Dell 13z Thread

Anyone else seen this? Just noticed it on the Dell Uk website. Looks freaking sweet for the the money, a net book beater for sure!

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Introducing the new InspironTM 13z laptop. With long-lasting battery options, discrete graphics and an internal DVD drive, it’s surprisingly powerful for its size.

* Power up with up to 11hours and 23 minutes of battery life with the optional 8-cell battery.
* Easily travels by your side at 3.94 lbs / 1.79kg.1 and barely over an inch (1.04”/2.64cm) thin.
* Get up to a 320GB2 hard drive and up to 512MB dedicated graphics.
* Experience true mobility with Intel’s ultra-low-voltage processors.

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Specs-

Processors
Intel® PentiumTM Dual Core SU4100
Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo SU7300

Operating System
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

Memory
2GB 2 DIMM DDR3 1067 MHz (2 x 1GB)
3GB 2 DIMM DDR3 1067 MHz (1GB + 2GB)
4GB 2 DIMM DDR3 1067 MHz (2 x 2GB)
6GB 2 DIMM DDR3 1067 MHz (1 x 2GB + 1 x 4GB)
Chipset
Intel® GS45

Graphics
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500MHD
NVIDIA® GeForce® G105M - 512MB

LCD Display
13.3” HD WLED True-Life (1366x768)
Audio and Speakers
Main Speakers (quantity): 2 x 1.0W with SRS Premium Sound
Microphone – Integrated single analog
Hard Drives
250GB2 5,400RPM
320GB2 7,200RPM

Optical Drives
Integrated DVD+/-RW standard
Power
4-Cell LI with Express Charge (up to 5 hours, 9 minutes of battery life4)
8-Cell LI (up to 11 hours, 23 minutes of battery life4)
Camera
Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam
Wireless
Wi-Fi
DellTM Wireless 1397 802.11g Half mini-card
Intel® WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/g/draft-N) Half Mini card
Bluetooth
Optional Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth Internal (2.1) mini-card
Ports, Slots, Chassis
Externally Accessible
Kensington lock
AC Power-in
7-in-1 Card Reader (SD, MMC, XD, MS, MS Pro, MMC+, Hi Density SD, Hi capacity SD)
Integrated network connector 10/100 LAN (RJ45)
VGA connector
(3) USB 2.0
Audio jacks (1 line-out, 1 Mic-in)

Dimensions & Weight
Width: 12.98" (329.8mm)
Height: 0.68" (17.2mm) to 1.04" (26.4mm)
Depth: 8.78" (223.0mm)
Weight: Starting weight of 3.94lbs (1.79 kg)1 Weights will vary depending on configurations and manufacturing variability.

PRICE: 479-599 pounds!

 

Yea its similar to the 14z, looks good,

Although a guy in the "What should I buy for school" section told me that these processors "Suck" even though he said he was not using his laptop for games, I think these new Inspirons 13z and 14z rock!

 

Well it could do games, im thinking things such as source games and some older titles/

 

I ordered top version of this (4gb su7300 g105m), with all discounts only added up to £550, pretty good deal imo, hope to check it out next week (arrive by 2/10/09). Hoping I get 5+ hours of intensive use or 7-8 hours of real use with decent playing of older titles and hopefully D3/SC2.

Think dell may have a great model here, just hope all of the little things add up, good mousepad, good keyboard and not too noisy or hot. Will add first impressions when I first get a chance

 

The Inspiron 13z sold in Hong Kong and China comes with HDMI port , but HDMI port not available on 13z in Malaysia and Singapore .

 

Thats the spec I was thinking of going for! Let us know how you get on with it.

 

may I ask what are all these discounts?
Im told there is a dell student discount of like 3% at this price range.
I mean I'm gonna buy this anyway but if I can save some more I will do.

 

There's a discount 5% for signing up to their mailing list - they send a coupon each time, then there's employee or student discounts, which I think go 3/6/?% as you spend more money. It all adds up to a neat little discount to pay for whatever extras you need to get.

 

Oh cool I just signed up now. Can they be combined then? Any idea how the coupons work then? How long till I get one?

 

My dad was recently talked into getting one of these over the phone.

