1700 arrived need recommendations for reviewing it tonight

ok my vostro 1700 just arrived at my office 2 days earlier than the estimated arrival.

Unfortunately I am working right now and any spare time I have I am using to study for a practice LSAT I am taking tonight so I cant get out pictures or a review until later tonight, but I wanted to know if there were certain programs people wanted me to run on it like 3d mark or something and where I can get them for the review. I will try to put everything that is asked for in this thread in the review tonight as long as it doesn't cost me any money.

From openning the box I can see a few things things. The 9 cell battery sticks out about a half inch, but on a laptop so big it looks fine. Also if the battery jiggles or anything I did not notice it while lifting and moving the laptop to examine. It did not come with a windows vista cd so I will need to get one from dell.

Basically I have never done a laptop review before, I have had 1 other laptop for 3 years (dell inspiron 8600) so I want any and all requests for a review so I can make it as informative as possible tonight

 

cool, i am waiting for your review and of course photos

 

Can you tell me the following things:
- When did you order?
- Location (EU or US?)
- Photo's
- Vista Score

Thanks!

 

If you can, use Lavalys Everest Ultimate Edition - it provides and can generate an extensive hardware and software summary of your laptop - you can also use it to determine the manufacturer of the LCD panel in your laptop (most of the time).

I am sure most people will want you to run SuperPi, 3DMark05, 3DMark06, PCMark, HDTune, among others.

 

Seems like you got one powerful config. . . Yeah first thing . . . 1)We need lots of pics. . . . 2) elaborate about the opening process. . . What all were in it. . . 3)first impressions. . . I mean right out of the box any thing that impressed you in particular. . . 4)build quality. . .Weight etc 5) your opinions in detail about the diff parts of the laptop physical i mean. . . Like the display,keyboard,head phone jack,camera,battery life etc etc 6) vista load times 7)bench marks. . 3dmarks 06,pcmarks 06,calculate pi(16M),vista score 8) your likes and dislikes i hope you got an idea good luck

 

lunch break so I'll try to answer some things now. When I have time for a full review I will post it in the review section and a link in here.


When did you order? 07/12/2007
Location (EU or US?) US
Photos? N/A atm
Vista Score? N/A atm

Openning Process - Had disks for the sound blaster program (I didn't know how useless it was until 2 days ago and ordered it), dell media, and 1 or 2 others that I can't remember at the moment, but no vista cd, had the plug for charging the battery (I forget what its called), and obviously had the laptop.

First impression was that this thing is a beast. I didn't think it was too heavy or big, but I was looking for desktop replacement so I wanted something big and expected it to have a little weight to it. I thought the battery looked fine and probably never would have questioned it sticking out if I had not seen it complained about on the forums. The laptop never got my fingerprints on it, but it did have someone elses stick so I dont know if maybe my hands were really clean or theirs really greasy or something. It felt really stable, I wouldn't drop it or anything but it felt like it wouldn't break from normal wear and tear.

most of everything else asked for looks like I need the laptop on so I think the rest will have to wait

EDIT: ok I just checked inside the box, the 4 disks are Dell Media Directt 3.3, Dell Webcam, Soundblaster Audigy, and Microsoft Works. Also there was a Dell contact booklet with more Dell numbers than I will ever need or want to know

EDIT#2: I did have a little jiggle in my battery but I never noticed it until I picked up my laptop and tried to jiggle the battery

EDIT#3: I also have
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829126101

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815100112

comming tomorrow from newegg to turn this into a little media center

 

I was able to get a little time on my vostro 1700 before leaving for my test so I figured I would give some first impressions and write a better review tonight.

The case is all magnesium it seems with very little flex only if i try to flex it.

The screen is absolutely incredible. I don't know what exactly graininess is, but I have looked at my screen from within 3 inches and as far as 12 feet and cannot see anything that I think would be grainy.

The screen does show reflections in light rooms, but looks absolutely incredible. I only see reflections in dark areas of the screen with a good amount of light around me.

I think the screen more than makes up for the reflections with how it looks. You can view this screen from any possible angle you can have with it in your line of sight (obviously looking at the back is useless) I put on a DVD to test it out and could watch it confortably from up to about 10 feet away, which is great for me because I plan to use this partially as a media centre.

No dead pixels as far as I can tell.

The first boot up took a while but all after are fast. Had a basic windows set up. Choose user name, password, etc.

3.5gb useable ram because 32-bit.

The rating in windows is 4.5:
Processor 5.1
Memory 4.8
Graphics 4.5
Gaming graphics 5.1
Primary hard disk 4.8

Note: the computer did freeze up when I tried to instal my anti-virus and I had to do a hard reboot, but the disk this was on is so damaged im surprised I can get it to work on my old computer.

More to come tonight

EDIT: I'm using some headphones now, I do not hear any huming or anything unless there is no sound on and I am not even sure if I here something then but there may be something an audio phile would notice

 

dude i got a 4.6 WEI with my t7100

 

Hmm, I probably will get lower then 4.6 (ordered with 2GB RAM and 2.0 Ghz T7300). But, wth, everything is better than my current pc.

 

overclock the graphics card and see how high you can get 3dmark/fps in games at

 

How about headphone noise issue? I want to know if it happens with every Dell.

 

no noise on my 1720... and the Ep 630 is pretty decent

 

Thanks "sinfolmatt" for your first impressions! Could you please post some pics ???

I'm verry interested by that product, to replace my old Inspiron 8600. I will buy one once the nVidia 8600GT will be available in Canada for this model.

 

I just took a bunch of pictures, what is a good site to upload them to and add links?

 

Photobucket? You can also just attach them to the posts too, although there are file size / image size limitations.

 

Images are here http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=149932

I am tired from my test and want to take some time to really mess with this so I will review tomorrow

 

hello sinfolmatt,
when do you think that you'll do the test of the vostro because i'm very interested by it?

 

Me too! I also ordered a 1700.

 

about the tests, sorry they are taking a while. I haven't had much time and didn't have any of the programs to test it so any time I had I was using downloading them.

So far I have downloaded pcmark and 3dmark, and have installed nero. I am going to test it out with those programs today and then test out the dvd burner. I dont have any dual layer disks so I cannot test out its dual layer capabilities

EDIT: I get off work early today and don't have anything else planned so I should be able to run some tests later today. I haven't yet figured out how to use the webcam or what program to test it with. Any ideas?

 

I don't have any taxing pc games to test on it right now. I am currently looking for something to test on it that I might like

 

Pick up Tiberium Wars
Anyway, looking forward to your review.