Got my Vostro 1710!

Well, I decided to go for a Vostro 1710 (just a few days before the new Inspiron Studio was announced), and have been using it for a week. I decided to post my impressions about the laptop in this forum in order to help prospective buyers

My observations:

• It's a bargain. I paid 822€ for an Intel Core Duo T8300, 2Gb RAM, 250Gb HD, 8600M GS (DDR3), and 17in WUXGA screen. Other laptops at this price had a lot worse specifications
• Quite thin, light and beautiful. While it's no MacBook Pro, it has the "business" look.
• The keyboard has some flex, but nothing that really bothers me.
• As other people have reported, the glossy black lid is beautiful, but can get fingerprints easily... also, I found an additional problem: it's really easy to scratch. In a way, it reminds me of a black iPod Nano (first generation). I was really careful, but even so I managed to scratch it.
• The specifications in the website showed a 8600M GS DDR2 as graphics card, but I got the same as everyone else (8600M GS DDR3).
• My WUXGA screen is a "SEM3155". I know that another user of this forum got a better one (LG), but other than some light bleeding at the bottom, the screen looks wonderful. It might be a problem for those who want to see movies on it, but in my case, I only wanted more screen real estate for coding.
• My biggest disappointment is the sound. They're located at the bottom of the laptop, and the stereo effect is really poor. Still, they sound OK, but might be a problem for movies (again, perfectly fine for my use).

The "cons" list might seem long, but I'm very happy with my purchase, so if you want a "no frills" notebook to work, and don't have high multimedia/gaming expectations, I highly recommend it.

 

I need to pick mine up at the mailbox... I will be re-loading it with XP Pro for my best friend.