Big, Heavy, dud (Dell XPS M1730)

Member Name: Gintor

Product:	Dell XPS M1730
Date:	12/01/09 (196 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Large screen, backlite keys, dual hard drives for loads of storage

Disadvantages: Big, Heavy, poor battery life, not capable of supporting the games it boasts and bad tech support

Not for the faint hearted.

I owned one of these babies for around 28 days before sending it back due to a number of reason. Firstly, i brought the modle with the 8700 SLI graphics ( GPU ) card. I also made sure it came with dual harddrives set in Raid 1.
Changeing the hard drives purchased was not as simple as removing the existing and plugging in replacements due to the set up of the raid.
Although billed as the ultimate games machine, games were terrible on this device, the only way to over come this was to buy the 8800 SLI GPU, this in turn added £600 more to the configured price or £800 if brought from an online supplier, making the machines total cost £2600
On first inspection i was astonished by the size of the power supply ( it is the same size or lager then most netbooks ) I also found the battery life to be extremley poor. You will be lucky to get 45 mins out of this beast. I brought the machine as i am a heavy games user. That said i wanted a machine that was portable, if i had wanted a desk top i would have brought a PC and for alot less money.

I also suffered from bad luck in the fact that my machine came with a faulty 8700 GPU, this proved extremley painful when i contacted Dell for their supposed high end XPS support. Eventually the card was replaced, i still suffered from freezing on film and graphics crashes, when i contacted Dell support i was advised i needed to find a 3rd party driver to get the best out of the GPU and also i would need to do some configuration work on the drivers.

Also one of the majour factors that made me choose this device wee the sales pitches on the net about this being one of the first laptops with the abilty to be future prrof, CPU, hard drives and graphics cards were all advertised as upgradalbe. I chalange anyone to find mor ethe 2 suppliers who can supply the graphics card upgrades, and i again challange anyone who can get this done for a reasonable price. the 8800 GPU is aroun £100 for a PC ( Tower unit ) the cheapest i found it for this machine was £800, hardley capable of being upgraded, you would be better off adding a bit more and buying a new laptop

I am not trying to bash Dell as I currently own a Dell and so does my son and wife, i just found the XPS 1730 ( the supposed Flagship ) laptop with the best support to be heavy, poor in battery life, terrible aftersales and tech support and finaly not capable of doing what was promised in its adertisment.

Summary: by the XPS M1730 if you can afford to have the 8800 GPU and do not want a portable device

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Installation:
Battery life:
Features: