700m Review Again

Ok, so I'm going to make a little review here of my new 700m from the perspective of someone who's never owned a laptop before.

Ok, first things first: I love this laptop! It's incredible, details follow:

Here is what I got:
1.8 ghz
512 2 dimms (from dell)
80 gb (5400 rpm it seems)
4 and 8 cell
3 year complete care
intel 2915 abg
dvd-rom/cd-rw
~$1350 after taxes and such

It took about 13 days from order to arrival, which isn't great, but it isn't bad either. I live in Santa Cruz, CA.

First thing I thought when I opened the box: "Wow that's tiny and light!"
And it really is. The size is great, by itself it fits perfect in a backpack, and is pretty light, but also solid and feels durable, though we'll have to see about that...

The screen is INCREDIBLE! I have been using it in all conditions (light, dark, indoor and out) and I have not yet had any problem with glare or the screen being too dim. It does seem to collect dust quickly though, but it came with a cool little cleaning kit that seems to work great. Today I gave a presentation in a class (well, a speech) and I had a slideshow going on my 700m of nebulae and stuff (it was about astronomy) and it was clear enough to see from the back of the room even on the little 12.1" screen!

By far my favorite part of the interface though is the touchpad, but first a quick word on the keyboard: It's great, very responsive, not at all too small for me, and it feels fine.

Ok, touchpad: I hate touchpads. I love this thing! The buttons feel cheap and are loud, but I've got it set up so that I will never have to use the buttons. If you play around with the synaptics settings, you can do a ton. Currently I've got tapping do a left click, but in the top left its middle click (for tabs in firefox) in the top right its right click (to avoid the buttons) and in the lower left and right are forward and back (very handy). It also scrolls on the bottom and right. It is very responsive, and I've found it a breeze to navigate my computer, even to drag things around without even using the buttons.

I have not had a chance to use all of the ports, but they look like they will work fine. The vga monitor plug at least works fine, very easy to set up.

I have had a ton of fun playing with the wireless. I can get onto my home's wireless network no problem, with better reception than any of the other computers here. I also have found a ton of unsecured networks all over that I have had fun with (the parking lot at my school has one, also a number near the 7-11 down the street).

Battery life could not be better, I used it all day without recharging with the 8-cell and still had another 4-cell. Also, the battery charges extremely quickly when plugged into the wall.

The dvd drive also works great. It's sometimes a little noisy and vibraty, but when watching a movie its no bother. I just wish it were slot loading.

Finally, the last thing I can think of is the sound. The sound is great, much better than I'd expected, and can get pretty darn loud. It's very easy to mute as well for during class and such. Additionally, I have found that the sound is fine even with the lid closed, which surprised me.

Oh yeah, one more thing:
I'm an avid photoshopper, and I was worried it would be too hard on this thing. I was wrong. CS2 runs great, even with only the 512 mb of ram, and the touchpad is very responsive so I am even able to do delicate brush work fairly painlessly. The screen is plenty big enough for it, as well, and the viewing angles and color accuracy really make photoshop a pleasure to do on this thing. With the persistent drag feature, it is very easy to do precise positioning with the touchpad rather than nudge, also the pen is easy to control.

So, to sum up: HIGHLY RECCOMENDED! You cannot beat the price, and you will be more than happy. The touchpad is very nice, and the screen is incredible. Thanks to everyone who helped lead me in this direction as well. I also just ordered a skooba sleeve, maybe I'll post some pics when I get that... maybe.

hmm you are right, it DOES say that it is 4200 (using everest). That's funny, because I called dell and asked them what it would be, and they said 5400... good thing i wrote down the name and badge of the rep...

Also, to address the other concerns:

I do not have particularly big or small hands, pretty average. I am currently in high school, but im graduating in a week, then i am going to be taking this into the woods for 2 months, and then to collegem where it will complement the desktop i have for playing games. This is a great little laptop for word processing and such, because it is so portable, and powerful for the price. I think you would be very happy with it, though it might be a little tough to live with as an only computer.

thanks for all the comments. I'm a little upset about the 4200 because i had actually called and asked what it would be, and they said 5400. But I haven't had any problems with the 4200, and I don't want to send it back to dell to get replaced, nor do i want to replace it myself. I think I'll just call sometime and ask for a bit of a refund or something. I don't want to be a jerk about it, but i feel like dell should live up to their end of the deal here. I'll let you guys know what i do and what my experience is like.

