dell xps 1210

[DanceswithDingoes]

Anyone had any experience with this notebook?

[djjc]

what sort of info are you after?

[DanceswithDingoes]

how well do they run? Are they worth the 2k? do I need a $900 laptop or a $2100 one?

[Marcus]

You need one that is easy to use, doesn't need virus protection software or spyware protection, will still work fine in 5 years time, can run Windows or Mac OS X without emulators, and features the highest quality hardware

http://www.apple.com/au/macbook/macbook.html/

[Progen]

Unless you're getting them for their sizes, I don't find these small farts worth the prices they cost.

And the range of overall performance amongst notebooks seem rather small when compared to desktops. Seems like the difference between 2100 and 900 went to the casing and miniaturization rather than anything which will produce a clear cut increase in speed or features.

[djjc]

Its pretty good for the money, as far as value is concerned. Like Marcus said, youve gotta think about the use experience as well. The dell comes with vista, an operating system that is not very familiar as yet and will be targeted by virus writers shortly. However, it is still compatible with XP, but that means swapping it over, which could be a hassle in some people's eyes.

Hardware wise, its processor and video are good. Dont expect miracles though, dell ALWAYS use older chipsets with heavily revised drivers for stability. The plus is that they rarely fail, but they rarely perform too. The screen is a little small, but such is the price of laptops, especially small ones. a 12' screen at 1280 x 900 is going to be a small picture. The harddrive spec is rubbish. 5400rpm is not enough for vista, so if you do get it, get the 7200rpm disc or forget it. Also, the spec reeks of pretty heavy power consumption, so expect heat, especially from the 7xxx series video chip, which arnt the coolest running VPU's doing the rounds. Also, seeing how it isnt running a DX10 video card, its not going to get all the bling bling from vista.

That said, its all pretty standard fare for a PowerPC lappy. The other beauty of using a PC is that there are user serviceable parts inside (if you know what youre doing). Macs are somewhat more fussy about their internals, though its not as bad now as it once was. If youre not technically minded, the warranties are both comparable. After sales service from both dell and mac are the same: utter garbage. If it breaks, dont expect it to be fixed in a hurry or cheaply. Macs are especially pricy to fix.

But, OSX has been around the block and more and more people know how to help. I would use one unless you held a gun to my head :P

Underlying all this is two important questions.

1. do you really need a laptop? They are hot, dont last as long and dont go as fast per dollar. Do you really need to move it every day, or do you think that its neat and something that youd like.

2. What do you want to do with it? Maybe a 900 buck computer is more than enough. Maybe a shuttle PC or some other SFF computer would be more suitable.

number 1 you can answer, number 2 we can answer when you know number 1!

[DanceswithDingoes]

I was pretty impressed watching Luke sitting in front of the tv surfing forums, so Id like the same. The only games I play are cs and aoe3 and Ill have this desktop if I need it, main concern is the shared graphics over a dedicated graphics setup, they offered me a budget 1501, a mid priced 6400 (with graphics upgrade) and the top range xps m1210. Retravision just advertised a couple of cheaper toshiba satelites to add to the mix :o

[Archangel]

The harddrive spec is rubbish. 5400rpm is not enough for vista, so if you do get it, get the 7200rpm disc or forget it.
7200rpm in a laptop? How common is that?

Also, the spec reeks of pretty heavy power consumption, so expect heat, especially from the 7xxx series video chip, which arnt the coolest running VPU's doing the rounds. Also, seeing how it isnt running a DX10 video card, its not going to get all the bling bling from vista.
The default video chip is an Intel, which shouldn't use much power seeing as it doesn't do much. What else sucks power? The CPU should be reasonably efficient and the screen isn't that big...
Do you honestly need a DX10 graphics card just for a second rate 3d accelerated GUI in Vista? That's a little ridiculous :-o

That said, its all pretty standard fare for a PowerPC lappy.
It's not a PowerPC. It's x86.

Anyways, my 2c: I reckon it looks alright. It's a reasonably powerful wee beast; it'll certainly browse forums in front of the TV very nicely indeed...
The dedicated graphics chip will take you a lot further in terms of gaming, but will suck up more power (== shorter battery life). Up to you which you prefer.

