Stylish, smart and fast laptop. (Dell Inspiron XPS M1530)

Member Name: Dazman83

Product:	Dell Inspiron XPS M1530
Date:	22/11/08 (245 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Did I say it was fast? Sleek design

Disadvantages: Noisy disc drive, USB ports too closely positioned, capacitive touch buttons can be a pain

As I was after a multimedia laptop that could play HD video but didn't want to go crazy with the spending, this was a very attractive proposition to me. I have the version with the T7500 CPU, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, 250GB HDD and at the time I got a cracking deal and saved myself a lot of money with the memory, CPU and warranty upgrades.

To behold, I think it's a really nice looking machine, closed or open but it's more than a pretty face as its performance matches its looks. It processes video and images pretty quickly thanks to its CPU and discrete GPU. HD video playback is effortless and very smooth. The wireless reception is brilliant and the WiFi catcher is a very handy feature. The little remote control that fits into the ExpressCard slot (no PC Card here), though hardly novel as my previous laptop had one, is a nice addition all the same. My laptop has the 9-cell battery rather than the standard 6-cell and though some might call the former ugly because of its protrusion from beneath the rest of the body but it's very minor to me since I don't take my laptop out that often (that's what my EeePC's for) and if anything the protrusion is a benefit as it makes typing a bit more comfortable and it might even aid the cooling since it provides about half an inch of clearance underneath the laptop. The touchpad was quite lousy but a driver update quickly fixed that problem. Royalty issues might have been involved in this but the memory card reader supports xD memory cards as well yet there's no mention of it on any of Dell's marketing blurb.

It's not a perfect laptop however as it does have its drawbacks. The capacitive touch buttons for the multimedia controls may seem cool and novel but they frankly get boring after a while and you have to press them quite firmly to work and there's a longer than desirable delay in turning up/down the volume. The Dell MediaDirect button can't be programmed so you're stuck with it only loading Dell MediaDirect rather than your choice of media player. The fingerprint reader, although very handy, could probably be a bit less recessed so you don't need to press your finger so hard against it or so many times. The pair of USB ports on the left are positioned to closely to each other so if you're using novelty or chunky USB key drives for example, you have no hope of putting more than one in unless you use an extension cable. Complicating the matter further is that the port for the AC adapter is also too close the USB ports. For the price range this laptop comes in, it really should have a gigabit Ethernet port rather than the frankly stingy 10/100 port you get. The slot loading optical drive, like the capacitive touch buttons, looks cool but it does have its flaws, namely being that you can only use full sized discs, the smaller ones will break or get jammed in the drive, necessitating a costly repair. It is also quite noisy compared to most laptop optical drives. The laptop does get a little bit hot but given its slim profile and its aluminium palm rest, it's hardly surprising and anybody buying a laptop of this spec should invest in a laptop cooler as well.

The other problems you may face are really down to the operating system (long shutdown times, not waking up from sleep mode) so I won't take anything from Dell on that but it still would have been nice for them to offer XP Pro on a "downgrade" from a Vista Business, which I would have been happy to pay a bit extra for.

Although I think I've been more critical than praiseful of the M1530, I think it's a really nice machine. I think it's unlikely you'll ever find the perfect laptop unless you have buckets of money to have one built exactly to your needs so you have to ask yourself if you can live with the drawbacks and after having had mine for about eight months, I definitely think I can live with the drawbacks and I don't see myself buying a replacement until after the three year warranty runs out.

Summary: A great performer but the most demanding of people may be put off by its faults

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