Now for the most part it seems ok, he paid more than he wanted, but it has a few nice features.

What I am concerned about is its CPU: "Intel® Pentium® Dual Core Processor ULV SU4100 (1.30GHz, 2MB, 800MHz) DISC GFX"

I told him, what ever you do, get at least a core 2 duo...

Will this thing be any good? It will probably only get light use (business type things), but still, 1.3GHz!! It seems like this will cripple it!

Impulse buying! Arr

Thanks

 

It is dual core though and tbf with the graphics card doing grunt work its not going to be taxed, especially running a few simple programs.

Plus from reviews I've read theyre good for pretty much ad DX9 games and only cant handle the high end DX10 Crysis GTA4 etc, I assume your dad wont be gaming anyway?

 

There's no architecture differences between them, only 1mb of cache less than the core2 su7300, so don't worry it'll still be like a dual core 3.2ghz ATM processor with decent graphics, so able to handle the web, media and dx9games!

Also you can generally combine dell coupons.

 

Ok, thanks guys.

I doubt he will play games on it, maybe some Civ3..

He has already ordered, I couldn't find any appropriate inspiron coupons. Is it even possible to get them applied after ordering though?

Thanks again

 

Maybe if you phone them, if that fails you can cancel and re-order dependant on what stage your order is at. I cancelled and reordered my vostro 1700 3 times because it kept getting cheaper on the website.

 

Articles announcing its release are only just appearing on the web, im guessing it will be a while till we see any reviews on this beaut.

 

Bah! Dell moved my order back half a month without tell me of it or why! Tempted to just get a different laptop now, can't go around with iPhone as Internet forever and not going to keep getting delayed by them

 

Just found the following review on Notebookcheck:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Inspiron-13z-Notebook.22081.0.html

 

Picked up my 13z (su7300/g105m) this evening. Looks great, size is perfect for me - big enough to be useful and small/light enough to carry around/travel with.

First impressions (very early days):

+ Nice Keyboard + Touchpad. Doesn't look as cool as macbook offerings, but I've got no problems with it whatsoever.

+ Nice Screen / overall design size

+ good sound quality, not awesome but better than what I was expecting for thin & light, cheap notebook.

+ very quiet in general (dvd drive not quiet, but will mainly be used for ripping/copying/installing - so once it's done, it's noiseless)

+ very cool so far, fan on left side is quiet enough and system hasn't melted with game + downloading at same time

- black dell plastic is the worst fingerprint magnet ever - luck I bought a laptop cleaning kit.

- extended battery is really extended beneath it - it's not inconvenient to have it on your lap (done so far a couple of hours testing), but it essentially doubles the thickness at the end and ruins the thin, sleek look slightly. If there was a 6 cell option that could hide away in there I'd get it, but a 4 cell seems to be ruining the point.



I've not tried any benchmarks, nor have I tweaked the system - I ran the system, installed Windows Security Essentials and have installed CoD4, downloading TF2 and browsed the net at same time. While downloading TF2 I've tried playing CoD4 with stock drivers and found it ran smoothly in native 720p resolution even with 4xAA, would probably lower it a little more to give some slack, but I don't think this would ever drop below 20fps with this setting (looks very nice as well).
TF2 is at 80%, will try that, CS:S, L4D and maybe UT3 in next couple of days, but considering I've come from playing Crysis on an AMD Athlonx2 with a 7300 LE, this is definately a boost in computing power (and the last one played CoD4 / TF2 / Crysis fine, just not at 1080p with max eye-candy)

When I've finished downloading everything - I'll try checking how much battery is drained by 1 hour of the games (with wifi / decent brightness) and then after I download a video file to test, I'll see how much battery life 1 hour of that takes (wifi off / decent brightness / headphones) to emulate watching films on train // and streaming video from random sites (wifi on / decent brightness / headphones) to emulate watching videos online at starbucks or wherever you tend to do it.

If I think I need a little boost, I'll look into OC'ing the CPU (trying to copy turbo33 from Asus UL Series and bump FSB from 800mhz -> 1066mhz) or less likely OC'ing the GPU (read a successful Q320 owner in Samsung forums knocked his 256mb G105m from 2.6k-3.1k 3dMark06, ~20% improvement potentially. Or if I think that this is enough power, I'll look into minor undervolting to cut a couple of Centigrade off the temps

I doubt I'll try many benchmarks (unless I try OC'ing) as I'd rather focus on real user experiences (games / media / videos online).