[djjc]

7200rpm in a laptop? How common is that?

Irrespective of the commonality, think of all the paging vista is going to do. Then add to it if the owner ever considers photoshop or any other serious prog that needs scratch space.

The default video chip is an Intel, which shouldn't use much power seeing as it doesn't do much. What else sucks power? The CPU should be reasonably efficient and the screen isn't that big...
Do you honestly need a DX10 graphics card just for a second rate 3d accelerated GUI in Vista? That's a little ridiculous :-o

To run aero, yup. And youre not the first to think its rediculous either. Of course, you can turn the eye candy off, which will save some power.

The spec sheet on the XPS said 7xxx video, i didnt go through the options. Intel graphics are out of their depth beyond regular desktop stuff. So if you plan on playing any games, id spec up.

It's not a PowerPC. It's x86.

Whoops! My bad, its been a long day.

[recurve boy]

To run aero, yup. And youre not the first to think its rediculous either. Of course, you can turn the eye candy off, which will save some power.

The spec sheet on the XPS said 7xxx video, i didnt go through the options. Intel graphics are out of their depth beyond regular desktop stuff. So if you plan on playing any games, id spec up.

I started specing out a machine on the US dell site. It recommended 2Gb of RAM for Vista.

SWEET JESUS. What the hell are they doing?

The specs however are very nice. Maybe you can give back Vista for a copy of XP?

[ninevalleys]

you do not need a Dx10 card for VISTA! to run Areo glass Vista theme you need a mininum of 128mb of GPU Ram. but it is recomended to have a 256mb card... all pre-made (non custom) Laptops that run Vista premium or better have one of these cards (7300 GO 256mb) or similar. latops with Vista Home basic normally do not.

Dx10 cards are at the moment not needed as there are NO games or programs needing them (for the moment)... in fact Nvidia are having trouble with Dx10 driver atm

NV

[djjc]

Im not entirely up to date, so youre probably right there. I thought they needed DX10 for one of the shader methods used in aero?

Perhaps not? Where did you read that it doesnt need it?

[Archangel]

Irrespective of the commonality, think of all the paging vista is going to do. Then add to it if the owner ever considers photoshop or any other serious prog that needs scratch space.
If it's paging, you're stuffed anyway, regardless of how many rpm the hdd does. Personally I just loaded up my laptop with 768MB RAM, and it never swaps. Of course, I'm not running anything made by Microsoft on it - Windows' memory management isn't the flashest, and Vista is just fat.

I started specing out a machine on the US dell site. It recommended 2Gb of RAM for Vista.

SWEET JESUS. What the hell are they doing?

The specs however are very nice. Maybe you can give back Vista for a copy of XP?
Lack of restraint - just like the graphics thing, you don't need bugger all of a graphics card to do a nice 3D GUI. But Microsoft couldn't have written something efficient, oh no...

Personally I'd give Vista back and get a real operating system, but that's a lot easier said than done.

[Eberbachl]

Vista runs (with all the eye candy turned off) on my 5 year old PIII 733mhz Thinkpad!

:o

...but having said that, I've got a new Macbook on the way, so soon all will be sweet!

:thumb:

[ninevalleys]

mininum RAM requirment for Vista Aero theme is 1 gig ... or 512 without it.

there are absolutly NO requirments for DX10 cards, they are only a added perk OF vista (atm its actually a hassle)

NV

[recurve boy]

mininum RAM requirment for Vista Aero theme is 1 gig ... or 512 without it.

there are absolutly NO requirments for DX10 cards, they are only a added perk OF vista (atm its actually a hassle)

NV

Mac OS X Tiger runs great on my 2+ year old iBook with most of the pretty graphics with 768Mb of RAM and a 32Mb video card. It actually runs slightly faster than the previous version, Panther.

It's really sad. Vista has at least one cool feature, ReadyBoost. Too bad so much of the OS is just crap.

