Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 review - Page 4

Actually I would hesitate to call it perfect. The screen resolution, in my opinion, is simply too high for applications that use a lot of text. The 1920 * 1200 pixels make normal text hard to read – especially if you are using an external keyboard (and are thus further away from the LCD).

Changing the windows font size does nothing for text within the application – it only affects windows components i.e. menus, tool bars, etc. Granted you can tweak some applications to make the default text larger, but not all applications work this way and some of them that do require the adjustment each time you launch the application (which becomes tedious).

You can adjust the Windows DPI setting, which is the only way to really make a universal change to all fonts across all applications – however this has a somewhat serious drawback in that Windows does not fully support any DPI other than the Windows default of 96. You can set it higher but you will start to notice that some applications and web pages render their screens incorrectly due to scaling issues with the higher DPI setting.

My current laptop has a resolution of 1920 * 1200 and I had to set its DPI to 144 to make the text look its best. Most things look great, but I do frequently come across web pages and applications that don’t render quite right. It has to do with the Windows GDI not supporting scaling properly when you use a DPI other than the default 96 DPI value.

Microsoft has acknowledged this limitation with Windows 2000 and XP. They claim it will be addressed in Longhorn. However Longhorn won’t be out for some time – so until then everyone should be aware of this issue before buying a very high resolution display.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;Q820286

I love the hight resoulution at the default setting. Super crisp with lots of space

Does anyone know if it comes with a TV tuner and remote if you go with WinXP Media Center Edition?

One thing to note is that DELL typically ships their higher resolution models with the Windows DPI set to 120. While this does make the text more readable - be aware that you will encounter some issues with applications and web pages displaying incorrectly. As times goes on I notice this sort of issue more and more. Until the release of Longhorn my next laptop will be at a lower resolution so I can run with a standard DPI of 96 - and hence avoid the scaling issues associated with the higher DPI.

I do quite a bit of application development (mostly Java based stuff) and I'm really looking forward to the high resolution. My current machine is 1600x1200 with a 15" screen, so it should scale nicely.

I'm getting confused... isn't the P4 better than the Pentium-M performance-wise? I thought that the Pentium-M was only good for battery life. By the way, the XPS 2 is AMAZING... I love the idea of the colored-lights.

Newegg sells 1GB sticks of Kingston DDR2-533 SoDimms.

It depends on the speed rating. The Pentium M line can actually perform well above it's rated Ghz so a Pentium M 2.0 is roughly equivalent to a 3.0 to 3.4 Pentium 4.

I don't have any actual benchmarks in front of me, but places like www.anandtech.com and www.tomshardware.com have some reviews.

ROFL, sorry had to do it. This is my least favorite XPS feature, but I respect that it may be your favorite, sorry

not in stock :P and no place sells the corsair stuff that I can see

I've been using the WUXGA at 96dpi (dell does ship it higher, that's fixed easy enough when you do the required format though) ever since the 8600 came out back in Sep 03 and I'd never go back. It is awesome for text applications because it allows you to see so much on the screen at once! That being said, it's going to be awesome to have a 17" (too bad it's not 2048 hehe).

Kingston in stock here, good price : clicky

Anyone know the brand of touchpad on the XPS Gen2?

That's because you've got a 15.4" LCD. 1920x1200 on a 17" LCD is perfect! It's about the same pixel pitch as 1680x1050 (WSXGA+) on a 15.4", which is also perfect.

Probably Alps -- the same they used on the 9200.

Yep, Alps, the i9300 will also have the same.

It does not... weird, huh? I found that out when I called today to order mine.

Too bad on the alps, loved the synaptics pads. Oh well... perhaps they came along better than the crap one in my toshiba 1955. It had Zero settings, was a mouse as far as the machine was concerned. There were no drivers produced for it at all.

I just read that Dell said no to AMD 64 bit chips...so I guess it would be interesting to see what other manufacturers are going to release...pretty soon. I am thinking a mobile workstation based on athlon 64 and pci express with the 6800 ultra will be released soon. Then I am gonan sell my XPS Gen 1 and get my hands on that bad boy. The XPS 2 is blindingly awesome but I like more CPU power and I know i will need it when it comes to rendering and stuff. Also XP 64 bit is almost around the corner and I have read that they provide a decent amount of boost in terms of performance whether you are running 32 bit or 64 bit...so I am gonna wait. Congrats on all who bought the Gen 2. Time to break the 6 thou mark on the 3dmark05 eh?

I'm betting you don't see any AMD 64 bit machines with the 6800 Ultra until mid summer or the fall.

I have a feeling that the power requirements of the AMD line, plus the power of the 6800 Ultra will just be too much for most machines.