If you have any questions or things you'd like me to look into, I'll try what I can do. I've literally only had this thing running for 3 hours and Win7 is very new to me coming from XP (feels like a mix of Vista and OSX), so my experience is very limited.


Edit: incredibly brief TF2 check - but yes, it runs smoothly in 720p with good graphics, the g105m is more than enough for this laptop for dx9 games below crysis it seems.

 

Nice, did you haggle with them or anything? Ive been thinking about getting the 13z but the lowest i can get it is £590, thats the top of the line one with a wireless N card added.

 

had it with 5% discount and 3% EPP so was £550 which was fine with me (£200 less than ordering Asus UL50vg or importing UL80vt)

 

I am interesting in the Dell 13z but in the notebookcheck review they said that the temperature was very high with high CPU and GPU load.
Can you check about this issue in different conditions? When is it high? I am interesting for example to know if it is high:
- with a multitasking activities (for exemple many office windows and browser tabs)
- watching a video or listen music
- using programs like photoshop
- performing a video format conversion

And of course I am interesting in your opinion about performance.

Thank you

 

I'm just back on a lunch break (set it to downloading L4D / CS:S / UT3 in the morning) and will check those out later.

I was worried when i saw the temps on notebookcheck (hotter tha envy15 with i7 + 4830), but my unit is cool (almost cold) and quiet idling and barely warm when gaming + downloading stuff, will test this more this evening. It's possible the battery slice helps improve airflow underneath the laptop - but it's been very good temps so far.

I'll try converting some episodes from my only DVD's around (blackadder collection) soon to see media conversion performance and temps - but if it's like my experience gaming - there'll be no problem doing this with the laptop on bare flesh as it's a comfortable warm under stress so far, not hot at all.

The only tweak I've made so far is removing McAffee and replacing with Microsoft Security Essentials, there wasn't any bloatware really (will remove works 9.0 when I get office) so haven't reinstalled Win7 or installed any new drivers. I do get a notice about something not activated on the trackpad - but that could be multi-touch drivers, since the pad itself works flawlessly for me.

Edit: Quick update -
UT3 quite smooth 720p, but I did have everything on max, so for some leeway I'd reduce some settings lower
L4D - very smooth 720p and lots of filtering/anti-alliasing going on
CS:S - old game, can go 16xAA and 16Xother filter at 720p and perfectly smooth


Therefore any game I'll play (including probably torchlight / diablo 3 / possibly Dragon age origins) will run smoothly on this without tweaking the hardware.

Initial games impressions - 8/10

smooth playing all games I want, but missing last 2/10 just for eye-candy which could be up'ed to 9/10 with OC'ing/other tweaks. I'm not saying this is a gaming rig - but unless you can only play crysis and intensive games like that at super-details or only play CPU intensive games, then this will keep you satisfied.

Will play about with it's features more after work.

Update 2:

Given it two hours of use streaming video online with 3 different video sources (zshare / wisevid / megavideo) at various brightness settings and with wireless mouse on/off and volume at medium level (not headphones) and it drained 40% of my battery (even share - 20% in first hour / 20% in second hour). I'm guessing the right video source + lowest brightness levels might have improved lifespan more, but this estimates a 5 hour lifespan streaming video online.

Initial battery streaming impressions 8/10 again - not quiet the 8-11 hours the Asus UL owners are talking of, but at stock settings (no undervolt / no playing with GPU like powermizer) 5 hours streaming video is good enough. I expect battery video playback (wifi-off - no downloading) to be a bit higher, and tweaking settings/undervolting to give this an extra hour or two max. 8/10 for me as 5 hours streaming video without charging is more than enough - it was smooth, sound was clear, and it wasn't dulled down to 40% brightness. Last 2/10 would have gone for extra hours, as playback quality whilst on battery mode had no reasons for complaint.

 

using CPUID to monitor temps for you whilst using various functions.

