[IMG]Ok, so not only is this my first laptop but first review here. I plan to add more as time goes by and as I become more familiar with the laptop but for a start here are my first impressions of this system.
Weight is a little more than I expected but is not something I cant deal with. Having it on my lap right now is out for now because in order to not block the fans I have to have this thing in a position that isnt very comfortable with its weight.
The screen is mostly what I expected it to be hearing everyones complaints. It does have sparkle, light leakage, and one HOT PINK (wth) stuck pixel. At first all I noticed was the light leakage and sparkle but could live with both. To sum up what sparkle looks like I can say its like have dust or oil on my CRT desktop monitor. It just looks like it needs to be cleaned. The light leakage goes completely from one side to the other on the bottom and so far thats all I notice. Neither of those two problems really bothered me but once I loaded windows up I VERY clearly noticed the hot pink pixel. I could live with more subtle colors but this thing really stands out being the color it is and right smack in the middle. I think I will calling to have a new screen and tech come out. :/ I dont care if the next has the same problems, even dead pixels, but cant take hot pink. Its just too .. bold.
As for Windows I havent formatted yet. I have spent the last couple hours trying to setup my router and get a network going. I will format in a few but I can truely say ... Dell does put a LOT of crap on here. I never believed it when people said a lot but .. boy it really is a lot.
The battery life seems to be good too as well as recharge time. Cant give any figures atm but will later when I have a chance.
I will load some pictures as well when I get some time but over the next day or two I am just going to spend time getting familiar with this beautiful beast.
On a side note I would really like to say a deep heart felt thank you to everyone on notebookforums.com You all have been by far the nicest and most helpful people I have EVER! met on the net. In the beginning I was leading toward an eMachine laptop with crappy parts and specs but after much education through all of the very helpful people here I feel I have made a good choice in securing my $2000+ investment for the next few years.
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Update 6/22/05
Well, here is some more info I have from my experience so far with the XPS Gen 2...
My overall thought at this point is I love this beautiful beast no matter what problems it has, which it doesnt have many at all.
LCD :
The LCD (dont know which I have and dont really care but will check later to let you all know) seems to be the only slightly bad part of this system. As I said above it has light leakage, sparkles, and one dead pixel (had one in the middle and that one went away then a new one showed up to the right of the screen the same color). I am a person that doesn't mind these things too much but understand how much was spent on this so if I can actually get a better screen I would like to but not to worried about it. The only problem with the screen I do mind is the dead pixel and thats only because its bright pink (hot pink if you will). The color of the screen leave a little to be desired sitting it next to a CRT monitor but again, I am happy with what I have.
Hard Drive :
The hard drive seems very nice and just enough for my needs. I currently am using the 60gb 7200 hd and haven't noticed any problems or slow down. After deleting ALL of the partitions on the disk then reinstalling everything (including doom 3, far cry, and many many more games + like 6+gb of mp3's) I still have about 32gb left. To some that might seem small but with a wireless network to my desktop (250gb 7200rpm) hd I dont need much more. I am also looking to getting a micro external hd and maybe even a wireless external hd.
CD-RW:
I have a small issue with this coming from my 52x or whatever on my desktop. Things take a bit longer to install. I am going to upgrade later to a dvd-rw when I get more cash. Other than the slower installing I dont notice any problems here either.
Video Card :
I havent spent much time playing games yet but I loaded em up to see how they looked/ran and I can say for sure its FREAKIN AWESOME! I noticed ZERO.. ZERO .. ZERO! lag or anything with Doom 3 on Ultra, max resolution, and everything else maxed. I couldnt throw anything at this card it wouldnt handle. The only thing I need to figure out though is why Far Cry looks so bright but I am sure I can fix that and its prolly not a problem with the GPU. I also loaded 3DMark05 and got a score of 5091 .. this being just after I first fired it up, still had all the dell crap and before I even put in my 2 gig transcend ram.
Intel 2915 Wireless/Pro :
Kinda sucks imo but I am not sure if its the card or just that its my first experience with wireless. The card rocks as far as signal strength and all (using a linksys wrt54g router) but the speeds kinda suck. I have 3.0mb dsl and get that almost fully on wired connection but with the wireless connection I am getting about 700kbs.
Giga Lan :
Works great and have no complaints here.
Software :
Dunno what it is with other people not getting all their cd's but I got all my stuff including the xp cd. Everything worked great here too.
Bios :
Nice, easy to navigate, no oc options though.
Case of the XPS Gen 2 :
Well build, seems plastic but its build well. Nothing really bends or moves from what I can tell.
Keyboard :
Doesnt seem bad to me. I am used to a lot bigger keyboard though so will take some time to get used to.
Touch Pad :
Good here too although I prefer to use a wired optical mouse for the moment but plan on going with a wireless bluetooth in the future.
LED's (Lights) :
Nice feature and love the proggie that lets em dance for media player. They are very bright too but you can change the settings.
CPU :
No info on this yet as I havent really done any CPU needing things such as encoding.
Ram :
Dunno about this either as I am not using the ram that came with the system. Using 2gb transcend with infenion chips from newegg.
More info to come later + pictures
_________________________________________________________________
Update 6/23/05
Here are some pictures of the laptop & dead pixel. Sorry they arent better .. guess I needa get a new camera.
