norton; it's always popping up messages or doing something on its own, whether you want it to or not. I spent a good chunk of time trying to disable the messages with no satisfaction, so I just uninstalled it (along with some other stuff like QuickBooks trial, AOL, etc.).

The keyboard and touchpad are nice. The touchpad is large and smooth and I like the buttons, which make no noise but have a nice click to them. It has a feature where you can scroll the page by dragging on the right side of the pad, which is very cool. The keyboard feels good but a bit stiff; it requires a little more finger pressure than I would like but otherwise seems to be comfortable. I'm already typing faster on it than I ever did on my old laptop's mushy keyboard.

The speakers seem really good for a laptop, but I'm no expert. They're plenty good enough for watching a movie or listening to music in a quiet room.

Performance wise, I definitely notice the slowness of the hard drive as compared to my desktop's SATA drives. However, I got the 2.0 GHz processor and it's fast! I ran SuperPI to 2M and it did it in 1m 37s; my 3.4 GHz desktop did it in 1m 27s, only 10 seconds faster! I haven't tried the graphics performance but I'm not expecting much because of the integrated graphics. It might work out okay for MS Flight Simulator though, as its performance depends more on the processor than the graphics card.

I opted for the larger battery and it sticks out 3/4" from the back. I can't imagine anyone being bothered by that, and I am certainly not. It's been running on AC only so far, no battery tests yet.

I ordered the 80 GB hard drive, and I was surprised to find that it appears to be closer to a 70 GB hard drive. Total capacity is listed as 68.6 GB, or 73,698,504,704 bytes. There doesn't appear to be anything other than just the C partition; I'm assuming the extra space is devoted to the "MediaDirect" feature which allows you to play DVDs without booting Windows. That seems like an excessive amount of lost space though.

The one problem I have so far is that it looks like it generates a fair amount of heat. The area where your palms rest when typing gets pretty warm. (I don't know if some of this might be due to the fact that I got the 2.0 GHz processor.) I hope it doesn't bother me in the long run. There is a vent on the left side of the case and the fan seems to turn on and off depending on the heat level; the good news is the fan is completely silent.

So, first impressions are... so far so good. If it's reliable and I can live with the heat issue this should be exactly what I was hoping for in a laptop.

 

cool, thanks for the first thoughts!

I also am using the M140 as I type

I have a 1.86GHz processor and also have some heat issues, but not terrible and I'm using it on a table not my lap anyway.

The keyboard has no flex, which is great, but still feels like a typical Dell keyboard which I'm not a huge fan of -- but all the keys are there and definitely flex free so I won't complain too much.

The screen gloss is nice, but there's some light leakage at the bottom and the sparkly thing going on again.

Performance wise, great for what I'm using it for, which is just maintaining this website and writing stuff, checking email -- it did terribly in 3D benchmarks, as expected, so not a gaming laptop of course.

The look is that of a 700m but bigger, the white bumpers need to go, I can't wait until Dell gives up on this look, they should have made them black on this system to match the other XPS machines.

Media direct buttons are nice at the front. Battery I got is standard, but it's been *great*, got 3+ hours out of it. One clutch thing Dell has done is when you switch to battery they turn off the LAN port...apparently that's a drain on power most don't think about (I don't) and I talked to a Dell system engineer about this last week and he indicated the battery savings would be significant and if you don't want the ethernet port to disable on battery power it's of course configurable.

WiFi is great, uses dual antennas in the screen, so above average range.

I always have low expectations for speakers, but wow, the M140 speakers are great! They're located at the front, get very good volume and provide clear sound. They don't do bass all that well, but definitely way above average notebook speakers.

Overall feel is pretty sturdy, lid offers good protection but the middle of the screen at the bottom doesn't seem to be very sturdy...if you give the Dell logo a push the screen will move quite a bit.

4 USB ports is decent, two on the back and two on the right side...I prefer to have two on the left side toward the back and two on the right...but no biggie. FireWire and Media Card Reader are good. I'll upload some pics to this thread later or tomorrow!

 

The hidden recovery partition probably accounts for the lost space on the hard drive.

 

Here is my preliminary review of the Inspiron 630m: LINK To Review

 

From your review it sounds like you're having the same heat issue I am. What is the processor speed on your 630m?

Edit: Well I'm not so sure the processor speed is going to make a big difference as far as heat is concerned. I ran a little non-scientific test:

1) I let the laptop warm up for an hour. I then took my aquarium thermometer (after drying it off!) and laid it on the left bottom quadrent, which is the hottest part of keyboard area. The "bulb" of the thermometer was laying near the left-side Ctrl key (this area is hottest closer to the keyboard).

2) I turned SpeedStep off in the bios; this forced the processor to run at its lowest speed (which I think I read was 800 KHz). I booted up and ran SuperPI for about 20 minutes. The temperature leveled out at about 94 F.

3) I restarted and turned SpeedStep on in the bios; this allowed the processor to run at full speed (I was running under AC power the whole time). I again ran SuperPI for about 20 minutes. the temperature leveled out at about 97 F, only 3 degrees hotter.

Even with the processor in low-power mode (confirmed by the fact that SuperPI calculations were taking twice as long), the M140 still got hot, nearly as much as when the processor was running full speed. So I can't see a slower processor (like a 1.77 GHz vs. my 2.0) making any significant or even measurable difference.

The heat is only really bad in the area to the left of the touchpad, near the keyboard, where your left wrist would rest when typing. On the right side it's barely noticeable, and on the left side bottom near the touchpad button (closer to where my hands actually rest when typing) the heat is noticably less then up by the keyboard. The keyboard itself doesn't seem to heat up at all.