Laptop idles at 37C CPU // 42C GPU

After hours of movie streaming it hasn't got hot, it's 41-43C CPU browsing / 49-50C GPU browsing

However, while watching a DVD it's steady at 48C CPU // 55-56C GPU on power DVD and 44-45C CPU // 53-54C on Windows Media Player (not uncomfortable for lap - using there while testing). It's the temps that notebookcheck listed, however it's quiet and nowhere near as hot as I feared it would be.

Music has CPU/GPU near idle temps - 43-44C CPU / 51-52C GPU

When I find a program that can rip my DVD's to my HDD I'll try a battery-life test on watching video files (wifi off / 80% brightness / 1 media program that uses CPU for media files & 1 program that uses GPU for media files).

 

bit odd - GPU z / CPU z both say the G105m is a GT218 40nm with 16 unified shaders (essentially a ddr3, lower clocked g210?)?The 105m is supposed to be 55 or 65nm and only 8 unified shaders. Is this some software screwup or some silent update by dell (similar scores to 4330 which also has same shaders)

Couldn't find PLL on SiSandra, might try playing about with GPU clocks very carefully - but if it rises more than 5C I'll stop that.

Downloading 3dmark06 to check what type of changes happen from mild jumps in GPU speeds - as these clocks in this (500/700/1070) are very different from the G105m clocks on notebookcheck.net (640/700/1600) - I'm not sure whether this is a downclocked G105m or something newer under the same name as the GPU Z screenshot suggests.

 

I check the following link
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
and if G210M is the GT218 it look like better than G105 but please check because I am not sure.

This is a link to a review http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Inno3D/GeForce_210/1.html. Check also that and tell me your opinion.

About temperature it looks like fine even if higher than other similar notebook (but it is acceptable: it is similar to the lenovo laptop that I use at work).

With your information maybe I will select Dell (with SU7300 and G105/218) against the other alternatives: ASUS UL30A (same CPU with overclocking but Intel graphic), ASUS UL30VT (with switchable graphics between Intel and dedicated graphics but maybe more expansive) and ACER 3810TZ (cheaper but with SU4100 and Intel graphic). But in any case I will wait a couple of weeks before to order it so I will read all new information that you will post.
Thanks

 

The Dell 13z is a nice looking little machine. Is this available in Canada? I didn't see it on the Canadian Dell website. Also what is the maximum screen resolution on this thing?

 

Hello all.

Thanks for the information so far.

How's the screen looking? I read some discouraging info about excessive glare from this review: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Inspiron-13z-Notebook.22081.0.html.

Would you go along with that, or is it negligible?

Thanks in advance.

Nick

 

I don't know what's going on with GPU - but I thought that the spec bump might explain why it gets better performance than Samsung's Q320 whilst having lower clocks, DDR3 listed instead of GDDR3 and far weaker CPU (where 3dmark tests are heavily affected by CPU strength) - whether this is the case or it's just drivers going odd - the performance is enough for playing most games casually/on the go.

I don't have a problem with screen glare, but I haven't tried using it ourdoors yet. The brightness goes up more than high enough to compensate for glare indoors - but like the rest of the laptop is prone to fingerprints... very prone (good thing I got laptop cleaning kit in advance)


back to your question of which laptop to get - it depends what you want to do with it. I'd suggest using the first part of the forum to get more input on it - but I wanted something big enough to use as my main/only computer, powerful enough to run the games I like (CoD4 / TF2 / L4D / UT3 / Diablo 3 when it comes out) yet was still small, light and ran quiet and cool enough that I could take it around with me and keep it on my lap when I want.

I'm very happy with low noise levels on this - the extended battery ruins the sleek look a bit, but gives the laptop a good slope for typing on and helps with airflow underneath it - so I'm 50:50 on this (if only I could have my cake AND eat it...)

The CPU works well, it only has 6/6.5x multiplier as far as I know - and when idling it generally halves the FSB and goes at 800mhz. When doing not much it's generally at 1.3ghz or sometimes 1.6ghz (guessing 1 core). The FSB has potential to go to 1066mhz, but I've had no luck and not experienced enough with SetFSB. Undervolting it by 0.1C only reduced stress temps by 2C on CPU and had little difference overall on case - part of this reduction was probably due to essentially underclocking it (only does integral multipliers, so downclocked from 1.3ghz-1.2ghz, which might have explained the 2C drop). But the case itself is normally 30-33C Idle / 35-40C under stress - so I've not had a problem with it whilst stress testing it / 3dMark testing it / downloading and playing games at same time.

