Here’s my review of the Dell XPS M1330. I’ve tried to point out some of the most blatant flaws as well as the features, but if you want more information, feel free to ask. (Sorry, no pictures, but you can find plenty of them online.)
My configuration (bolded items indicate upgrades)
- Intel Core 2 Duo 5750 – 2.00GHz, 667MHz
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- 160GB 5400 RPM TOSHIBA MK1652GSX Hard Drive
- Slot-Loading DVD-RW drive
- 13.3″ LED-Backlit Screen
- Biometric Fingerprint Reader
- VGA Webcam
- 2 USB Ports
- VGA outputs
- HDMI, I394, Audio Input/Output, PCI Cards, etc.
- Some media buttons
- 6-Cell Battery
- Intel Wireless-N card
Here we go.
Price
My goal was to buy a laptop of around $1000. The 3 upgrades cost a total of $250, which was the minimum requirement for the 20% coupon I found. So, I ended up getting this laptop for about $1050, including tax.
Overall Design
The design XPS M1330 is nicely balanced; it’s fundamentally conservative, but has just the right amount of flashy features. Initially, I was unsure about whether I would like the wedge shape of the computer; the pictures I saw made the laptop look clumsy. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I actually got my hands on it; the reduced thickness in the front is just enough to lighten it up and for some reason, the wedge didn’t seem to be as drastic as it did in the pictures.
The touchpad is a bit small; you’ll find that most reviews of this laptop mention this fact. However, I haven’t had any problems navigating with it. In fact, I can use the M1330 about just as fast as my Pavilion N5470, which has a much larger touchpad.
Screen
The most expensive upgrade I purchased was the $125 LED-backlit screen. It was worth the money because the display is nothing short of stunning. In terms of brightness, it rivals my Sony SDM-HS95P. It’s also much thinner than the display that comes with the default configuration. And, it’s more power-efficient.
When looking for decently-priced 13″ laptops, I came across far too many that employed average or sub-average screens. I imagine that many laptop manufacturers assume that people looking for low cost 13″ laptops aren’t interested in screen quality, only price. However, for me, this was not the case, and so the M1330′s screen upgrade was absolutely perfect for me.
Because of the glossy display, the screen is indeed hard to read in high light without the backlight at full brightness (which still causes the battery to drain faster than at low brightness despite the decreased power consumption of the LED backlight).
The screen is attached with a tangental hinge, which is a little odd. It only tilts back about 120 degrees and it seems to interfere with the vent on the back a little bit.
A note about screen size: I wanted a laptop with a nice balance between usability and portability. I didn’t want to hunch over some 12.1″ laptop trying to read text off of the tiny screen, but at the same time, I didn’t want to lug around a 15.4″ behemoth with a mass comparable to that of an 800 page textbook. So, the decision ended up being between 14.1″ and 13.3″. After a lot of thought, I decided to go with the latter because I knew that I could use an external display when I needed a bigger picture. I am quite positive that I made the right choice in the end.
Processor
This is my first experience with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It’s not a Penryn processor, but despite the fairly low frequency and frontside bus, I haven’t really had a lack of performance. I’ve instructed CPUFreq to use the ondemand governor and it seems to consistently keep the cores at 1.00GHz, indicating that I really haven’t pushed the processor to its limits yet.
This processor does not support VT-X. I’m using VirtualBox to run a small implementation of XP for taking notes (warning: virtual machines cause the battery to drain fast) and managing my calendar (Kontact is still really, really buggy). Fortunately, VirtualBox’s software virtualization is reported to be as fast as VT-X, but VMWare Workstation 6.5 Beta is painfully slow.
You can get the processor temperature with lmsensors. CPUFreq works well, but it dies on the second core after resuming from standby. So, you just need to do rmmod -f cpufreq before you suspend the computer and then modprobe cpufreq after you resume. You can also instruct the suspend client to do that automatically for you (stick a script into /etc/pm/sleep.d/ with a case statement containing suspend and resume).
Graphics
Since I had already decided that I wasn’t going to get a powerhouse, I decided to skip the nVidia GeForce 8400 and go with the default Intel GM965 instead. I knew that the Intel GMA’s can’t handle games that well, but I figured that this chip would at least be able to handle Nexuiz with medium quality settings…
I was wrong. In Windows Vista, with the quality set to the absolute lowest, I am lucky if I can get a game that plays mildly smoothly on 1024×768. Initially, in Linux, I couldn’t even get any 3D support at all, but found that while using the XAA buffer, I could eke out fairly smooth gameplay by shutting off compositing and setting the quality to the lowest settings. I also turned the resolution down even further, to 800×600, and that seems to be working better.
Which brings me to my main point: this chip is broken on Linux. If you use EXA as your buffer, it will cause all sorts of rendering glitches (my taskbar would be just a pile of garbage). So, you need to use XAA, which is slower, older, and rarely updated. Some people say that by reverting back to older Intel drivers, you can get decent EXA support, but I haven’t tried it.
2D acceleration is fine and compositing works well. KDE 4.1 looks very nice under this system and it doesn’t suffer from the nVidia bug, obviously.
Hard Drive
It’s a standard 5400RPM, 160GB hard drive. I’m using the XFS filesystem, which is pretty neat. hdparm reports pretty decent speeds:
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1690 MB in 2.00 seconds = 845.85 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 186 MB in 3.00 seconds = 61.99 MB/sec
I have set both the acoustic management and the power management levels with hdparm improve my battery life. Which reminds me…
Battery Life
I haven’t done any official timings, but I know that I’m getting pretty good battery life. I usually keep the screen brightness at the lowest setting and when using the laptop lightly, I can get almost 4 hours of battery life with the 6-cell battery, which was a fairly pricey, but definitely necessary, purchase. Dell also sells a 9-cell battery, which sticks out of the laptop (unlike the 4- and 6-cell batteries). But, the 6-cell seems to be fine for me.
