I have a couple of A860s, any Qs? +thoughts

Well, i have picked out 2 Vostro a860s for work, and I thought i'd share what I thought about them, and answer any questions.

The ones I have are on this page:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-vostro-a860?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

And would be the productivity package version, Core 2 Duo 1.6ghz. 2gb of ram, 160gb HD, 15.6 inch Wide Display HD (1366 x 768 screen resolution) with anti-glare, bluetooth, wifi, firewire, etc. etc.

General Construction:
Generally, these are budget laptops, and yes, you can sort of feel that "budgetness" when you handle them. It's mainly in the materials, it feels like the plastic is cheap, like they are of less density compared to that of a thinkpad. You can really feel this in the keys on the keyboard too. The main body of the laptop feels less solid, and more hollow. There is also some creaking going on if you hold it in different areas. Also lightly pushing down with your right hand in it's natural position seems to cause a bit of flex and noise.

As far as chassis flex goes, well the general frame seems to be pretty sturdy. However the plastic body isn't very solid, so say if you picked it up by one hand, you can feel the plastic body somewhat push up into chassis. So to sum it up, the frame seems solid, but the body has a bit of give.

The lid, as wide as it is, feels pretty sturdy, I'm pretty happy with it. The hinges feel great as well, they have an excellent amount of resistance, and zero play.

The top of the lid has a gloss finish, and is completely idiotic. It will look terrible with smudges and scratches for most of it's life. I'm not sure what the deal is with all these new laptops having gloss finishes, it's about the dumbest thing i've seen as of late with laptops.

The Screen:
15.6 inch Wide Display HD (1366 x 768 screen resolution) with Matte finish. I really like the screen to be honest, it has a very wide aspect ratio, it almost seems wider than HDTV format, I really like it. Viewing angles are decent, backlight brightness is great, and thank goodness for matte finish, I would probably hate it if it were gloss.

The Touchpad:
Well someone at Dell really screwed up with the touchpad. Before tweaking, it was terrible and I couldn't stand using it. I mean, I had to do a lot of tweaking to make it behave like a touchpad should. These tweaks were, drastically increasing the touchpad speed and sensitivity, and disabling draglock (unbelievably annoying!!!!).

Before these tweaks, the touchpad was not sensitive enough (sometimes not responding to input), too slow to move across a wide screen, and the draglock would enable all the time, just to annoy the crap out of you.

Now, the touchpad is actually farily nice to use.

EDIT: I also want to add that I had to crank up scrolling speed, as by default it was way too slow.

Keyboard:
Layout is good, no complaints there, there is a very good amount of travel, almost like a desktop keyboard. My fingers seem to fit nicely on the buttons as well. There is a little bit of downward flex though, a sign of cheapness. Other than that, it is a very good keyboard, other than the fact that it feels and sounds cheap

Wifi:
Reception and performance seems pretty good.

Overall performance:
Well, I haven't done much with it, it generally seems to be fine. Realistically, so far i've been pretty pleased with it. Vista Basic runs pretty well on it, no complaints. In some situations though, I have seen it (the cursor) become unresponsive while doing certain intensive tasks, not a trait i like to see.

The Speaker:
Yes, singular, because there is only one of them. Well, it has decent volume, but sounds cheap, hollow, and there was some slight buzzing going on.

Battery Life:
Can't really say, i've seen the meter report 3 hours of time left, so it seems like it is decent.

Other thoughts:
The inclusion of bluetooth was a very nice surprise. For those who are wondering what good it is, its great for transferring pictures, ringtones, files to and from smartphones, PDAs, and regular phones (though your SOL if your on VZW (they like to cripple that part on regular phones)). In addition, you can use it to synchronize them to outlook etc. if you don't have an exchange setup going.

Final thoughts:
It's cheap, it performs decently for office use, it's packed with featuers, and it is supposed to be durable according to dell. How long will it last in the real world? You got me, I guess I'll find out eventually.

When we ordered our second one, they said they only had them with a matte blue lid. Seems like Dell got a clue, and scratched the gloss finish. The matte finish is much nicer than the gloss, and it feels nice to the touch too.

Any questions? Let me know.

 

Thanks for your very detailed review. You should contact the editor about posting a review in the 'Reviews' section- (click on 'clicking here' link) at this LINK to contact them.

This is the first review of any sort that I've seen for the A860. I've been reluctant to recommend it until now, but I'm glad to have some info to go on.

 

Yeah, thanks for the review! There's no way I would have expected Thinkpad build quality at this price. So... I consider this a good review considering that Dell is selling these for $450. (I guess you do too, since you bought a second one.)

 

Thanks for the comments, I will try and submit it.

I also want to add that these units aren't docking station capable.