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Introduction
Hello, I am The Anaconda, one of the moderators of the forum if you're not familiar with me. I work technical support, am a hobby game programmer, and travel around the country every so often for other various jobs I do on the side. Recently I had the need to upgrade my old, ailing, backlight-failing Gateway 7422GX that has served me since 2005, and so I decided to invest a good amount, and get the XPS 1530 with a lot of its extra features.

Ordering
The ordering of this is a tale in and of itself. Ever since it was announced I had planned on getting this notebook, the original plan was sometime in March or April after I'd saved up some money and got my tax return, which I traditionally always put towards computer parts.

However, plans changed a little. This tale started in December, when I got an e-mail from someone wanting to buy one of my personal domains through escrow from GoDaddy, my registrar. There were little details for it, I'd have to say I was interested before I got anymore information. I wasn't really expecting to get much if I was being offered, being that the offer would be based on the domain alone and not domain and a SEO-useful site together, so I declined.

The story continued then January 10, where, after getting home from a Guitar Hero party, I found another offer for that same domain, through a different escrow service this time, Network Solutions. This offer had a value attached to it, and it wasn't any measly offer either - this would singlehandedly pay for this notebook. Near speechless, after a quick check to make sure the service was legit, I excitedly accepted the offer to begin the process. In the mean time, Dell had put up a fairly large coupon on the 1530, which would stack with my EPP, but it was set to expire at the end of January.

It nearly fell apart, however. Because they were acting in escrow, the domain would have to be transferred to a Network Solutions account first before it would be transferred to the buyer and I would be sent my check. Because I had accidentally registered my personal domains with the same information as my business domains, I had to correct the information on my domain so the check wouldn't be written out to a company that didn't yet exist and I wouldn't be able to cash without first finishing my business registration. Due to this, however, without my awareness an automatic 60-day transfer lock was erected on the domain as a account takeover precaution, and the transfer to Network Solutions failed. I called GoDaddy technical support, and they said they were unable to remove the lock. Panicked, I e-mailed the person who was overseeing the whole process, and she was able to get with her contacts in GoDaddy and get the lock overwritten, and the process continued.

The process finished on January 18, and they began processing the check. They said it would take 3-4 weeks, however, to get my check, which would have left well after Dell's coupon expired, and it would have cost me more. But to my luck, however, just a few days before the end of the month, the check arrived. I quickly went and deposited it, and further to my benefit because I have been with my bank so long I was able to get a manager to waive the hold that would normally go on the funds while waiting for the check to clear. It cleared, posted, and at the last minute I was able to place my order with the discount.

My configuration was as follows:
Midnight Blue
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7500
WXGA+ LCD (1440x900)
256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
160 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
Windows Vista Ultimate
Blu-ray BD-RE drive
6-cell Primary Battery and 9-cell additional Battery
3-year In-home Service Warranty with CompleteCare and LoJack

All in all, the price was $2198, and between the coupon Dell had on it and my EPP discount, I got about $700 off the price. Very nice, and and a great series of luck to get it.

Building, Shipping, Delivery, and Unboxing
When I placed the order, there were a few things that set a delay. The video card, the 3-year warranty (), and the longest of them all, the WXGA+ LCD. The estimated ship date was Feburary 14, quite a while after my order date of January 30. I'm not a very patient person, myself, and doubly so when I'm having to test my patience in anticipation.

The LoJack software arrived first, a few days later, shipped on a separate order then the notebook. As such I had a disc sitting around for a while that I couldn't use, I ended up just stuffing it in a drawer until later.

It actually shipped a week early, on February 8, though according to the tracking number it didn't leave the plant until a day later. It had arrived in the Salt Lake DHL hub before that day was done, though, it had only shipped out of Nevada. Since it was just sitting there, I tried calling DHL to see if I could drive out to the hub and pick it up from the building so I could use it on the weekend. In an almost rude tone, though, the person I spoke to replied, quote, "No, you'll have to wait until it's delivered Tuesday."



It actually came a day early, delivered a little after I left for work on Monday. So I had a good long amount of time before I could go home and unbox it. It was in a rather conspicuous box, which was a little smaller than I thought it would be, to be honest.



Inside were two pretty awesome looking boxes with some stylish XPS artwork. Definitely not bland packaging by any means, and honestly one of the best packaging materials I've ever seen. Worth saving for just the artwork, I think.



Inside the smaller of the two was all the software discs, a trial version of Lord of the Rings Online (which I have no intention of using), the tiny media remote, the spare battery. and a leather case for holding the discs that has the manual, a screen wipe, and the premium earbud headphones with a drawstring bag to put them in. The larger of the boxes contained the notebook itself, inside a notebook sleeve that seals with magnets.