But no matter what, I love this thing! It is soooooo nice. Granted I've never owned a laptop myself before, but from what i've seen this blows everything away for the price.

I havent had personal experience with the 600m, but it is heavier and bigger, and uses more outdated stuff. It does not have firewire, and is less solid from what i've heard. I highly reccomend the 700m.

Ok, so I just ran through the gamut of dell support about the hard drive, and here is how it turned out:

First I called Tech Support, and while waiting on hold for 20 minutes before anyone would talk to me, I tried to make online chat work, but it kept giving "connection refused" errors. Whatever.

Ok, so the tech support finally got me, and I told them my situation. They told me I was supposed to get a 4200 drive, so they didnt know why I was complaining. I gave them the case number of the conversation where i was told 5400, they got confused etc.

Eventually they decided they could see what they could do (note that I never actually asked for anything). Eventually they said something about shipping me a new drive and charging me the difference between the 4200 and 5400 and transferred me to Customer Service to work it out.

I was confused at this point, but I got a nice american girl CSR, so that was nice. She was very considerate and seemed to know a lot more than the tech support guy about hard drives anyways. He had told me there was no difference between a 4200 and 5400 anyways, because 7200 is the best. (really, that's what he said, I didn't try and figure out his logic, but oh well.)

So the CSR was very considerate, and ended up telling me they would send me a new 5400 drive, and I could put it in and keep the old one, but if I'd like I could send it back to them and they would pay me for it (!!!). At this point I was excited because it sounded like I would get a new drive (not that important) but also that they really seemed to care kind of.

So she put me on hold to talk to her manager about it. When she came back she said something about her being "over her credit limit" and she could not place the order for me. I don't know what exactly that means, but she offered me an alternative:

Instead of sending me the hard drive, she gave me a coupon code for $100 off $100.01 or more. She said I would have to place the order myself and could use that code. Of course a 80 gb 5400 rpm drive from dell is over $200 so I would still be paying some. But oh well, I didn't want the drive anyways.

So now I've got $100 to burn on dell.com, which is basically what I wanted to begin with. I never actually asked for anything, I just told them that I got a 4200 drive when they said I should have a 5400 drive and they gave me $100 for it. Good deal! Besides, I did order a 4200 drive, it's just that someone told me it would be 5400.

When all was said and done, it had been about an hour long call (for both tech and cs). But then, $100 an hour is a good deal.

I know you might think I was being a jerk about it, or pushing too far, but again I never asked for anything, I just called, and they are paid to answer calls, they chose to give me something. The techie wasn't so great, but the CSR I got was very considerate and nice, so I'm pleased.

I think I'm going to get a Gigabit ethernet switch and some network cables with my $100.

Ok, I have a few things to add to my review:

I still haven't reformatted as I am still testing stuff in ways that will eventually neccesitate a reformat So I have also been using this situation to test games, for other people's sake, not mine. Many people wonder what will run, and I have a few answers.

The first thing I tried was a demo disc of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 I had lying around. It works fine.

Next I installed Need For Speed Underground 2. It works fine at the lowest settings, and with my configuration I could even bump the resolution up to 800x600 and the level of detail up one notch without suffering, though any more starts to slow it down.

The next test is Star Wars Battlefront and Half Life 2. Half Life 2 is still copying, so I went ahead and tried Battlefront in the meantime. THe default settings it loaded up don't look that bad, and has no problem playing. I don't know if it was the lowest graphics settings or not, but it ran fine. I even succeeded in playing with the touchpad, which was wierd...

So I'll write more in a bit when HL2 finishes copying. I don't have many more games, and it's already been stated that Warcraft 3 works fine, so I won't bother with that.

Hope this helps.

Well, the hl2 transfer failed because my 700m crashed after trying to install doom 3 and the cd drive acting up, then trying to play a movie to test it, then the movie being messed up and upon closing it destroying the display driver and being told i will need to restart so I'm left with 16 colors and 640x480 resolution. hl2 was minutes from being done but then I did something and the display blacked out, so i waited for a beep that I assumed meant hl2 was done, then reset and it all was ok, and the cd drive worked fine it seemed, but the hl2 file was corrupt. Oh well, I'll try again later, but I'm going to bed now.