I bought my last desktop computer from a house that was custom-building before full customization was popular, and ordered each component exactly to specifications. That desktop computer is now almost 4 years old (it will turn 4 in March of 2009), and although it has aged well thanks to some optional and some repair-type upgrades, it is starting to reach the limit of what it can do. The machine is a workhorse, and is still nice… A single-core P4 processor clocking in at 3.1 GHz, which is still pretty damn fast… 2 GB of RAM (doubled from the original 1 GB a year or two ago)… an upgraded power supply (the 425 Watt one that came with the case died and I replaced it with a 500 watt one)… and an upgraded AGP video card (the GeForce 6800 died, and I upgraded to a 7800 GS with 256 MB of RAM). All in all, it’s not a bad machine, and it runs most of the games and other applications I use with it quite well. However, I know it is getting older, and eventually some hardware piece or other is going to go, and I would rather have a new system in place and up and running before that happens and I find myself without a computer for weeks.
And so, it was time to look into a new dual-core machine, and my first decision was: laptop or desktop? Now, a desktop will always give you more power and performance for a given price, and you can get a smoking desktop for the same price as a decent (but nowhere near smoking) laptop. On the other hand, laptops are portable, and it has been painful for the last few years going on trips or long winter breaks at the family home without any computer at all. Time spent in my mother’s retirement home for the holidays could be better spent if I had a PC with me, but she has no computer and doesn’t see the need for one. And I don’t just mean gaming — I could also use it to prepare lecture materials for the coming semester, thus saving myself time during the year. On the other hand, although gaming laptops exist, they can be expensive compared to gaming desktops, and they never can quite perform up to the same standard.
The deciding factor turned out to be my workplace — a small state university. The school has an absolutely draconian administration policy for all computers bought through its purchasing department. As a mere user, even the faculty cannot install software, or do any sort of problem-solving — we must simply call IT, who frequently take days, or weeks, to respond (if they respond at all!). I understand the draconian standards for students, but for faculty, this is excessive. Having to call IT every time I want to install open source software is completely ridiculous, and has harmed my ability to serve my students on more than one occasion. I managed to get around this silliness a bit by installing linux on one of my lab machines, but it’s really not possible to go full linux on our campus, given its committment to Windows XP SP2-3, especially in the office. However, getting my own laptop that I could connect to the network but still have outside the power of our IT office — one for which I was the head administrator — would solve that problem, and allow me to display presentations, video, or whatever else I wanted to my students without the university IT “bosses” interfering or preventing it. And so, I decided to go with a laptop.
Having chosen a laptop, I went with Dell mainly because I know they make good laptops, and because the university contract with Dell (at least the past one — I have heard it is about to expire) gave us a small (6% or so) discount. I went to their website and started comparing systems. They offer a gaming variant of their performance laptop model (the XPS), but some features it offers are just not necessary to me. After toying around with the sub-XPS models and finding that to bring them up to my desired specs, they would cost almost exactly as much as the XPS and still have a few less features, I decided to go with the regular XPS (not the gaming variant), and then add the features I desired (such as a better graphics card adatpor) to bring it up to snuff. This ended up getting me to just under the base cost o the gaming laptop, missing a few “gamer” features I don’t need, but adding a few features that I thought would really make the laptop better, such as extra RAM. I was able to save quite a lot by going with the 15″ laptop instead of the 17″. This was mildly disappointing, as I wanted the larger screen… but the increased cost was something I just could not justify.
In the end I went with the Dell XPS M1530, which is a 15.4″ widescreen laptop having lots of nice features. I upgraded to the best graphics card possible on this model, the nVidia GeForce 8600 GMT, which is roughly equivalent to the older 7800 GS in my desktop, and went with 4 GB of RAM, which I think is important — it ensures that each of the two processors has 2 GB to work with. Any less than that and you’re really wasting the extra processor. I considered trying to fight for XP instead of Vista, but finally decided that it was time to give up the fight and accept that Vista is the new OS, and that I might as well start getting used to it. Thanks to my discount, I saved about $90 on the price, which coincidentally is just about the same price as Office Home/Student edition, so I had them tack that on for me — since the university is fully invested in the older version of office (2003), and since I wanted to use this machine to present things to my class, and build presentations for use on the other school computers, office really is a must. Oh, sure, I could have gone with Star Office (and in fact did, on my older desktop, for nearly a fully year), but since this amounted to a free copy thanks to the discount, I went with it. I also decided to spring for the bluetooth keyboard (which I’m typing on right now) and mouse.
All in all, I have been relatively pleased with my new acquisition. It took Dell about 2 weeks to build and ship the thing — so in my view, that means there is no point to springing for the much more expensive overnight delivery option (what’s another couple of days when you have to wait two weeks anyway?). When the machine arrived, it was completely, and exactly, what I had ordered. Everything was in order, and ready to go. I opened up the boxes, plugged in the laptop, turned it on, and was off to the races with Vista and my setup. All the software came pre-installed, which I am of two minds about. On the one hand it’s nice not to have to deal with installing. On the other, I would’ve done some different things with the installation, such as dual-partitioning the drives so that I could keep one as a “gaming and applications” partition, allowing me to separate my own personally loaded apps from the more systemic or generic apps like Word or things like Trend Micro Anti-virus. However, since it was all loaded up in a not-too-objectionable way, and since I really was not in the mood to spend several days in a long and annoying reinstall process, I’ve just gone with their initial setup, and tweaked a few things (like turning off some things in the startup menu, such as Google Desktop, which I never use).
