1210M Impressions

m1210

I have had mine for a couple of days.

Here's a really quick rundown:

Device is solid, seems similar to 700m in form factor.

Screen is very good but extremely prone to glare. If you use it indoors a lot you will probably be happy with it. I found that sitting in a conference room with windows behind me made it difficult to see. I have a lot of laptops and this is probably the best quality screen of the bunch. MUCH better than my earlier XPS laptop and better than the Fujitsu or Vaio machines I was using recently.

I was pleased with the battery life. I got about 4 hours out of it today and it's still not dead. This was mostly with the wireless connection active, screen brightness set to about 1/3rd, running just MS Word.

It is very fast. I haven't benchmarked it yet but when running general windows apps I'd say it is on par with the Compaq Evo 7600 I use as a work desktop machine. It loads programs faster than the Gen1 XPS I had been using, which had a 7200RPM disk as well and the same amount of RAM.

For the first time ever I'm actually using some of the included software. The WiFi utils seemed decent, the Media Direct ability is very nice (Will definitely use it on flights). I did uninstall a dozen things but am keeping several, for once. I probably won't reinstall XP unless gaming performance seems really sub par. On that note, I will be gaming with it but haven't had time to install any yet. HL2, Oblivion, FEAR, usual stuff...

Fit and Finish:
When closed it's mostly black, when opened the keyboard/palmrest and screen are all silver. I like the look more than any other Dell Laptop I've owned. It's sleek with a bit of flare (The silver accents and use of blue LEDs). Fits very well into a business environment.

Tolerances are average for the most part. The included camera feels like it could/will break. They could have done a better job of the construction. The unit I received has a couple small scuffs on the bottom right corner. Annoying. The fans kick in once in a while but overall this thing is near to silent, even when it was running a number of moderately demanding apps at once. Look forward to seeing what it does with games.

Screen is latchless but closes firmly. I worry about latchless screens losing their tension after a while.

All included devices (card reader, DVD writer, USB ports, NIC port) seem to work fine. I haven't tested the new PC-Card bay as I don't have anything compatible. I really wish it had a gigabit connection - this is annoying in a modern laptop. The camera seems identical to a 1.3MPixel logitech I use at work and even had all the same software. It does the job but isn't great.

Very pleased with the weight. The XPS I had was around 10 pounds, all subsequent laptops were closer to 6, this feels much lighter to me. Carrying around is just not an issue.

I'm not seeing the keyboard flex people mentioned. I'm about 6'3 and have decent sized hands but don't find typing on it to be difficult -- I actually feel more at home typing on this keyboard than on the Gen1 XPS for some reason.

I wish it had an eraser pointing device in addition to the touchpad... but the touchpad seems to work well.

I know we've had a review saying the audio was good and another saying it was bad... I'm forced to vote "Tinny" on that one. I had really hoped it'd sound decent, but it just doesn't to me.


Apologies for jumping around so much - this was a quick off-the-cuff set of views and I don't have time to organize it into categories.

My Mediadirect won't work properly after a clean format. I get a blue screen error either while loading it or after it's loaded. I think Mediadirect is a bit of a waste of time anyway. It takes a bit to load, and Windows allows you to access any DivX files etc anyway.

Glad you're enjoying your M1210. I'm loving mine, despite its quirks.

I feel the same way. I haven't even tried to see if mine works. I used it once (just to see what it did) on my E1505 and found out it couldn't play DivX which makes it of very little use to me. At least it's not taking up much hard drive space.


And I also agree with many of Malarkey's thoughts. I'm disappointed about the lack of gigabit ethernet, and am wondering how well the latchless design will hold up, but other than that I love the thing.

For you guys who have it with the 7400 ...can you tell us about heat? Can you use this on your lap for normal surfing, and office applications..and also for those with the 7400..I see the Dell Website says this things gets up to 7 hours battery life..what about the ones with the 7400? what kind of batter life are you getting. And finally..gaming..how is it..what have you played..and how warm/hot does the unit get when gaming. Can you sit it on your lap or does it need to go to a table..etc..

Thanks in advanced

I should add..I mean battery life for normal, chating, office work etc..not gaming..

Well this 7400 is quite unique in my eyes... So far I love my M1210, and this 7400 is holding up quite well while playing Oblivion. I have played, surfed etc... with this laptop on my lap and it never got as hot as my 8500 did. It is quite bearable, and really I only notice my pants heated up a bit after I put down the notebook. The 7400 has a sideways fan, and quietly expells hot air to the left side of the M1210. This is kinda funny in eyes, because I use it as a hand-warmer occassionally. Thus there is definately hot air being pushed around, but it is being directed away from me, and helps to keep the notebook cool enough to keep in my laptop for an hour+... My real only qualm with the notebook is the pixelation on the built-in webcam... But, I am unsure if it is becuase I am used to dealing with better equipment/pictures (I "dabble" in photography a bit)... or what exactly. So anybody who also has the built-in webcam, any feedback/thoughts would help put me at ease a bit...

No comment on the webcam as I haven't really used it. I turned it on once to see it work, in a dim room, and quality was awful.

Gaming-wise, it's very impressive. We must not forget it's only a 1280x800 res, so it doesn't need a 512MB 7900 GTX. It handles World of Warcraft with full details (aside from AA), with ease. Just took the M1210 with me to Onyxia in a 40-man raid, and Onyxia spent too much time dribbling over my XPS that she went down first shot. The M1210 didn't break a sweat.

It's a great machine, but not perfect. It has some oddities that I hope will get ironed out, especially driver wise. That said, it's a very stable machine for the hours I've strained it this evening. It doesn't get as hot underneath as other laptops I've used, that's for sure.

what settings on wow were you on and how many fps did you get?

Thanks guys this has helped me out alot...I like the size and the power... Anyone else on the battery life? I read on a review it said about 4 hours on the 7400 and 7 hours with the intergrated if im not mistakened.

Anyone get the Costco unit?

1280x800, full AF, full texture detail etc. I always turn the terrain distance to a little over half, as you really can't tell the difference save for a few places, but the framerate difference, even on my M170, is huge.

I vsync enable, as there's no point to it off. I get 60fps a lot of the time, and around 30-40 in 40-man instances. It's honestly a little less that what I get on my M170 in 1920x1200 with the same settings.

Does anyone know anything about the m1210s graphic card internally? I'm wondering if you could throw a 7600 in there somehow.

wow that sounds good

Wow, I am really impressed with the video card! I didn't realize it could handle any of the new games without choking (even Oblivion!). Maybe I should look into getting this little beast myself.

BTW has anyone ran Guild Wars on it?

The 7400 is integrated on the board, no hopes for upgrading it.

you can't upgrade 99% of the laptops video cards....and even if you could, a 7600 in a 12" frame would create WAY too much heat.

video cards

one of the big problems with notebooks is that graphics card manufactuers dont want to commit to a long term connection standard, and theres no way ati and nvidia are going to collaborate (nvidia with its mxm, and ati with there axiom). And it all boils down to cold hard cash, whichever connection standard wins then the other is stuck paying royalties. (although i did prefer nvidia's solution with different sized modules for differnt form factors)

and on the other hand youve got the form factor mess to figure out. succesfully cramming a decent videocard, and memory into a 12" laptop frame is already pretty good.

just my view on the subject

w00t! 1 post and you have HIGH rep!