Weight is a little more than I expected but is not something I cant deal with. Having it on my lap right now is out for now because in order to not block the fans I have to have this thing in a position that isnt very comfortable with its weight.
The screen is mostly what I expected it to be hearing everyones complaints. It does have sparkle, light leakage, and one HOT PINK (wth) stuck pixel. At first all I noticed was the light leakage and sparkle but could live with both. To sum up what sparkle looks like I can say its like have dust or oil on my CRT desktop monitor. It just looks like it needs to be cleaned. The light leakage goes completely from one side to the other on the bottom and so far thats all I notice. Neither of those two problems really bothered me but once I loaded windows up I VERY clearly noticed the hot pink pixel. I could live with more subtle colors but this thing really stands out being the color it is and right smack in the middle. I think I will calling to have a new screen and tech come out. :/ I dont care if the next has the same problems, even dead pixels, but cant take hot pink. Its just too .. bold.
As for Windows I havent formatted yet. I have spent the last couple hours trying to setup my router and get a network going. I will format in a few but I can truely say ... Dell does put a LOT of crap on here. I never believed it when people said a lot but .. boy it really is a lot.
The battery life seems to be good too as well as recharge time. Cant give any figures atm but will later when I have a chance.
I will load some pictures as well when I get some time but over the next day or two I am just going to spend time getting familiar with this beautiful beast.
On a side note I would really like to say a deep heart felt thank you to everyone on notebookforums.com You all have been by far the nicest and most helpful people I have EVER! met on the net. In the beginning I was leading toward an eMachine laptop with crappy parts and specs but after much education through all of the very helpful people here I feel I have made a good choice in securing my $2000+ investment for the next few years.
_________________________________________________________________
Update 6/22/05
Well, here is some more info I have from my experience so far with the XPS Gen 2...
My overall thought at this point is I love this beautiful beast no matter what problems it has, which it doesnt have many at all.
LCD :
The LCD (dont know which I have and dont really care but will check later to let you all know) seems to be the only slightly bad part of this system. As I said above it has light leakage, sparkles, and one dead pixel (had one in the middle and that one went away then a new one showed up to the right of the screen the same color). I am a person that doesn't mind these things too much but understand how much was spent on this so if I can actually get a better screen I would like to but not to worried about it. The only problem with the screen I do mind is the dead pixel and thats only because its bright pink (hot pink if you will). The color of the screen leave a little to be desired sitting it next to a CRT monitor but again, I am happy with what I have.
Hard Drive :
The hard drive seems very nice and just enough for my needs. I currently am using the 60gb 7200 hd and haven't noticed any problems or slow down. After deleting ALL of the partitions on the disk then reinstalling everything (including doom 3, far cry, and many many more games + like 6+gb of mp3's) I still have about 32gb left. To some that might seem small but with a wireless network to my desktop (250gb 7200rpm) hd I dont need much more. I am also looking to getting a micro external hd and maybe even a wireless external hd.
CD-RW:
I have a small issue with this coming from my 52x or whatever on my desktop. Things take a bit longer to install. I am going to upgrade later to a dvd-rw when I get more cash. Other than the slower installing I dont notice any problems here either.
Video Card :
I havent spent much time playing games yet but I loaded em up to see how they looked/ran and I can say for sure its FREAKIN AWESOME! I noticed ZERO.. ZERO .. ZERO! lag or anything with Doom 3 on Ultra, max resolution, and everything else maxed. I couldnt throw anything at this card it wouldnt handle. The only thing I need to figure out though is why Far Cry looks so bright but I am sure I can fix that and its prolly not a problem with the GPU. I also loaded 3DMark05 and got a score of 5091 .. this being just after I first fired it up, still had all the dell crap and before I even put in my 2 gig transcend ram.
Intel 2915 Wireless/Pro :
Kinda sucks imo but I am not sure if its the card or just that its my first experience with wireless. The card rocks as far as signal strength and all (using a linksys wrt54g router) but the speeds kinda suck. I have 3.0mb dsl and get that almost fully on wired connection but with the wireless connection I am getting about 700kbs.
Giga Lan :
Works great and have no complaints here.
Software :
Dunno what it is with other people not getting all their cd's but I got all my stuff including the xp cd. Everything worked great here too.
Bios :
Nice, easy to navigate, no oc options though.
Case of the XPS Gen 2 :
Well build, seems plastic but its build well. Nothing really bends or moves from what I can tell.
Keyboard :
Doesnt seem bad to me. I am used to a lot bigger keyboard though so will take some time to get used to.
Touch Pad :
Good here too although I prefer to use a wired optical mouse for the moment but plan on going with a wireless bluetooth in the future.
LED's (Lights) :
Nice feature and love the proggie that lets em dance for media player. They are very bright too but you can change the settings.
CPU :
No info on this yet as I havent really done any CPU needing things such as encoding.
Ram :
Dunno about this either as I am not using the ram that came with the system. Using 2gb transcend with infenion chips from newegg.
More info to come later + pictures
_________________________________________________________________
Update 6/23/05
Here are some pictures of the laptop & dead pixel. Sorry they arent better .. guess I needa get a new camera.
Its so bright I cant stop looking at it.