[ninevalleys]

i really enjoy Vista, its pretty sweet especially the Aero glass theme. i admit it is a hassle becasue of the limited drivers available.
but it is very fast and once you tweek the graphics cards (takes a while) the games are brilliant, smooth and super fast (with DX10 cards and without)

give Vista 6 months to a year and it will pretty awsome.

NV

[Archangel]

Mac OS X Tiger runs great on my 2+ year old iBook with most of the pretty graphics with 768Mb of RAM and a 32Mb video card. It actually runs slightly faster than the previous version, Panther.
Beryl runs fine on my 1.1GHz laptop with an integrated video card. Looks like everyone but Microsoft can write something like that efficiently...

It's really sad. Vista has at least one cool feature, ReadyBoost. Too bad so much of the OS is just crap.
Personally I don't see the point. RAM's not that expensive, I'd much rather whack another stick in the machine rather than take up half my USB drive for some infinitesimal improvement.

[steves]

I've had one of these for a few months now. So far no problems.
Small, light & fast - I'm happy with it.

[Archangel]

it is very fast
It is not. Fluxbox is fast. Vista is fat.

and once you tweek the graphics cards (takes a while) the games are brilliant, smooth and super fast (with DX10 cards and without)
Tweak the graphics card? What is this, 1995?
Bugger that, my drivers "just work" (TM) once they're installed - what on earth do you need to 'tweak' in a graphics card that nVidia or whoever haven't done already?

give Vista 6 months to a year and it will pretty awsome.
After six months to a year it will have been cracked by all the virus writers and Hotbar (dunno which is worse), and it'll be a gigantic mess like XP is, because Microsoft haven't addressed most of the fundamental flaws in their product.

[Marcus]

give Vista 6 months to a year and it will pretty awsome.

:rofl:
They have had 25 years and still have not gotten it right, and you think they will in 6 months?

Holy crap that's funny.
:rofl:

[ninevalleys]

well archy if you check the Nvidia forums you will see that the drivers are all BETA, and are not always working on 100%, you need to fiddle with some of teh setting (like the AA settings) to get certain games to run. this of course will be fixed by teh end of the month (official driver release).
so far i have found Vista to run 2x faster than XP.
in a year Vista wil be the thing to have, a majority of PC owners are waiting for a year untill al the drivers and stuff have been worked out

NV

[Marcus]

I'm sure it will be as popular as Zune.

[Archangel]

well archy if you check the Nvidia forums you will see that the drivers are all BETA, and are not always working on 100%
Nothing wrong with beta software. Anyway, even if it's a prerelease version, what are you going to be able to do to fix any issues with it? Nothing.

you need to fiddle with some of teh setting (like the AA settings) to get certain games to run. this of course will be fixed by teh end of the month (official driver release).
So you drag a slider bar. Big deal. I thought you said it took a while?

so far i have found Vista to run 2x faster than XP.
Obviously your highly scientific benchmarking techniques have managed to highlight this hitherto unknown optimisation.

in a year Vista wil be the thing to have, a majority of PC owners are waiting for a year untill al the drivers and stuff have been worked out
It's nothing anyone hasn't done before now. In a year it'll just be further behind.

[djjc]

I think that we are getting a little deep here. We still dont know what this guy wants to do with his computer. As much as i hate to say it, maybe a mac is a suitable option. hell, he is looking at dells after all, so its not like he is aiming for a 3dMark world record.

Despite all the internet speculation and downloads and betas avaliable, vista is still a relatively unknown proposition. is that the sort of thing you would encourage a newbie to dive into?

[primal]

DWD will need it for most desktop applications like word, excel maybe some email,

DWD check out an asus (they make the sony laptops) or toshiba teca a6

stay away from dell and acer laptops, i have always had quality issues with their laptop products.

if you want a brand label check out the lenovo (IBM) or HP laptops slightly more bucks for the same specs as an asus but excellent laptops.


i would recomemnd at your price range of 1500-1800 the toshiba tecra a6 ($1800 -beware no cd's with this sucker) or the hp nx6120 for about $1600, both have more grunt then you require 512 mb ram, 60-80gb hdd, 14.4" or larger screen full size keyboard keys, DVD burner, wireless and bluetooth (i think its an option on the hp)

or if you like a mac get a mac.