I should say that my last laptop was an Inspiron 3800 which generated no heat at all (except out the vent in the back where you didn't notice it), so I'm not sure what is an acceptible amount of heat in a modern laptop. For me the heat that the M140 is putting out is right at the top of the boundry of what I think I could put up with. Only time will really tell how much of a bother it is for me.

 

nice take nycscorpio, thanks for the review link attached are a few pictures of the M140 system.

 

and a couple more xps m140 pics

 

I got mine yesterday. One disppointment goes with that the 9 cell battery protrudes (stick out) from the back of the case. It's really urgly! If I would know it, I probably went to standard one.

For the 68G thing, I chatted with dell support, which didn't convince me. Here is the chat session:

11/30/2005 11:37:37PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Could you please elaborate the issue so that we can resolve it"
11/30/2005 11:38:33PM Hui Deng: "ok, first I order the 80G hard drive, but the properties show it's 68G"
11/30/2005 11:39:03PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "ok"
11/30/2005 11:39:51PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Since when have you been facing this issue?"
11/30/2005 11:40:22PM Hui Deng: "i just got a new one, arrived today"
11/30/2005 11:41:19PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Where does it display that it is 68 GB only ?"
11/30/2005 11:41:47PM Hui Deng: "you told me where should I check?"
11/30/2005 11:43:01PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "How did you come to know that it is showing 68 GB only"
11/30/2005 11:43:50PM Hui Deng: "ok, I point c driver and check the Propertise"
11/30/2005 11:45:01PM Hui Deng: "it shows Capacity 73.000,000 bytes 68.6GB"
11/30/2005 11:46:04PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Thanks"
11/30/2005 11:47:04PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Now I will provide the reason for it"
11/30/2005 11:49:04PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "Please allow me a moment for it"
11/30/2005 11:50:06PM Hui Deng: "ok, I'mwaiting"
11/30/2005 11:51:33PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "I appreciate it and I apologize for it"
11/30/2005 11:53:45PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "There are two measurement formats used with computers: Decimal (base 10) and binary (base 2). Hard drive manufacturers measure storage capacity using decimal (base 10) formats. This the same format Dell uses when you purchase a computer or hard drive."
11/30/2005 11:55:02PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "80 GB (decimal) = 74.5 GB (binary - reported by Windows) 120 GB (decimal) = 111.8 GB (binary - reported by Windows) 160 GB (decimal) = 149 GB (binary - reported by Windows"
11/30/2005 11:59:01PM Agent (Ritu_0123527): "I apologize but our system is not receiving your response. Please refresh the page, or end this chat session and re-enter your original question or any other issue that you are facing with the Dell computer. Thank you for contacting Dell Consumer Technica"

 

I understand the decimal vs. binary thing. However, using the binary calculation the hard drive has a "capacity" of 73.7 GB (reported as 68.6 GB in decimal). So there's 6.3 GB missing somewhere. I'm assuming that's going to the MediaDirect feature (probably running under a DOS partition), based on the fact that it's accessing the hard drive when MediaDirect is running. I was just surprised to find this out. I didn't put much thought into it beforehand but I just figured the MediaDirect was a firmware thing and wouldn't eat up hard drive space. If I'd have known about this I might have ordered a bigger hard drive, but too late now.

 

Every hard drive that you purchase is going to be less than what is advertised. Dell also has a recovery partition which is going to take up some of your space. You should reformat your computer to get rid of all the junk dell puts on there.

 

Hey does anyone have the MediaDirect Reinstallation CD, I need it to put it back on my Inspiron 630m.

You can use www.yousendit.com to send it if its too large for email.

Thanks

 

Mine didn't come with any system restore CDs, only Norton and WordPerfect. You may need to contact Dell on this one, and if MediaDirect does sit in its own hidden partition you may need to do a complete system restore to get it back.

 

That's the problem, I swapped the original harddrive with my existing 60GB 7200RPM drive. :-(

 

Check Dells website under downloads, or talk to them at www.support.dell.com to see what they can do.

 

Here is the page for it on the Dell support site:

http://tinyurl.com/caeqn

Good luck!

 

I got to this file name: R95248.EXE

When I tried that, it said: this cannot be used with this system

 

Well, that stinks! I just tried my link above and it doesn't work. Weird. NYC, you should call them up. Though, I shudder at the mere thought of it. To think, if Dell's site was organized better and more helpful, many of us tech-literate folks wouldn't have to deal with their interminable hold times! Ah, well...

 

I understand if Dell doesn't include the operating system disk, but they ALWAYS gave you utilities and driver CDs. Now you don't get that and your stuck if you have to reformat the computer... Granted, I did get most of the software from Dell's site and partitioned the harddrive to include the "1308MB" of space needed for the "reinstallation" but it says use reinstallation CD, and I am like... uhm... I never GOT that. LOL, it's plain dumb of them. At least they should include this for people who get the 630m & M140 and the other upcoming systems with MediaDirect.

Or better yet, have MEDIADIRECT as a download on their support site. Of course you can only use it on a system that supports it, so it's limited to those systems.... just like the 700m does NOT and cannot use QuickSet software.

 

Now that I think about it, I do remember seeing something about MediaDirect. And here it is:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps140m/en/om/om_en.pdf

Go to page 89 of the user manual. It states, "NOTICE: You cannot reinstall the Dell MediaDirect feature if you voluntarily reformat the hard drive.
Contact Dell for assistance. See "Contacting Dell" on page 145."

That stinks. I wonder what all those other folks who reformat do about it. Maybe they don't use MediaDirect. Oh, well. If you figure it out, please post it!

 

Actually, the OS CD is a $10 option when you buy the computer.

 

Operating system is $10, MediaDirect is not part of the operating system, it should be on a driver & utilities CD, like Dell Media Experience as been. :-(

 

Dell should just put it on your hard drive and let you burn the copy.