A Stylish Product That is Excellent for it's Price (Dell XPS M1330)

Member Name: World-of-Bones

Product:	Dell XPS M1330
Date:	16/06/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great looks, many features, good processing ability, fast

Disadvantages: Just typical Dell reliability issues

I got my Dell XPS M1330 for my birthday a year ago now, and unlike what would be the case with many Dell products, I am still typing on this laptop right now. The first thing I noticed about it when i opened the case was the stunning design work that has gone into it. It looks amazing i've got to say, so sleek and stylish. I went for the black option but you can get it in red too. It has a cool black finish with a silver outline and the Dell logo embossed in silver as well. It is slightly wedge shaped for a reason unknown to me where it is 0.87 inches on it's thinnest side, which is actually quite thin. The styling certainly doesn't disappoint when you open up the 13.3 inch screen either, I still get a sense of satisfaction when I press the touch sensitive media buttons at the top and they light up with a soothing glow.

Anyway, to the performance. The specifications for the M1330 are quite impressive for a laptop of this price range, with the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor more than holding it's own along with the 2GB RAM memory that I get, although you can get up to 4GB. The 160GB standard hard drive is enough for most peoples storage needs although I believe a larger 320GB hard drive is available at an extra cost. Adding to the style it also has a slot loading disc drive, which is very cool. For your gaming needs the 128MB Geforce 8400M GS graphics card can play a lot of modern games, although i'm afraid some of the graphic heavy, very modern games do not run smoothly on the machine. Other features included in the laptop are the VGA webcam which is suitable for any video chat uses, but maybe not so suitable for high quality video recording. The fingerprint scanner is also included, which is actually quite useful, no more will your mates guess your password whilst you are away, unless they are so desperate that they cut your finger off. There's also a nice Media Centre Remote which is styled as coolly and sleekly as the laptop itself. There are only two USB ports, which I don't really find enough but that's the only problem with the features. Performance wise i've found it copes very well even when i'm running video games and web browsers / Instant messaging programs at the same time. It always loads very quickly and i've never really had a problem with it crashing or freezing.
However, I have encountered a few problems pretty typical of a Dell product with it. Firstly, when I opened the box, I admired it for a bit before plugging it in to have a mess with it. Only to find out that it wouldn't turn on, how strange. We rang Dell and about a week later a technician turned up to check what was wrong with it, I already knew because i'd found a forum dedicated to the problem. The motherboard was dead on arrival, so I had that changed and got on with using it. However, in February I got an error, and then the M1330 would not turn on, I wrote down the error message and checked the Internet. Low and behold, another community dedicated to a problem, my hard drive was corrupted for no reason what so ever. So I resorted to my warranty and a technician came out and changed my hard drive. I didn't get so much as an apology from Dell even though I failed a piece of coursework that was stored on the hard drive. They also had the cheek to ask me to send them the hard drive back.
Anyway, rant over, the overall performance of the laptop is really good, better than any in it's price range and the looks make it all worthwhile as well. The keyboard isn't fiddly at all like it can be with some laptops and although the touchpad is on the small side it has excellent sensitivity so it is also easy to use. The touch sensitive media buttons all respond excellently and the screen is large and bright.
Overall, it is a great quality product and with a bit of luck you'll be saved from regular Dell issues and be left with a top quality product that caters for all your computing needs.

Summary: Very good product that looks amazing, recommended highly.

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