Also djjc you should think before you speak.

[2Dogs]

Dell Latitude 620 is pretty good for the $$$

[recurve boy]

Personally I don't see the point. RAM's not that expensive, I'd much rather whack another stick in the machine rather than take up half my USB drive for some infinitesimal improvement.

http://mjtsai.com/blog/2007/02/04/readyboost/.

Under certain conditions, your flash is faster than HD. So with some cleverness, you can speed up your system without having to muck around with RAM. And maybe you have run out of RAM slots.

I can think of at least 1 possibly good way to take advantage of this. Have RAM in your USB stick. The USB port powers the device. Since RAM is so cheap, could we have enough so that we almost ignore the HD? Of course, your USB bus may not work so well anymore for your other devices ... :-|

[Archangel]

I can think of at least 1 possibly good way to take advantage of this. Have RAM in your USB stick. The USB port powers the device. Since RAM is so cheap, could we have enough so that we almost ignore the HD? Of course, your USB bus may not work so well anymore for your other devices ... :-|
One idea (that's been around for ages now, although they've never been particularly economic) is bunging a whole lot of RAM chips on a PCI card that detects as a drive, then using that for swap. With PCI-Express it would probably work quite well.

I s'pose there is that situation where your RAM could be full - of course, with 32-bit Vista, you're more likely to run into a software RAM limit than filling up the number of slots, which this boostready thing gets around too.

Still, if Windows didn't swap so much, you wouldn't need it :-P

[djjc]

Also djjc you should think before you speak.

Of course, how dare i help as best i can. How stupid of me.

[primal]

How stupid of me.
case in point.

[ninevalleys]

Archy you should have a look at the Nvidia Forums. maybe you could learn somthing tweaking the cards.

if word and email is all yoru gunna be doing with a laptop, dont go overboard with all the extra fancy stuff. somthing with 512RAM Intel Centrino 80 gig HD... unless you want to go crazy then look at teh Alienware laptops:p
\
NV

[Marcus]

Archy you should have a look at the Nvidia Forums. maybe you could learn somthing tweaking the cards.


:rofl:

You are a funny MoFo NV.

[mertle]

If you can, go the Mac, so much simpler to use and don't listen to anyone that says you can't do the same things on a mac that you can on a windoze machine.

I have both, a Mac mini desktop and a windows laptop, Brother bought the windows one for me for work (not my choice!)

Anyway it's a new Toshiba and it says vista ready, but pay 299 for something I don't need? not me thanks, I got the vista skin from downloads.com and it looks and feels like vista! it's free too! hehehehe, so there you go, if you want your computer to look like vista for a tryout then go get that.

I can't wait for the new Apple OS sooo much better than anything windows could ever do.

[Archangel]

Archy you should have a look at the Nvidia Forums. maybe you could learn somthing tweaking the cards.
You still haven't explained what this "tweaking" is, apart from adjusting your antialiasing slider - clearly that's enough to make you the leet hacksaw that you are :rolleyes:

Anyway it's a new Toshiba and it says vista ready, but pay 299 for something I don't need?
"Vista ready" is total garbage as far as I can see. My work desktop says that too, but it blatantly won't run Aero - there's a "Vista Premium Magical Might Enabled" badge for that. "Vista Ready" means I can run the simplest tier of the 57 varieties, which really tells me nothing. It's too complicated for me, and I thought I understood computers...

[recurve boy]

You still haven't explained what this "tweaking" is, apart from adjusting your antialiasing slider - clearly that's enough to make you the leet hacksaw that you are :rolleyes:


"Vista ready" is total garbage as far as I can see. My work desktop says that too, but it blatantly won't run Aero - there's a "Vista Premium Magical Might Enabled" badge for that. "Vista Ready" means I can run the simplest tier of the 57 varieties, which really tells me nothing. It's too complicated for me, and I thought I understood computers...


Apparently "vista ready" should also come with a new USB port that locks the device in mechanically incase you have ReadyBoost enabled.

