Shiny stuff
OK, before I get too serious with the software side of things, probably best to describe what the new notebook's like.
It's a Crimson Red Dell XPS M1730, a few weeks ago Dell had a 25% off special that made it really worthwhile getting. The specs are:
First impressions of the package was the nice black XPS lining to the box. It's a little more attention than the other lines get. Hopefully it's a well supported product.
The next thing I saw blew me away. The size of the power supply is enormous. I've called them bricks before, but this thing's a paver. It's thicker than my portable hard disk and almost as big. There were a heap of cables and a really nice XPS folder with the manuals and lots of room for the swag of disks that came with the system. Another nice touch is the inclusion of a screen cleaning cloth (XPS branded of course) and some creative ear buds.
Finally we get to the notebook itself. Instead of being wrapped in plastic, there's a recyclable cloth bag surrounding it inside the foam supports. It's easy enough to unwrap and will probably be kept to ensure there's no dust getting in to it on long hauls.
The first thing to notice when powering it on is the glowing red speakers, the red backlight to the touchpad, the backlit keyboard and the LCD panel just above it. It's a Logitech game panel which is a nice touch. I've gotten used to having one on my G15 keyboard so having a portable display for system stats is great.
Surprisingly, the Vista install went very quickly. As it's the first time I've touched Vista, I don't know if it's the OS or how Dell's customised it. I'm assuming the latter.
Once Vista's finished doing its stuff, I'm in to the desktop and completely dissappointed with what I see. While it's no secret that I'm not a fan of Windows in general (other than how games run on it), I'd expected a little more that what I found, but I'll cover that in another post.
I've pulled down 3D Mark 06 to run through the demo and found I got just over 9000 3D marks. I've no idea if this is any good, but I've also found that SLI wasn't enabled by default. After enabling it I'm now sitting just under 12000. It's obviously better, but as I've not looked at windows based benchmarks for a while I'm hoping it's not to bad in general. If anyone happens to stumble across this and can let me know more about it, please do.
That's probably enough about the notebook. A brief summary is, so far, I really like it. It's just that it's no where near as portable as I'd hoped. At least it's not too far from the carpark to work.
It's a Crimson Red Dell XPS M1730, a few weeks ago Dell had a 25% off special that made it really worthwhile getting. The specs are:
- Core 2 Duo T9300
- 4GB DDR2 RAM
- 2 x 320GB HDD
- 2 x nvidia 8800M GTX 512MB SLI
- 17" 1920x1200 screen
- AGEIA PhysX card
- Dell 355 Bluetooth
- Blu-ray combo drive
- 4965 Wireless
- There's also a 1920x1200 external monitor to attach it to as primarily it's a portable desktop.
First impressions of the package was the nice black XPS lining to the box. It's a little more attention than the other lines get. Hopefully it's a well supported product.
The next thing I saw blew me away. The size of the power supply is enormous. I've called them bricks before, but this thing's a paver. It's thicker than my portable hard disk and almost as big. There were a heap of cables and a really nice XPS folder with the manuals and lots of room for the swag of disks that came with the system. Another nice touch is the inclusion of a screen cleaning cloth (XPS branded of course) and some creative ear buds.
Finally we get to the notebook itself. Instead of being wrapped in plastic, there's a recyclable cloth bag surrounding it inside the foam supports. It's easy enough to unwrap and will probably be kept to ensure there's no dust getting in to it on long hauls.
The first thing to notice when powering it on is the glowing red speakers, the red backlight to the touchpad, the backlit keyboard and the LCD panel just above it. It's a Logitech game panel which is a nice touch. I've gotten used to having one on my G15 keyboard so having a portable display for system stats is great.
Surprisingly, the Vista install went very quickly. As it's the first time I've touched Vista, I don't know if it's the OS or how Dell's customised it. I'm assuming the latter.
Once Vista's finished doing its stuff, I'm in to the desktop and completely dissappointed with what I see. While it's no secret that I'm not a fan of Windows in general (other than how games run on it), I'd expected a little more that what I found, but I'll cover that in another post.
I've pulled down 3D Mark 06 to run through the demo and found I got just over 9000 3D marks. I've no idea if this is any good, but I've also found that SLI wasn't enabled by default. After enabling it I'm now sitting just under 12000. It's obviously better, but as I've not looked at windows based benchmarks for a while I'm hoping it's not to bad in general. If anyone happens to stumble across this and can let me know more about it, please do.
That's probably enough about the notebook. A brief summary is, so far, I really like it. It's just that it's no where near as portable as I'd hoped. At least it's not too far from the carpark to work.
posted by Zenophran at 10:42 pm
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