Dell’s previous XPS range received a lot of praise as well as criticism from users who cited them as being too bulky and heavy. So they came up with a new XPS range that wasn’t just slim and sexy, but offered the hardware flexibility of the previous XPS range. Their first result was the XPS 1330, voted as one of the hottest notebooks of 2007. The 1330 featured a 13.3" screen but users wanted more, so Dell listened and the 1530 was born. With its larger size and 15.4" screen there was no way that Dell could go wrong.
Unboxing and Unpacking
This was a rather large surprise. I returned home to find a tiny box sitting on my bed. At first glance it looked way too small to accommodate a laptop of any kind; however I couldn’t be more wrong. Dell had packed everything except the laptop itself in a neat square cardboard box which sat in the upper half of the main box. Lifting this box out revealed the XPS below it, resting on two foam blocks.
The smaller upper box was first removed. It contained the AC Adaptor, the Battery Pack and a strangely lovely looking A4 sized leather wallet. This must have taken "10 cows to create" I thought as I opened it to reveal a neatly inserted XPS manual plus XPS owner’s information booklet to one side. The right side of the wallet revealed a couple of CD sleeves, a compartment in which Dell Headphones resided and a cloth wipe for the screen.
Unpacking the headphones had me gasping with shock - They were a pair of Creative Labs EP630’s - which I already owned. These noise isolating headphones produce superb sound. However I stopped using them because like most lower end in-the-ear headphones they have a lot of microphonics, which is the term given for acoustic feedback, which travels up the wires in to the headphones and in to your ears as the rubberised wire rubs up against your clothing.
Basically your breathing, humming, fidgeting can be amplified in your ears because of this. On the whole they are superb headphones if you can handle that feedback and they’re about £20-30 retail.
All in all I was rather surprised with the quality of the goods that came out of the box. The headphones and document/CD wallet were a major unexpected bonus.