[DanceswithDingoes]

Dell Latitude 620 is pretty good for the $$$
Thanks 2D

[ninevalleys]

despite what i previously said about Vista, ive just reinstalled XPpro, unless you have countless hours like Archy seems to have to spend scruitinzing how crap eveything is on a computer, you will most likly find countless driver problems from things like Mice, keyboards, to Gigabeat room 3.0 and to my shock AutoCad 2007... Vista is fun, if you have nothing better to do, if you expect to use it immediatly for school/ work you may find some software will just refuse to work :( ill reinstall it in a year, or may do a dual system boot.

archy as i said have a look on Nvidia forums to see what you can do to tweek you card. i hae no merely overclocked mine but also added more RAM to it (the card has a couple free slots:p) so i have a 8800GTS with 768mb of onboard DDR3 ram.. but this is off topic.

cheers NV

marcus! using language like that! im shocked! shocked :p

[Archangel]

unless you have countless hours like Archy seems to have to spend scruitinzing how crap eveything is on a computer, you will most likly find countless driver problems from things like Mice, keyboards, to Gigabeat room 3.0 and to my shock AutoCad 2007...
So you're saying you have countless hours to find all those problems with Mice, keyboards, gigger beats and autocad? :confused:
Anyway, if I seem to have lots of time to correct your drivel, it's just because I'm not spending it waiting for the 137 reboots required to reinstall Windows or cleaning spyware off it two days later.

Vista is fun, if you have nothing better to do, if you expect to use it immediatly for school/ work you may find some software will just refuse to work :( ill reinstall it in a year, or may do a dual system boot.
This is true, we won't be going to it at work in any hurry since Visual Studio 2003 doesn't work on it. You wonder how anyone else is meant to get things working on it if even Microsoft can't.

archy as i said have a look on Nvidia forums to see what you can do to tweek you card. i hae no merely overclocked mine but also added more RAM to it (the card has a couple free slots:p) so i have a 8800GTS with 768mb of onboard DDR3 ram.. but this is off topic.
For those of us who have to spend our own money on things, not have Daddy buy it for us, we might rather not void our warranties by doing things like that...

[Archangel]

On the new hijacked topic, here (http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2007/2/how_to_properly_load_vista.flv) are some instructions on how to properly load Vista on a machine.

[ninevalleys]

no archy daddy (or father as i call him) did not buy my card... and also before you correct my drivel you can get vista yourself and then try it, make your own mind up then comment. as i said its fun and interesting... but also a novelty (yes this is where father money comes into play). when i have the time i will run a dual OS system.

on topic, if youget a laptop get XP

NV

[Archangel]

and also before you correct my drivel you can get vista yourself and then try it, make your own mind up then comment.
No. That would require me to consent to the license agreement. Won't happen.

as i said its fun and interesting... but also a novelty (yes this is where father money comes into play).
[QUOTE=Merriam-Webster]Main Entry: nov

[ninevalleys]

looks like we will have agree to disagree then... or at least you actually spend some good one on one time with Vista.. or in fact any MS OS.

NV

[hoyt for life 2]

How is it a novelty? Integrated search, users not running with root privileges, accelerated desktop - these are all things that have been available elsewhere for _years_.



Yes, I felt quite ripped off when I found all the new stuff thats been coming out has been stolen from apple.

[Archangel]

Yes, I felt quite ripped off when I found all the new stuff thats been coming out has been stolen from apple.
*ahem*, Google Desktop was the first desktop search thing I can remember - it was certainly out before Apple did it.
The second on that list has been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth, it was only Microsoft that thought it was a good idea to have users run as admin.

Not sure about accelerated desktops - Project Looking Glass was old, but it may not predate Apple's thing.

Personally, I'd quite like to see something that's not just an evolutionary addition to work Xerox did twenty years ago.

[hoyt for life 2]

Not those things, I ment on older windows versions.

[Archangel]

Not those things, I ment on older windows versions.
Sorry, I thought you were referring to the bit of my post you quoted. Not to worry, just led to a bit more Microsoft bashing :-D

[hoyt for life 2]

just led to a bit more Microsoft bashing :-D
Nothing wrong with that.:-D