Hey there everyone. So further down in the forum there's a pretty good review already, so this post will be focused on merely adding a few things.
So, awhile back, I put up a post asking for people's advice on a laptop to go for, specifically choosing between an M1210 and an E1705. The merits of both laptops were pretty awesome, so the criteria came down to basically two things: The Oblivion test, and the College Student test. I ended up purchasing the M1210 despite the protests of a few other forum-goers (I'll get to that later), so I based my tests on its capabilities.
The Oblivion Test: Basically, this is more of a subjective test, as there are differences between myself and a true hard-core gamer. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games as much as the next person, but I am not a true lan-party fragger. So I set some basic milestones for how I wanted Oblivion to run.
Pass/No-Pass Point: Significant Choppiness within the game (About 20 or less frames per second) in the Outdoors. If the game began to chug, I would know I reached the limits of my computer. It is generally recognized that the outdoors of Oblivion eat RAM and GPUs alive, so I figured that would be the best choice to base it off of.
So, my computers basic specs are a T2400 (Shipped right before I could call in for a Core 2 Duo), 1 gig of 667mhz RAM, 80 gig hard-drive at 5400rpm and a GeForce 7400.
I booted up the computer, went about setting it up for my needs and whatnot, then installed Oblivion. Tried it, default settings being Medium, and it ran fine. Awesome, in fact. I was a bit wary, as the first part of the game is inside a tight dungeon, and is in my opinion the easiest part of the game, graphics-wise. I did, however, kick up the texture size to large, and tweaked on a few more settings. So I get out of the dungeon, and I'm still getting about 35-45 fps. I was kinda surprised at this point. So I up the resolution, and turn on a few more shadows, and there was no real change as far as frames went. Long story short, I've kept increasing settings little by little, and now have it at the 1024 widescreen resolution (Thinking about sending it up to native resolution), HDR-enabled, Distant objects, draw distances to about half, internal shadows at full, external shadows at about half. I've tried shadows on trees, and it goes down to about 15-25 frames, so I'm going to wait until I upgrade the RAM to try that again. But basically, Oblivion is running very nicely. Perhaps not to suit a hard-core gamer, but for a more casual person like myself, it runs like a dream.
The next test is a sort of all-encompassing test of durability, portability, battery life and efficiency of use. The first aspect was met admirably, as the structure is very sturdy. The design of it is nice and simple, which I actually appreciate much more than I do the design of the M1710. I'm a bit more of a minimalist as far as art goes. The small size of the laptop seemed like a mixed blessing at the time, as I needed something small to carry around frequently, but the samll size of the screen (12.1 inch) could kill the deal. But the screen, a WXGA Tru-Brite, is amazing. The sharpness of it makes any smallness of the screen all but unnoticeable, even at a high native resolution of 1280x800. It has one dead pixel that I've found, but I actually had to look for it. Further, the screen seems to make the most light out of anything given to it, so I normally leave the brightness to almost all the way day. The one drawback that I can see is that the reflective screen also makes it much more susceptible to flare and glare.
The battery life works very well (It shipped with the standard 6-cell, which I plan to replace and use as a backup after I get a 9-cell, with it getting about 2.5 to 3.5 hours with the wi-fi enabled. The adapter makes the whole set a little heavier, but it's fairly compact at least, and fits well within my bag. I haven't tried Oblivion or any other intenstive application yet without the adapter, so I couldn't speak on the battery life in regards to that. Finally, the efficiency of use is quite nice. The keyboard is extremely comfortable, and after I found out how to disable the click-tap of the touchpad and just use the button, I found it to be a fantastic use when I'm not using the USB mouse. I like the window scrolls at the edge of the touchpad as well, though it took a little practice not to hit those when moving around. The XP Media Center is pretty neat, nice and streamlined, but the jury's still out on whether I'm going to use it as my primary media application. Finally, I love the PCCillin it ships with. After dealing with McAfee for a year at my work (That program's a huge resource hog), this is a very nice change. One bad note: The speakers suck for anything outside of alarms and system sounds. It has no bass capability, and music sounds a bit metallic. However, I hear this is to be expected from laptop speakers, and in any case the audigy card I got with it makes my ear buds sound I'm surrounded by speakers.