There it is, in all its grainy glory (my camera settings must be off, all these pictures came out grainy). The blue is very subtle, actually, its rather dark and in less light looks like a black cover. I cleared off space on my desk and set it up, put in the 9-cell battery to charge it, and turned it on, and was immediately greeted with this neat little aesthetic:



Testing
Audio
The audio is an Azalea HD Audio codec. The speakers themselves on the unit aren't very powerful, and sound somewhat tinny, though that will probably smooth out as the speakers get broken in.

There are three audio inputs on the front of the unit, and they can be configured to put out 6-channel audio fairly easily. Presumably the audio will output through the HDMI port as well, but I don't have an HDTV to test it with.

Batteries
I ordered two batteries for this machine, a 6-cell and an additional 9-cell, as I'm often out and about and sometimes don't have any power I can plug into. When I first took things out, the 6-cell battery was fully charged, and the 9-cell battery was at 20% charge, so that was what I had plugged in at first. It took me a while to figure out how to attach it, honestly, because the way its in it props up the back on a stand, and I wasn't expecting that, I was expecting the extra cells to stick out the back with the bottom still flush.

I haven't had a chance to test how long it drains yet, but I did get readings from it's estimates. At 98% (which I chose because it could guesstimate better after going down a few percent), at maximum brightness the 6-cell estimated the remaining time to be 2 hours 39 minutes. At minimum brightness it kept changing its mind about its estimate, so I let it drain a little more to 97%, but it still couldn't agree with itself, giving me numbers between 3 hours and 4 hours. With the 90-cell it was more consistent, at 98% it's estimate was 4 hours 17 minutes at maximum brightness, and 6 hours 12 minutes at minimum brightness.


Blu-ray Playback
This is my first device with a Blu-ray player, so I had to go buy one for my first test. I ran out late to Wal-mart to buy a film, after my local Hollywood Video didn't have any for purchase (I don't have a membership with them so I couldn't rent one). I had wanted to buy Casino Royale, so I could do a visual comparison between my DVD version and the Blu-ray version on playback, but they didn't have a copy of it, so I went with Live Free or Die Hard instead.

At first glance it appeared it didn't have any Blu-ray playing software, strangely enough, because I couldn't find PowerDVD anywhere. The Blu-ray playback was solely a component of Dell's MediaDirect software, and when I put in the disc it launched MediaDirect and began playback. This of course means it has the handy benefit of being able to watch Blu-ray movies in the fast-booting mini-Windows MediaDirect.

The second disc I bought was Across the Universe. MediaDirect, however, wasn't so friendly with that one, as it simply would not do anything on the title menu. I downloaded the Blu-ray updates it, but it was to no avail as it did not change. So, thinking it was just some incompetence of that software, I installed PowerDVD Ultra and installed the latest patches, and tried to watch it there, but PowerDVD did the exact same thing. Later I found a topic on the CyberLink forums of someone else having the issue as well, and Tech Support had told them it was an issue and they'd have to wait for the next patch. MediaDirect's updates are served directly from the CyberLink site, so I'm assuming that they use the same engine for Blu-ray playback and once they patch one they'll patch the other.

Blu-ray Burning
To test burning, I got a single layer Sony-brand 2x disc, which I happened upon browsing the clearance items at CompUSA. The total space available on it was 22.3 GiB, so I decided my music collection would be a good test, weighing in at 21.1 GiB. First I had to transfer that all over my network, so I plugged into the Ethernet so the transfer would be faster.

Once that was finished, I started the burn. It fluctuated a little bit, but generally stayed at .89x speed, not even 1x Blu-ray spec and certainly not close to the 2x that the disc and the burner support.

Fingerprint Reader
The fingerprint reader works great. After the training it gives you at the beginning, I got so it would read my swipes every single time, unless I put my finger in the wrong place on the pad and it gave me the error "Too short". I've been wearing a bandage on my right index finger the last week, so I didn't register that finger as it would be off, instead I registered my right middle finger and my left index finger.

So far I've only set it for login functions, I don't really have any particular desire to use its function to launch a certain webpage when swiping a certain finger. It is very convenient for logging in, though, as I can simply swipe instead of leaning over on my desk to type the password on the keyboard. It does have an oddity, however, as a separate "user" called simply "Fingerprint Logon" appears on the login page, even though it is not a real user. (I have yet to figure out how to make this not show up, but I have a new lead to check once I get home this evening.)