There is a lot to like about this XPS laptop. One of the first things I did was download the current version of the City of Heroes client and take the game for a spin. For those who have not tried it, COH is a very graphically and performance-intensive game. With 2 GB of RAM and the 7800 GS, my desktop system can handle it relatively smoothly, though with 1 GB of RAM it struggled slightly. I wasn’t sure how the laptop would fare, but it actually did extremely well. The gameplay was completely smooth, perhaps even slightly better than on the older desktop. It was not really playable with the touchpad, but heck that’s what the bluetooth mouse and keyboard are for, right? I also loaded up and played a bit of Galactic Civilizations II, which is not nearly the performance hog, and of course played just fine too.
I’m not going to make this a formal review… really it’s just a blog entry about my new machine and what I like and dislike. But I will list the pros and cons for those who might be considering this laptop.
Pros
Case design: The XPS M1530 has a great, sleek, stylish design.
Performance: It gives the user solid performance, and excellent graphics and game performance, provided one springs for the appropriate upgrades (such as the better graphics card, more RAM). With 4 GB of RAM and the 256 MB nVidia card, it’s on par with my single-core Desktop at least, and possibly superior (it’s hard to tell since they both handle COH equally, and I have not yet tried the one game my desktop couldn’t handle — Mass Effect — on the laptop).
Bundled software: Even without Office there is a nice array of bundled software on the Dell XPS. You get Adobe Photoshope and Premeire Elements for free, and a full install of a complete security suite of your choosing (options include Norton, McAffee, and Trend Micro… I chose Trend due to bad experiences with the other two over the years).
Hardware extras: The XPS automatically comes with a built-in mini-web-cam and a fingerprint reader. Since I don’t use either I would’ve stripped them out if I could have to save some money, but there was no option to do so. These could be cons if you really don’t want them, but for most people I suspect they’re pros.
Bluetooth keyboard: Having a full Dell keyboard without a wire to connect to my laptop is wonderful. In the past with older laptops I have used a regular mouse but the laptop keyboard, but I always find those to be uncomfortable. The Dell laptop keyboard is typical, which is to say neither good nor bad… it’s usable and on trips I will use it, but at home, I prefer the bluetooth… and I may get an additional one for my office.
Cons
Bluetooth mouse: Unlike the keyboard, which works perfectly, the mouse is very unreliable. Sometimes it works like a regular, plugged-in mouse, but much of the time it is extremely unresponsive, or else it’s over-responsive. The response is poor enough that even though I am an expert at COH and was not doing anything I would normally consider hard, or dangerous for my character, I had one character die repeatedly because of the mouse response time. I would move it to hover over, say, a “healing” inspiration and click, only to find the mouse had gone less than half the distance I had anticipated, leading me to be clicking in the wrong place, missing the needed healing, and watch the character die ignominiously. You might say, “this is just poor game performance,” but it also did this when surfing the web, and so on. I checked the batteries but clealry, this is just a performance issue. It doesn’t matter all that much surfing the web, but is totally unacceptable for any sort of gaming or Photoshop work, both of which require precision. I dumped the bluetooth mouse in a drawer two days after receiving it, and swapped to an old USB mouse, which works just fine. I would not waste money on the bluetooth mouse… although they usually bundle it with the keyboard. If so, just order a regular, wired mouse (not wireless!) in case you get this problem. It’s not expensive.
Battery life: I did not spring for the more expensive battery, but went with the default one. I know the default one would not have the most juice in the world — they never do. But this one is really not very good at all. Its life of course depends on the application, but even under very minor use it gives no more than 3 hours of use, and if you do anything substantial, like, oh, say, playing “Hearts” (not a high-performance-demand game) you’ll be lucky to get much more than 2 hours out of it. I’m not sure the battery alone would let you watch an entire feature-length (2 hour) movie on DVD, what with the DVD motor having to turn the whole time and all. Again, I realize that I did not spring for the better battery, but given that these machines are being marketed and sold as high-end portable multimedia systems, it seems to me the minimum standard of battery life should be at least two hours of continuous DVD playback. Otherwise, they’re forcing you to plug in during the middle of a movie… and good luck trying to watch just a 2 hour movie on your laptop during a long plane ride.
Overall
Other than the lousy bluetooth mouse and the weak battery life — both of which are easy enough to rectify by laying out a bit of money — I am very pleased with my Dell XPS laptop. It performs well, and is a solid machine, enough that I am toying with just completely retiring my desktop and switching out completely to the laptop as my main machine, even for gaming. I would definitely recommend the Dell to a friend, but I would also definitely recommend a regular (wired) mouse and especially the larger battery.
