Vostro 3350 Owner's Cafe

It's not a bad laptop but if you are going to college, I would recommend an accidental damage warranty or at least on-site warranty so you aren't without your laptops for possibly a couple weeks.

College has those "oops" moments.

 

Doesn't it come with 1 year on site warranty or did I read that wrong?

 

Really depends on your configuration. The higher spec you buy up front, the more Dell "discounts" off the "suggested" price. Interesting though now On-Site is standard, Dell usually wants you to purchase it for around 60-80 USD per year. You can also call up Dell and see if you can get a better deal.

 

Really ! As I said I have ordered the notebook but do not have it yet.
And yes, you are right, there is no ExpressCard slot, interesting...

Most of the lighter notebook have an express card slot but this 2.2 kg monster does not.

Then I maybe should go for a 500 GB Seagate Momentus XT HDD+SSD (4GB SSD).

 

If you open the bottom of the 3350 you can access the wireless card, both ram slots and the 2.5" hdd.

Yeah, the lack of an ExpressCard was disappointing for me, but I didn't really need it and what ports the 3350 does possess are very comprehensive for my use.

How much storage space do you need? Is this going to be your main computer with all your files or something you use when moving between work/home computers?

 

Having 2 500 GB MomentusXT drives, I can tell you their performance is most disappointing. Unless you do TONS of reboots or do the same tasks every day over and over, you will not see the difference between the XT and a normal 7200 rpm drive. That and there is a near 50-100% price premium for that 4 GB SLC flash NAND and the MomentusXT drive DOES benchmark slower in CrystalDiskMark.

Most users would be better off with just a Scorpio Black 500 GB (~60-70 USD vs 110-120 USD for that XT).

 

I used my XT as the boot drive for the Vostro for a few days to try and get a feel for it. My results mirrored yours. While the NAND did make some things faster it still lacked the responsiveness of a full SSD.

The 500GB drive that came with the Vostro was a Scorpio Black so that may be an easy fix to Hakkan's problem.

I'm actually transferring all my files over now from my XT to the Scorpio on my P150. After almost 12 months of owning the XT it just hasn't helped that much, the slightly better speeds on the Scorpio would be more useful to me.

 

I would suggest just getting a regular SSD as opposed, even if it is a bit smaller than the Seagate Momentus XT.

 

Hey all,

I just ordered from a French website a 3350 (i5 2520m HD3000 only no ATI GPU / 4Gb of RAM / Backlit keyboard / 8 cell battery / 3 year of ProSupport) for University (starting in September). Just a few questions to other owners of this notebook, I'll probably will be using it for 4-5 hours in a row without a charger (internet / eventually youtube videos + Office), will I need to bring the charger with me ?

Also, I heard there were some issues with the Wifi / BT module (Intel 6030 ? Don't remember the name), did you experience any connection issues in WiFi ?

 

My Vostro comes with 750 GB HDD. That's more than more than enough for me.

I will use my Dell at Home and Office. I use Microsoft Office apps mostly at the office and web surfing+gaming at home. For office use Dell should be very quick to open apps, files, etc. but I do not need so much storage space. 128 GB SSD is enough for me.

I want to boot windows and open Office apps from SSD very quickly and use HDD for storage. I plan to remove DVD (I do not need it so much) use a SATA Caddy to replace it with a SSD.

Thank you for all your suggestions.