LCD
There were three LCD resolution options for this screen, WXGA, WXGA+, and WSXGA+. I own a Dell 2007FPW for my desktop, a WSXGA+ screen, so I'm used to having a lot of screen space to work with, and a lower dot pitch, and in comparison to that the WXGA resolution on my previous notebook had been sitting very large. However, at the same time, I don't sit very close to my machine usually when I'm at home, so the WSXGA+ option was too small a dot pitch for me at 15.4". So I went with the WXGA+ option, which has been just perfect for me.

This screen uses a standard CCFL backlight, but Dell's rumored to be planning to introduce a LED backlight option for this machine. I had wanted to get that, as my previous notebook's had it's backlight go out twice, and I wanted something that would be brighter and more reliable. That aside, this screen on max brightnees is still much brighter than my previous notebook ever was, even when knew, and I'm quite pleased with the brightness.

Microphone and Webcam
A webcam isn't really all that useful to me, and if it was optional I probably would have opted-out of it. It works, the effects in the Webcam Center are amusing for a few minutes, but beyond that it isn't much to me. The "Live! Cam Avatar" software from Creative is borderline disturbing at times.

A microphone is somewhat handy, there have been a few times when I'm out and about with my notebook that I've wished I had a microphone handy. It seems to be a stereo microphone too, which can be handy.


Video Card
One of the things I've dealt with on my desktop for the last year have been piss-poor drivers from nVidia for Vista. They've finally gotten decent, but I've had everything from the driver constantly crashing and recovering (and sometimes not recovering) to visual corruption in games. I'm an indie game developer, and so I've got a number of different tools and examples lying around, and up until 163.69, one of my very simple demos, a terrain example, showed the problem very clearly: it simply, at random, wouldn't display triangles at random on the screen. 163.69 finally fixed it and everything's been stable since, however this machine came preloaded with 153.something, so I knew I couldn't trust it's results entirely and would need to install something new ASAP. I installed 169.09 from our MobileForce team.

I went with two programs for testing the performance, 3DMark06 for the main tests, and the demo from the NVIDIA Direct3D SDK 10 Code Samples for a DirectX 10 test. On the initial drivers, 3DMark got somewhere around 4100, after I had updated to 169.09 it went up just a bit, to 4278. I'd have to admit that, while yes this is a mid-range card, I had expected a little closer to 5000 since 3DMark06 had been around for a while I believe. Nonetheless, in comparison and by the design of the score system of the test, that's much better than my first notebook, which scored only 1000 points on the latest 3DMark at the time (3DMark05) when I got it.

The Rain demo was a little more disappointing. This is my first DirectX 10 capable video card, so I have nothing to compare it to other than the Youtube video (which doesn't have card or FPS listed), this seemed to not do well. On the original drivers it chugged along at a lowly 11 FPS average, clearly struggling on screen in animation. After I updated the drivers, it actually, astonishingly, went down, fluctuating between 6.5 and 10, but mostly sitting at 8.7. Clearly not very much, and that's just with a simple (though shader-heavy) tech demo, so this is clearly not a very viable solution for DirectX 10 gaming.

Vista
This was a very clean installation, first of all. No crapware, nothing "value added" that was not a value at all, very clean with just the things I requested installed and the utilities for each of the components. The only things I uninstalled, in fact, were the preinstalled Google Desktop (only because the improvements in Vista are sufficient for its functions, I used to use it regularly in XP), and the Dell Support Center (because again, Vista's functions sufficed, I didn't need the alternate solution).

The Windows Experience Index score is 4.8, with the lowest being 4.8, solely I believe because there's only 2 GB of RAM (my desktop is the same way, limited at that score by RAM at only 2 GB). Beyond that is only a step up, with the hard drive at 4.9 so increasing the RAM will do nothing to my base score.

Comparisons

As I had mentioned, it was brighter than my old notebook. Just to show the exact comparison, I took a couple pictures of my three LCDs, the picture on the left with them set to their minimums, and the picture on the right the notebooks set to their maximums and the desktop LCD set to 50% (the setting I keep it on in the day, because it's freaking bright as it is). On minimum there's a very clear difference in brightnesses between my old and new notebooks, though using it the actual lighting on the lowest setting isn't too bright to use in an unlit room uncomfortably. On the maximum brightnesses it's not quite so stark a contrast between my old notebook and new notebook. The maximum brightness is a little brighter than the 50% i usually run my desktop on.


The notebook is at sort of a wedge shape, wider in back at the barrel hinges while thinner at the front. Compared to my old notebook, the back hinges are just a little bit shorter, and of course the front of it is significantly shorter. It's also somewhat lighter too, after handling this one all week when I went to move my old notebook from where I had it set up to my desk to do these comparison pictures, the increased weight of my old notebook was immediately noticeable upon lifting it.