I've not tried the DVD drive much, but it's audible over the silence of my laptop - it's definitely unnoticeable compared to my GF's laptop next to me that I've borrowed for the last couple of months, but as I said - compared to the silence of this laptop the DVD drive makes audible noise, not that you'd notice it if you were watching anything/listening to anything.


So Performance is enough for me. It's overkill for most web/office things and it's exactly the right level for the games I play - that may not be the case in a few years, but with the Source Games / Unreal 3 Engine Games / Diablo 3 things going on why would I care?

The Noise levels are incredibly low - The temps on this originally worried me when I read reviews, but my experience is I'm perfectly content with them. Only concern is DVD drive - I haven't used it enough to honestly give a fair review of it.

Screen - it's thin, but sturdy enough for me not to worry about flex (same with case overall, I pick it up by corners easy without worrying). It's bright enough for indoor use - sorry but I doubt I'll be testing it outside in current weather conditions. I can happily watch videos anywhere up from 30/40% brightness which is nice.

Keyboard and touchpad - very happy with these. Have a wireless laser mouse in use, but the touchpad is nice and the keyboard is perfect for me. Proper size, and smooth typing for me, it's like my work keyboard. I originally was desparate for Macbook style chiclet keyboard, but I cannot complain about this.

Overall experience - very happy with this, but that's just me. It has enough battery that I could take a train to London while watching movies at max brightness, then take eurostar to Paris, continuing watching these movies - which is the plan for a couple of weekend's time. It does the office / web / games as I'd like them - to be honest I wouldn't notice if this was or wasn't a fully fledged C2D at good speeds - as I guess my tasks just don't use that much power. I know if I had that power I'd try to use it to do little things, like going from 4XAA to 8XAA, but it's only tiny, marginal changes for a very large loss in battery life, and a big jump in temps - the highest my Case has gone under stress tests and hours of use is 38C - and I use laptops on my lap a lot, so a light, cool laptop is big on my list of priorities.

Lastly was the price - my laptop included 5% discount and 3% EPP, but I didn't try haggling, getting a light&thin with more power than my previous Pentium-D desktop (at least in games/web/real experience) for £550 brand new was more than I could ask for - I spent months watching the UL80VT and it didn't get "£$"ing released in UK and the shipping/import/customs charges knock up American prices up to the $1=£1 rates...

I'm incredibly happy with this laptop so far - which is good since Dell Customer Care has been crap with me in all of my experience, so I hope nothing goes wrong with this. I'd recommend this laptop to any joe-average who wants portability and at least the ability to play games at a fair price - if you're planning on getting a desktop replacement - look elsewhere, if you're not planning on games/media conversion - look elsewhere. If you're patient and don't need a laptop right now, it might be worth waiting for Arrandale ULV (I think 1.2ghz-2.2ghz and Hyperthreading, may be a little off on speeds, but faster clock-for-clock and good use of switchable graphics could make that an acceptable games playing laptop when you want // portable long-life battery when you don't need power).

 

Why you write "if you're planning on getting a desktop replacement - look elsewhere"?
I am looking for a desktop replacement but I need also portability.
I will use it mainly for office, internet, play music and video and run some program like gimp. I also open very often a lot of window. From your review I think that it is not a problem with the dell 13z so it is a good desktop replacement fo my needs. Am I wrong?

 

I was generalised to anyone who was reading, not you in particular.

My use of the laptop is essentially the same - it will be my main computer (no desktop, no other laptops) and I'll use it at my place, but also travel with it every week or two.

I'm sorry, but I don't know how demanding gimp is, I've only done basic multi-tasking at the moment (downloading one game, installing another and playing a third at same time or browsing net whilst running CPU stress tests + moving loads of files from old laptop to new laptop. I don't really count having 20 tabs on Chrome as multitasking for me, as I'm only actually running things on about 3 tabs max most of the time.

