Last week I ordered a Dell XPS M1330 to replace my old Inspiron 9400 as my main development machine at work. I thought I'd put together some first impressions for anyone who is interested.
I ended up ordering the model with the WLED screen, 2ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS, and the slower 250GB hard drive. The machine arrived within about a week and came with a few nice goodies like noise cancelling headphones.
Sitting next to the Inspiron 9400 on my desk the M1330 doesn't look all that small. Dell managed to fit a full-size keyboard in the M1330 which I thought was quite impressive - in fact it is much nicer to type on than the 9400's keyboard. You can tell from a looking at the two machines side by side that the M1330 is much better built - it's metallic finish and compact design really stand out next to the 9400 and the crappy IBM Thinkbooks that pervade our office.
The machine came with Dell's standard Vista Business image and all of Dell's standard bloatware. As soon as I powered it on, I realised that the whole right hand side of the fancy new WLED screen was covered in horizontal white streaks. The machine is usable but frustrating - I called Dell's tech support department and they agreed to send out a technician to replace the screen. They offered a full replacement but that would have taken much longer than just getting the screen replaced.
I re-installed Vista without the bloatware and found that the machine randomly "white-screened" every 10 minutes or so. The only way to get back into Windows is to fully reboot the machine. So I got back on the phone to the idiots at Dell and with a bit of forceful reasoning I got them to agree to send out a new video card with the tech who is coming to replace the screen.
Despite the broken screen and random crashes I still love using the M1330. It is just as fast as the 9400 but you can pick it up with one hand. It weighs in at about half what the 9400 weighs in at, so you can comfortably sit with it on your lap or carry it to a meeting under your arm.
Also the battery life is incredible. The WLED screen uses much less power than LCDs so the M1330 with the 9 cell battery I ordered lasts for about 3.5 hours.
Pros
- extremely light (1.78 kg)
- great battery lfie
- fantastic WLED screens
- sleek and sexy design
- slot loading DVDRW, just like the Apple Macbook Pro
Cons
- no DVI outputs (but it does have HDMI)
- WLED is quite flimsy (and I think probably very prone to breakage)
- the touchpad is a little too small
- the buttons at the top are hard to press and don't give any feedback
- Dell don't seem to have quite figured out quality control on this model yet
In conclusion, I would recommend this laptop to anyone looking for a powerful and light laptop that is enjoyable to use.