In terms of ranking, I think that puts it above most other comparable laptops, but still below the MacBook; who knows what those guys are doing to get such amazing battery life…
Built-in Devices
The Intel Wireless N card was the last upgrade that I purchased; it was also worth the money. I had read multiple reports of problems with Dell’s default wireless chips; the card I bought has full Linux support. I don’t know if I’ll ever use the N capabilities, but I’d like to.
The webcam and biometric fingerprint reader both work with Linux. I’m still having some trouble getting the fingerprint reader to work with KDM, but it does work with su. The touchpad uses the Synaptics driver, so I can add virtual scrollers.
The DVD-RW drive seems to be pretty good. However, it’s a bit loud as it spins up and down when you boot the computer.
xrandr makes on-the-fly monitor configuration switching easy. I have a script for setting the screen to a dual-monitor configuration and one for reverting back to the default single-monitor config. KDE 4.1 is usually smart enough to not crash.
There is also a built-in IR-based remote control that fits into the media slot when you aren’t using it. It is translated directly to keycodes, so you don’t even need to use lirc!
Oh yeah, Dell also includes a nice self-destruct button. No, seriously. Because I removed the MediaDirect partition (MediaDirect is like a tiny version of XP with Dell’s media app running on top of it), if I accidentally hit the MediaDirect button, my partition table will become corrupted. Awesome.
Accessories
ASUS makes it pretty much a standard policy to include a case and mouse with every laptop purchase. I was a little surprised to find that the M1330, an XPS laptop, which Dell considers to be it’s “elite” line, came with absolutely nothing. So, I bought a Case Logic sleeve, which fits the laptop absolutely perfectly. I also received a Logitech VX Nano for my birthday. This little mouse packs quite a punch. It has 5 buttons, a scroller with two modes (ratcheted, which is like any other mouse, and smooth, which provides high speed scrolling capabilities), and horizontal scrolling support. The receiver is also tiny; it only sticks out about 6mm from the laptop. That reminds me; the fact that there are only 2 USB ports is a bit frustrating, but thankfully, the notebook cooler that I have includes a 4-port USB hub.
Build Quality
This is the only real gripe I have with the XPS M1330, and more specifically, with Dell.
Generally, the computer is built from fairly solid parts. The palm rest is aluminum, the frame seems pretty sturdy, and the screen hinges are pretty cool looking. But, when you look at the details, Dell fails to deliver. The reason why I say this is not because the parts are necessarily bad; they’re fine. The issue is that the XPS series is supposed to be Dell’s best line, so you would expect much higher quality components.
The biggest offender is the keyboard. There’s no issue with flexing, but the keyboard itself just feels cheap. I prefer to type by gliding my hand over the keyboard instead of using the keyboard like a typewriter. But, if I press the C key and proceed to move my hand toward D or F, occasionally my finger will get caught underneath the key. It’s not a big deal, but, again, it makes the keyboard feel cheap. I’ve seen the keyboards that HP, Toshiba, Sony, and Apple use; they’re all much higher quality than these because they don’t have large gaps between the keys and some of them are even backlit. I expected that in an “elite”-series computer, the keyboard would cost Dell something more than 5 cents.
I’m also a bit worried about the casing. One of my friends purchased the XPS M1530 (i.e. the 15″ version) and accidentally dropped something on the left palmrest. Unfortunately, the hard drive sits right underneath that. As it turned out, the force of the impact produced a decent-sized dent in the palmrest and also caused enough pressure to destroy the drive. When I looked inside, I found virtually no protection between the palmrest and the drive. That was a disturbing sight, to say the least.
One more thing: when I received the laptop, I noticed that the left speaker was slightly dented. Apparently, Dell doesn’t have the manufacturing process totally down yet; there have been other reports of glitches in the build process as well.
Default Software
Hahahhahaa… Like I would ever keep any of that.
Linux Support
It’s very good (minus the graphics chip); all of the devices work fine, frequency scaling works well, ACPI seems to be supported perfectly, and suspension to RAM also works fine (I haven’t tried suspension to disk).
Conclusion
If you’re looking to buy a cheap 13.3″ laptop, get this one. You will not regret it. But, if you want to spend a lot of money upgrading it (faster processor, more RAM, decent graphics card, etc.), you’d be much better off getting a Sony Vaio or an Asus. These companies will make you feel like you get what you paid for if you are willing to pay a higher price.
Will I buy from Dell again? Probably not. Was this a good laptop choice for me? Definitely. I needed to buy something fairly inexpensive that would be very portable. When Nehalem comes out in full force (Intel indicates sometime in 2009 for the really nice stuff), I hope to buy a top-of-the-line laptop or build a nice desktop computer for myself. So, this laptop is a perfectly complement to that kind of system.
So, you should get the M1330 if:
- You want a cheap laptop with a small form factor (there aren’t many options available for a comparable price);
- You aren’t concerned about the “little” details such as the cheap keyboard;
- You don’t plan to wipe it and install XP; and/or
- You want a laptop with decent Linux support
M1330 -> M1337?
Definitely. First, I’m going to disconnect the self-destruct button. I’d also like to add LED lighting to the keyboard, if possible, but I’m not going to attempt that quite yet…