If there's some realistic test (not benchmarks in particular) I can run for you, let me know and I'll see what I can do.

 

Just wanted to leave a few good words about Dell 13z (even registered on NBR for that)
Received mine on Tuesday as well as jk6959 - I think we are the first 13z users in the UK
Initially I was a bit afraid to get the laptop since it had almost no reviews. (Notebookcheck one appeared only a week ago or so) Normally, when I buy anything >200GBP, I try to read at least 20 reviews about the item. Well, it seems sometimes the risk is worth taking.
Got mine for ~588GBP with U7300, 4GB RAM and Intel wifi.

Things related to what was posted on notebookcheck:
* Battery looks way bigger than it actually is in those photos posted on the website. Probably because of the shadow. Yes, it does stick out, but it is not as bad. Plus it probably helps to cool the thing better, when it lays on a table. And of course, the additional benefit of 7 hours working time in Windows 7.
* Glaring - the LED powered LCD is so bright, that I normally use the second lowest setting when browsing at home while in a couch. Setting brightness to maximum should probably allow to see image even in direct sunlight...
* Temps - I was surprized to see 40-50 degrees mentioned in the article. In real life, it is barely warm and the fan is almost inaudible. Of course, it might get hot when you run video encoding for two hours, but I don't expect you do that when it sits on your lap

Further nice things:
* includes a DVD rom, although it is REALLY thin
* remaining space (DVD rom probably takes half of the area) for components is really tiny.. and for the first time in my geek career I cannot estimate/find where the 2.5" hard drive sits - it is very silent and does not vibrate or tick when working
* 1080p videos use 20-30% CPU when playing in Media Player Classic (compare to 35W 2.16Ghz T7400 with intel 950 video taking 60-90%)
* Speakers and headphone socket is different devices in Windows (you can have some interesting arrangements)
* Screen is crisp, bright, photos look great, no dead pixels
* In BIOS you can turn on something like 'turbo charging' which I think charges battery twice or so faster.
* After reinstalling Windows 7 just a few things were missing - I think video and mouse drivers. Keyboard shortcuts (except multimedia and eject DVD) work just fine.
* Sound over HDMI - works great with my monitor Yet again, the speakers appear as a separate device in Playback devices.

Windows Experience indexes:
* CPU 4.1 (same as T2300 1.6GHz 30W TP)
* RAM 4.8
* Graphics 4.7
* Gaming graphics 5.5
* HDD 5.9

OK, enough for this post - let me know if you have any questions.

 

Just like to update about glossy screen - testing it in a sun-facing room and the reflections are noticeable. If you plan on working in a lot of bright/sunny areas I'd suggest considering how much you can live with reflections. Currently with brightness on max there's still a fair bit of reflection going on - but this is the brightest room of my family's house I'm testing this with. Plastic Macbook's have similar battery life and have ~50% brighter screens methinks, so if that's what you need it might be worth checking them.

 

Hey guys im new here, Ive ordered a 13z so im glad to see the few of you lucky enough to have got yours already are giving it good reviews!

Dell keep making me wait longer and longer for it! I ordered it on the 27th Oct with an estimated delivery date of the 5th Nov that was then revised to the 18th Nov (So i was getting excited for this week) But now its been revised AGAIN till the 3rd Dec!

Anybody else still waiting for theres? If so whats your estimated delivery date?

Also can anybody put me in the right direction to get a 6 cell battery for when i get it to use aswell as the 8 cell you get with it? I cant seem to find them on the dell site (perhaps its just me)

 

My Delivery Date got moved back from 5th Nov to 18th Nov, but they delivered it last Tuesday (10th), so it could get there sooner than the date.

I travelled with the laptop this weekend and had results I'm content with. Using CPU accelerated media players I got an estimated 5:30-6:00 battery life watching movies (not dimmed completely, but I'm not ruining movie experience to get extra hour of crap movie experience) and with gpu accelerated Media Player Classis I got an estimated 5:00 hours of battery life. I know this isn't the 8-12 hour claims that Asus UL owners can do, but this is good enough for me.

