Build Quality and Design
This is where my old Acer laptop fell flat. The whole thing was creaky when it was held, I suppose I can’t complain when the machine was a measly £650 a year and a half ago though, and I am comparing it with an XPS laptop, which are Dell’s premium range and a lot more expensive.
The Dell XPS M1330 received major recognition for its design and feature set, and the M1530 follows suit with its larger 15.4" display. Customers wanted bigger and better, so Dell listened. In its new form the M1530 is almost identical to the M1330. The Media Bar touch controls are still present along with the same ports; however there is an additional USB 2.0 port so essentially what we have here is a bigger twin brother.
The M1530 now has slightly more room within so it can be now configured to house the more powerful Nvidia 8600M GT with DDR3 RAM, over the M1330’s 8400M GS. The M1530 can now stretch up to a 2.80GHz Intel T7800 Dual core CPU, whereas the M1330 topped out with an Intel T7500 2.2GHz CPU. Obviously this will affect battery life somewhat, but boy - you’ve got some serious power under the hood there. I opted for the T7500 2.2GHz Dual Core with its 4MB cache.
With a 9-Cell battery the M1530 weighs in at a gorgeous 6.3lbs, which is lighter than my girlfriend’s Inspiron 1520, which weighs in at a hefty 7.5lbs with a 6-Cell battery. The M1530 does feel quite light, yet robust enough to hit people with, and that’s quite useful in a laptop. The sleeker form of the XPS range means it just looks a whole lot more pleasant over the flat rectangular shape of your average laptop and with exclusive XPS tech support, and Dell’s Media Center (which can be accessed outside Windows) you have a rather nice entertainment machine in your hands too.
One last thing I’d like to mention is that some parts of the laptop are covered with a clear plastic ’shield’. The shield is so well attached over parts of the laptop that it is hard to see with the naked eye - until you scratch it. The shield covers the whole length of the Media Bar, and on each side of the screen where the round Dell logo resides. At first glance when I saw the scratches on the media bar, I assumed this was a second hand machine. With deeper inspection it was just harmless marks on the shield.
The Screen
This is the most crucial aspect of any computer. It’s the one primary device you’ll always notice any change on no matter how small and the last thing anyone wants is a dead pixel. Prior to deciding to purchase the M1530, I had read of users buying their machines and finding out they had grainy displays. I’m thankful that wasn’t the case here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t any complaints…
Dell has received a lot of feedback about their screens and lack of configuration options for it. At the time of ordering my machine only 1280×800 screens were available for the UK, and 1400×900 for Canada and America (subject to change) I unluckily found out that Dell had begun allowing Canada and US customers to outfit their M1530’s with larger resolution screens of up to 1920×1200 just as I ordered mine. Dell has also stated that 2008 will see new LED backlight options for these machines too.