It also has ports. Oh, god does it have ports. 4 USB 2.0 ports, firewire (Though apparently there's a flaw with the firewire at the moment, which has led Dell to start working on a BIOS update for it), Tv-out, and two headphone jacks. Lastly, there's a wi-fi hunter switch on the side of the laptop that searches for wireless networks without even needing to boot up, which was nice when I was walking around campus looking for a nice spot to set down. And speaking of wireless, I purchased the Dell Draft N card, and they really aren't kidding when they say it has a stronger nad longer connection. At the coffee shop I frequent near campus, I was able to catch the tail end of the University's wireless network, which was about a block away. The bluetooth is nice as well, though I've only had a chance to use it a few times so far.
The last things to speak of will be the accessories. I got a standard kit of a USB optical mouse, 256 flash drive, lock and surge protector with the computer. I really like the mouse (It changes colors!), and the retractable cord is a godsend. It has trouble on smooth black or near-black surfaces, but the neat bag that ships the camputer makes for an excellent make-shift mousepad. The surge protector's a nice piece of security all bundled up, and the flash drive is a nice addition. The lock seems a little weak, but time will tell, and something is better than nothing. It's very compact and portable as well, which is nice. Lastly, I got their 5-in-1 printer thing along with it, and it seems pretty sturdy, though I haven't had a chance to try out the scanner yet.
So that about covers all I wanted to add. As I lack a digital camera (I'm more of a film person, which makes the printer awesome), I won't have any extra pictures of it up anytime soon, but I will get a few screenshots of Oblivion up when I get a chance.
I'm really glad I got the M1210. It's perfect for my college and work needs, but at the same time has enough power to play any game that I'd like to, with good upgradeability for the future (Up tgo 4 gigs of RAM, though from what I hear, motherboards can't really handle that right now?). I'm sure I might've been happy with the gaming capabilities of the E1705, but this thing just does so much, and so well. I would definitely recommend it as a college notebook.
Hope you guys enjoyed my take,
So, awhile back, I put up a post asking for people's advice on a laptop to go for, specifically choosing between an M1210 and an E1705. The merits of both laptops were pretty awesome, so the criteria came down to basically two things: The Oblivion test, and the College Student test. I ended up purchasing the M1210 despite the protests of a few other forum-goers (I'll get to that later), so I based my tests on its capabilities.
The Oblivion Test: Basically, this is more of a subjective test, as there are differences between myself and a true hard-core gamer. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games as much as the next person, but I am not a true lan-party fragger. So I set some basic milestones for how I wanted Oblivion to run.
Pass/No-Pass Point: Significant Choppiness within the game (About 20 or less frames per second) in the Outdoors. If the game began to chug, I would know I reached the limits of my computer. It is generally recognized that the outdoors of Oblivion eat RAM and GPUs alive, so I figured that would be the best choice to base it off of.
So, my computers basic specs are a T2400 (Shipped right before I could call in for a Core 2 Duo), 1 gig of 667mhz RAM, 80 gig hard-drive at 5400rpm and a GeForce 7400.
I booted up the computer, went about setting it up for my needs and whatnot, then installed Oblivion. Tried it, default settings being Medium, and it ran fine. Awesome, in fact. I was a bit wary, as the first part of the game is inside a tight dungeon, and is in my opinion the easiest part of the game, graphics-wise. I did, however, kick up the texture size to large, and tweaked on a few more settings. So I get out of the dungeon, and I'm still getting about 35-45 fps. I was kinda surprised at this point. So I up the resolution, and turn on a few more shadows, and there was no real change as far as frames went. Long story short, I've kept increasing settings little by little, and now have it at the 1024 widescreen resolution (Thinking about sending it up to native resolution), HDR-enabled, Distant objects, draw distances to about half, internal shadows at full, external shadows at about half. I've tried shadows on trees, and it goes down to about 15-25 frames, so I'm going to wait until I upgrade the RAM to try that again. But basically, Oblivion is running very nicely. Perhaps not to suit a hard-core gamer, but for a more casual person like myself, it runs like a dream.