I've tried the laptop in brighter and colder rooms than I'm used to - and in sun-facing bright rooms the glossy screen does glare a lot and you'll probably see reflections even with max brightness on (I'm happy with laptop, but I won't lie to prospective buyers), but it cooler rooms my temperatures plummetted drastically... My case idle temps were 20-23C, CP 25-30C, GPU 30-40C it was good beforehand, but this was nice to see.

I've tried the games a bit more in detail and under stress the GPU can hit highs of 60-68C when playing, but I can play games in good graphics incredibly smoothly in most cases - But in parts I believe are CPU intensive it can slow down a little - so in CoD4 when lots of smoke grenades go off - it slows down a bit (30+ with high settings AA on and 720p to 10-20 fps I believe) and in L4D when mods are on to have incendiary bullets setting on loads of zombies on fire it slows down from perfectly smooth (30+ fps) to noticeable stutters at times (mix of 30+ fps and 10-20 fps) but to be honest none of this has affected my game experience.

All in all, untweaked this is a pretty sweet rig. It sounds like it's better build quality than the HP DM3 / Asus UL80VT that were my main alternatives, even if it might have less CPU/GPU oomph than them possibly (still confused about odd G105m readings). For my next few games (L4D2 / Torchlight / Eventually D3 / Hopefully can do Dragon Age Origins) it should be enough, the only one in question is the latter (DAO)

One part I haven't tested much is the quality of Blacks on the screen, it didn't seem as good as it could be when playing L4D - but I just haven't had enough time with it yet (work + general tests / installations on laptop)


Edit: Plays Dragon Age Origins at 1024x768 reasonable. It's not perfectly smooth but definitely playable. It is however, pretty much stretching the CPU to its limit. I'd be interested in what gains could be seen from increasing fsb from 800mhz-1066mhz, but I've had no luck finding PLL to test that out.

 

Anyone experiencing BSODs or graphics freezes due to nvlddmkm.sys fault?

I started getting more and more of these recently while simply working or browsing in Windows. I reinstalled Windows 7 Pro from scratch and used the official DELL driver from their support page. Unfortunately, no other drivers can be installed (modified or NVIDIA generic ones), but there seems to be newer version available already.

Temperatures seem normal - in idle GPU is around 40 C, CPU 30-40.

NVIDIA Display Power Saving technology in Power Options does not seem to make a difference.

Any ideas? Faulty GPU? Unstable drivers?

 

Nope, not a single error for me here, but vanilla Win7 Home Premium here, not Pro. I've played about with drivers, the cpu, the gpu and god-knows what without knowing much and nothing's gone wrong so my laptop seems pretty resilient (which is lucky as I dread dell customer service).

Btw I haven't tried Nvidia Power Saving Technology, but then I've been content with 5-6 hours usage at a time so haven't had a reason to check it yet.

 

lucky you - i had about 15 crashes in the past week at random times...
unfortunately, just scheduled a return to dell (their support via phone was horrible...)

will probably get the model with X4500MHD and 4-cell battery maybe i do not need dedicated graphics after all - i read 4500 has a decent DXVA support and draws GTA3/CS well

anyone knows a good place to get dell discount vouchers? the ones on www.myvouchercodes.co.uk do not seem to work :/

 

lol, nope, far from it. i had a dell d420 that had a 1.2Ghz Core Duo, and it was great for all the surfing, browsing, word, and playing 720p HD.

with the addition of the nvidia graphics to this until, that will add hardware decoding for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG2....the core2duo 1.4 even has a decent shot at bluray playback if you use Media Player Classic - HC with some 3rd party decoders.

with the exceptions being video encoding, and gaming, i used less than this for my main comp for a period of months. ^^

 

Strange request but could someone confirm the dimensions of the 13z - the Australian site lists them as 340 X 240 (13.39 X 9.55) which seems too big and are the same as what's listed for the 14z.

I guess it's a mistake but just want to be sure.

Also is the AC connection socket robust? I've seen some cheap and nasty one's on previous Dells.

Edit: Dell UK lists the dimensions as 330 X 223. Sounds better.

 

There's around a 1/2" bezel for the screen so I guess the size there is right. I spent ages looking for a laptop sleeve with right dimensions and it's quite snug at that size.