Closing Thoughts
One thing I'm somewhat disappointed in is the lack of a locking mechanism on the lid, you just push closed and open again without any way of keeping it closed while transporting it. Otherwise I'm loving it very much, and am very satisfied with it.

Nice review conda,cool little vid of the startup effect....sort of reminds me of Kitt in the knight rider tv series.

The battery life is looking pretty impressive,your side on pics were with the six cell,correct?

The screen hinges are quite stiff? if there's no latch

Congrats and happy mobile computing

yah i believe I had the 6-cell in there at that time. the 9-cell raises it up off the desk about an inch and a half

yah the hinges are pretty stiff, theyre nice big barrel hinges so theyll hold up well

Excellent review Conda. The M1530 is a nice machine.

Nice review Conda. Thanks for putting my review of the same machine to shame.

Great review

This is the first review of a blyu-ray player. Great write up.

I'd also be interested in seeing how the LoJack software works. Screen shots maybe?

Very well written, detailed, and photo'd review. It's not only succinct, but detailed enough to give a user a VERY good idea of its ups and downs. Why don't people like anaconda write reviews for magazines and truly give an unbiased, uncompensated opinion.

*****5 stars for anaconda*****

-Jason

basically it doesnt do much, really. you install it and then its there. it runs in like an invisible service or something that doesnt show up in the task manager or something like that, according to the description. Dell adds support for it in the BIOS as well, so it installs a component in the BIOS that will download the software back into the machine automatically if the hard drive is reformatted. shows "Enabled" in the BIOS, with no way of disabling it. from what i understand every so often when it's connected to the internet it will send minimal information to the Computrace servers, and if there's a stolen flag on file for the machine it will show up as an alert and they can then call the authorities to have it retreived. comes with a 30-day recovery guarauntee or they pay the cost of replacement

P.S. CyberLink still doesnt have a patch for Across The Universe yet no other movie's I've gotten in the time since I wrote this up have a problem tho, Hitchhikers Guide and Casino Royale, and everything is every crisp and clear (and Casino Royale in particular is omgamazing looking )

P.P.S. still havent gotten the "fingerprint logon" to go away, at this point i don't think there's any way of hiding that while the fingerprint reader is enabled for login (which I am using all the time now, so much more convenient then typing in my password )

Wow invisible processes?

Also

Post some screenshots of the Blu-ray movies.

see edit above, was adding more when you posted

CyberLink wouldn't let me take screenshots in the software; when both PowerDVD and the MediaDirect launch they disable Vista's Aero, so I can't get a simply PrintScreen off them either. I gotta find something else to do it (anyone got any ideas?)

EDIT: failing any program to do it, i guess I could take full-res pics with my camera and post them

You can only take a screenshot of a movie if the player is playing in software mode... Find an option in your player to turn hardware acceleration off!

can't turn hardware acceleration off, which is the reason I never replied back after further researching. the entire thing is end-to-end HDCP protected, theres nothing I can do to break into the stream and get a screenshot without breaking into the HDCP stream

Cyberlink still hasnt posted an update, so I still can't watch Across the Universe. that, 3:10 to Yuma, and one other title that came out last week are the only things I've seen reports of not working, everything else is working great. got Independence Day last week and it looks great (except for a few shots near the end where the Blu-ray transfer was bad ), will probly get either I, Robot or I, Legend on my way home tonight

brought it with me to an event I was working a week and a half ago and used it all through the day, works very well coming in and out of Sleep as I got on it and then closed it to do other work on my table Youtube doesn't like the encoding or something on the webcam's videos, the only way I was able to upload a video from the webcam onto Youtube was using the batch uploader, kept just hanging uploading forever using the single uploader (and even using the batch loader to finally complete uploading, it still didn't appear to work because it didn't show up at all in my Youtube account until like 6 hours later, whereas videos I was taking on my phone had their page so i could edit their details immediately after I uploaded the video and was processed within 15 minutes)

gonna install SP1 on it tonight too

Great review, i dont want one but i really enjoyed reading, lots of attention to detail and well worded. I'd like the finger print reader just to not have to type a password.

Used it to test out my friend's new HDTV yesterday over HDMI. We watched Independence Day Blu-ray, it looked pretty good, but the whole time it was looking a little off compared to watching it on the notebook's LCD. after it finished and I was trying to figure out why, we discovered it was running in 1080i mode.

I tried messing with it for a while to get it to switch into progressive mode, but to no avail. If I forced the resolution to run non-interleaved all I got was a blinking cursor. It seems, unfortunately, the maximum digital resolution for the 8600GT is 1600x1200, and it wont push 1080p.