D830 Owner's Lounge

ryusrain - I have a 2.4, and it's very quiet no matter what I've tried, including PCMark05 - around 5000, btw. I've even enabled 'performance' for the HDD in the BIOS.

 

Okay, as a new owner of the D830, I've got a few pros and cons:

First, my specs. I'm a Dell Premier member (I spend 50-100k per year on Dell equipment, so the following cost me right at $2500 including tax and shipping)
T7700 @ 2.4Ghz
WUXGA+ 1920x1600 display
4 GB DDR2 RAM
120 GB 7200rpm HDD
Nvidia NVS Quadro 140M
Intel 4965AGN
Dell 360 Bluetooth
DVD+-RW
9-cell battery x2
2x power cords + 65w travel cord
4 year onsite + 4 year completecare + 4 year gold tech
XP Pro (Vista just isn't ready for the corporate environment)

Pros:
- Great speed... calculated PI (using Super PI) to 2million digits in 54 seconds.
- Quiet touchpad buttons. My previous Inspiron 8000 (5+ years of use) could be heard in another room when using the touchpad buttons vs the pointer stick buttons.

Cons:
- Default icon settings from Dell were huge for WUXGA, and shouldn't have been imo. Default text was set to Clear Type and Large Icons in Display Properties -> Appearance -> Effects. After I corrected this, my 1920x1200 was as expected (the Inspiron 8000 was 1600x1200).
- TOO MUCH LIGHT LEAK in the bottom inch of the LCD! In 4 days of ownership, I've already been sent a new backpanel (panels with plastics aren't available yet). This didn't resolve the issue, so now a new mobo will be here Tuesday and I'll spend an hour swapping it out... trust some 3rd party tech with a couple of years experience to be gentle with my new baby? Yeah, right.
If that doesn't work, they've committed to a complete replacement - which will be tech-tested before sending out. It's good to be a corporate customer - and to have gold support - when such things go awry.

-J

 

Thanks to the gentleman who started the D830 threads...it really came in handy when I purchased my notebook today!!!

First of all, it had to have XP PRO factory installed...didn't want to pay extra for Vista when I can't even use it at work. This eliminated most of the brand & style options quickly. I also wanted to be able to customize it quite a bit...of course Dell is great for that & these are a couple of reasons I chose the D830 in the following configuration....

C2D - 2.0 GHZ
XP PRO
WUXGA
1 GB DDR2 RAM - 1 DIMM (buying Kingston 1 GB on newegg)
120 GB 5400 RPM
8X DVD/CD-RW
128MB Nvidia
Intel AGN Wireless Card
Bluetooth Module
Fingerprint Reader
9 cell with 90W A/C & Car Adapter
MS Office Small Business
3 YR Ltd w/ mail-in service & accident protection
40 GB primary partitioned
$2150 w/ tax

The one thing I hate is the amount of travel I will be doing with this heavy thing. Being a financial advisor takes me all over the region, but I wanted one that would be my desktop replacement as well.

1. Can anyone give me any idea as to what they think of this configuration???? Is it too bold...should I have scaled it down from the factory & bought after-market parts cheaper??? Any other brands I could have used in this config for cheaper or better build??

2. This ? is a little off topic, it involves a certain type of mouse I saw one time. The cursor was able to be moved from the notebook screen onto a projector's screen & it didn't need a surface to make the cursor move from point to point on either screen...anyone know where I can find a mouse like that?????

Thanks for any help!!! It is much appreciated!!!

 

After the RAM, I don't think there's much you can get cheaper from an outside source...

Other than that, I would personally go for the 80GB and 7200 RPM harddrive instead of a larger and slower one. Everything on the WUXGA at native resolution was a bit too small for me, so you might want to scale back on the screen...

Also, easier to do the 40GB partition yourself since you should do a fresh install of XP anyways.

 

Unless you plan on gaming or using 3D apps, I'd skip the Nvidia upgrade. GMA X3100 would be plenty for all work related task and most likely make for longer battery life time, too.

 

If I'm not mistaken, you can achieve the effect you're looking for by setting the projector to an external display, and then setting the laptop to configure the video as extending your current desktop to the external display. In this case your desktop will effectively be split up into two, spread across the laptop's LCD and the projector's display.

As for the mouse, I'm not sure if I understood this right but check out Logitech's new MX Air mouse. It uses gyroscopes and a combination of accelerometers (I think) so you can do your mousing mid-air, without any surface at all.

 

I noticed under the battery there is a slot for a SIM card. Now I didn't opt for the WWAN configuration. I guess my question is, if I didn't configure it, does that mean the antennas/modem/whatever else would be needed for WWAN were not installed at all? Or is the hardware all there? Can I plug in my own local telco provider's SIM card for HSDPA access?

Also, as a side note, I am incredibly disappointed in this notebook's gaming abilities.

 

There is an integrated antenna, in the WWAN slot (next to the WLAN slot, see the service manual on the Dell site) you can either fit a WWAN card or a Robson module (flash for vista's readydrive, only faster than your average USB stick). And yes, gaming performance is poor! Since you (also) have a WUXGA screen you might consider running your games at 960x600. There are plenty of tools that allow games to run in other resolutions than the generic one, here is good link http://www.widescreengamingforum.com. Also, like always with OEM computers, try to find some "better" drivers.

 

Well, I don't do much gaming myself (small part of the reason I chose Latitude over Inspiron) but just based on the 3D/PCMark scores of the D830 and what're supposed to be "good" gaming machines, I'd expect the thing to at least be *decent*...

Somewhat disappointing to hear, I guess.

 

Anyone know when the Robson module will be available?