Also the AC socket is sturdy for me, it's no magsafe, but it's not giving me any worries.

The size of the model surprised me coming from 4+ yr old laptops - it's thin apart from the extended battery. It's light - even taking into account the battery. But going from old 4:3 screens or whatever they used to be to 16:9 screens with larger Bezel it's essentially very close width to old 15-16" laptop, just a little less length and a lot thinner. It's still fine for travelling for me and perfect mix of large enough to use as my main pc // small enough to happily take around with me.

 

Im torn between getting this and the hpdm3

 

DM3 looks prettier methinks, nice aluminium look and the 6-cell battery doesn't stick out like the 8-cell, but then I was swayed by features and price too - and 8-cell worked out well for me and dell ended up cheaper than any HP setup (su7300/g105m || AMD Neo + 3200/4330) I was tempted by the dm3 with the SP9XXX/g105m but thought that wouldn't only be more expensive, but also ruin the battery-life point of it all, but I've only read a few pages on HP Forums.

I've heard of a few problems with DM3 but I think that's more likely more due to there being more of them than 13z's rather than anything in particular.

Pretty much if looks or battery not sticking out or having amd/ati or intel SP9300/G105m combo mean more to you then should go with HP. Dell option should be cheaper, have longer battery-life and better quality screen, hdd and keyboard, but if I was at a cafe or showing off to friends / using in lectures I might be more swayed by the DM3's good looks and minor differences.

I'd suggest first going to some store to check what the dm3 looks like, the 13z is significantly different looking to the 11z (fortunately). I'm incredibly pleased by the 13z, but I'd imagine I'd still similarly happy with the dm3 if it was similarly spec'd and priced (would love to try AMD/ATI combo if it has 5+ hour battery life, but from my use with 8 cell battery I'd think it'd be stretched to get 4 hours watching videos with 6 cell battery)

 

The intel version of the DM3 doesnt seem to be available in the uk yet, anyone know roughly how the dualcore in the 13s compares to the dm3?

 

The HP has AMD (Neo + 3200 or Neo + 3200/4330 switchable) and intel (su7300/g105m or sp9300/g105m) and maybe some more with x4500hds.

I'd look into the DM3 owners lounge part of the forums, the Neo + 4330/3200 seems pretty impressive and more capable of overclocking than the g105m. My G105m reads as very different to what normal G105m's should do that I'm weary of Overclocking it much (GPU-Z 0.3.6 & 0.3.7 & CPU-Z & Nvidia Control Panel all agree on Clocks which are off, and the first programs list it with 200-series specs...).

Generic assumption is that Intel SU7300 will perform better than Amd Neo and with more battery life and less heat - but 4330 will outperform G105m and is DX10.1. To be honest I'd expect both to end up with very similar user experience using the same programs and playing the same games.

 

So best go for the dell as HP arent offering the lowvoltage culv cpus in the uk atm it seems.

 

JK if it's not a hassle could you measure your 13z and tell me how long and wide it is. I still have some doubts about the correct dimensions and haven't been able to clarify things yet. If it is 340 X 240 then it's too big for me which would be a bummer.

 

Excellent 13 z review here:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=899

 

I'll try measure it tomorrow for you, I've been fixing my old 15" 4:3 aspect ratio laptop, the change to 16:9 definately makes this look as wide including bezel, but a fair bit less height. It is should be inside the dimensions listed on UK dell site - as I used that for my laptop sleeve (it fits in there fine and my workbag fine)

UK Site lists dimensions as below - will measure mine tomorrow:

Dimensions & Weight
Width: 12.98" (329.8mm)
Height: 0.68" (17.2mm) to 1.04" (26.4mm)
Depth: 8.78" (223.0mm)

i.e. slightly below your 340 x 240 limit it seems.

 

UK Site lists dimensions as below - will measure mine tomorrow:

Dimensions & Weight
Width: 12.98" (329.8mm)
Height: 0.68" (17.2mm) to 1.04" (26.4mm)
Depth: 8.78" (223.0mm)

Thanks JK,
I saw the uk specs before that's what made me check more carefully.

 

Thanks for the link, great review! Shame that they didnt get the model with the switchable nvidia gfx tho.