The next test is a sort of all-encompassing test of durability, portability, battery life and efficiency of use. The first aspect was met admirably, as the structure is very sturdy. The design of it is nice and simple, which I actually appreciate much more than I do the design of the M1710. I'm a bit more of a minimalist as far as art goes. The small size of the laptop seemed like a mixed blessing at the time, as I needed something small to carry around frequently, but the samll size of the screen (12.1 inch) could kill the deal. But the screen, a WXGA Tru-Brite, is amazing. The sharpness of it makes any smallness of the screen all but unnoticeable, even at a high native resolution of 1280x800. It has one dead pixel that I've found, but I actually had to look for it. Further, the screen seems to make the most light out of anything given to it, so I normally leave the brightness to almost all the way day. The one drawback that I can see is that the reflective screen also makes it much more susceptible to flare and glare.
The battery life works very well (It shipped with the standard 6-cell, which I plan to replace and use as a backup after I get a 9-cell, with it getting about 2.5 to 3.5 hours with the wi-fi enabled. The adapter makes the whole set a little heavier, but it's fairly compact at least, and fits well within my bag. I haven't tried Oblivion or any other intenstive application yet without the adapter, so I couldn't speak on the battery life in regards to that. Finally, the efficiency of use is quite nice. The keyboard is extremely comfortable, and after I found out how to disable the click-tap of the touchpad and just use the button, I found it to be a fantastic use when I'm not using the USB mouse. I like the window scrolls at the edge of the touchpad as well, though it took a little practice not to hit those when moving around. The XP Media Center is pretty neat, nice and streamlined, but the jury's still out on whether I'm going to use it as my primary media application. Finally, I love the PCCillin it ships with. After dealing with McAfee for a year at my work (That program's a huge resource hog), this is a very nice change. One bad note: The speakers suck for anything outside of alarms and system sounds. It has no bass capability, and music sounds a bit metallic. However, I hear this is to be expected from laptop speakers, and in any case the audigy card I got with it makes my ear buds sound I'm surrounded by speakers.
It also has ports. Oh, god does it have ports. 4 USB 2.0 ports, firewire (Though apparently there's a flaw with the firewire at the moment, which has led Dell to start working on a BIOS update for it), Tv-out, and two headphone jacks. Lastly, there's a wi-fi hunter switch on the side of the laptop that searches for wireless networks without even needing to boot up, which was nice when I was walking around campus looking for a nice spot to set down. And speaking of wireless, I purchased the Dell Draft N card, and they really aren't kidding when they say it has a stronger nad longer connection. At the coffee shop I frequent near campus, I was able to catch the tail end of the University's wireless network, which was about a block away. The bluetooth is nice as well, though I've only had a chance to use it a few times so far.
The last things to speak of will be the accessories. I got a standard kit of a USB optical mouse, 256 flash drive, lock and surge protector with the computer. I really like the mouse (It changes colors!), and the retractable cord is a godsend. It has trouble on smooth black or near-black surfaces, but the neat bag that ships the camputer makes for an excellent make-shift mousepad. The surge protector's a nice piece of security all bundled up, and the flash drive is a nice addition. The lock seems a little weak, but time will tell, and something is better than nothing. It's very compact and portable as well, which is nice. Lastly, I got their 5-in-1 printer thing along with it, and it seems pretty sturdy, though I haven't had a chance to try out the scanner yet.
So that about covers all I wanted to add. As I lack a digital camera (I'm more of a film person, which makes the printer awesome), I won't have any extra pictures of it up anytime soon, but I will get a few screenshots of Oblivion up when I get a chance.
I'm really glad I got the M1210. It's perfect for my college and work needs, but at the same time has enough power to play any game that I'd like to, with good upgradeability for the future (Up tgo 4 gigs of RAM, though from what I hear, motherboards can't really handle that right now?). I'm sure I might've been happy with the gaming capabilities of the E1705, but this thing just does so much, and so well. I would definitely recommend it as a college notebook.
Hope you guys enjoyed my take,
