Dell Studio 15 arrived....first impression--meh

OK, here it is. My neice wanted a laptop for school and was pretty adamant that it be pretty, so the Dell Studio naturally became an option. Her biggest criteria was stylish, followed by battery life. I've been playing with it all afternoon (more on that in a minute)

First, to answer a few obvious questions.

It's a fairly basic machine

Flamingo Pink
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T8100 (2.1GHz/800Mhz FSB/3MB cache)
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1
Hi Resolution/Bright, glossy widescreen 15.4 WLED display (1440x900)
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2
160GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
8X Slot Load CD / DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive) 8XDVDRW
Dell 1510 Wireless-N Card
Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
85 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (9 cell)
High Definition Audio 2.0
FINGER PRINT READER
backlit Keyboard


It arrived very quickly, about 10 days from order to the doorstep. I confess, I expected that the 9-cell battery and LED screen to slow things down, but I give Dell props for getting it here quickly.


BUILD AND DESIGN

Falmingo Pink--actually, a very pleasing dusty rose. Quite attractive. It feels like a rubberized coating more than paint. Seems scratch resistant.

It feels "plasticky", and somewhat "hollow". It's not the worst laptop I've ever dealt with, and is for the most part pretty solid. The base is rigid, but the palm rest feels light. And a little too warm to the touch after some time.

The hinge mechanism for the screen is solid without being too tight

Packaged well from what she told me.

The keyboard flexes quite a bit in the center.

The touch sensitive multimedia pad at the top also flexes quite a bit and feels a little flimsy, though upon removal (more in a moment) it is reasonably thick and shouldn't break

Ports are adequately placed, though one usb port near the slot-loading dvd worries me a little....need to make sure whatever is in there isn't too close when loading and unloading.

The LED screen is freaking gorgeous. One of the nicest I have ever seen. Bright, sharp, responsive. Good side viewing; not so good viewing from the top and bottom as you tilt the screen. Overall, very nice.

Speakers
Whoa, these are unbelievably bad sounding...tinny, tinny, tinny. I've got a 5 year old sager with much better speakers than this.


Touchpad

And now we begin to get to why I have my neice's 5 day old laptop (you couldn't pry a new notebook from my hands without a problem)

About 5 days into ownership, the touchpad and keyboard suddenly stopped working properly. With the touchpad, the mouse cursor stuck to the side of the screen and wouldn't move, or would move eradically.

Also, the 6,7,y,u,h,j,n,m keys began to act oddly--you have to pound the keyboard to get them to work--an issue made even worse by the fact that her chosen password includes several of those characters and she wasn't aware they were not typing and couldn't get into her machine.

And, the multimedia touchpad wasn't working.

Attached an external mouse and keyboard, we uninstalled the troublesome devices in device manager and rebooted--no luck. We reinstalled the drivers from the dell site and flashed the bios--no luck.

Got on with tech support and he suggested the same thing even though we said we already did it.

Tech support guy wanted my to pry the faulty keys off, but I thought that was a bad idea (these keyboards are too easy to break in my opinion), then he suggested I remove the touch sensitive multimedia pad, keyboard and reattach all the ribbons.

So, five days old and we're already opening her up. Sigh.

Fortunately, removing all the above DID solve the problem (or you wouldn't be reading this, or you would be reading it without the 6,7,y.u.h.j.n.m letters and numbers

Word to the wise--while the keyboard ribbon is easy to remove and reattach, the locking mechanism for the touchpad and multimedia control panel was a bit of a bear to work with.

No benchmarks as this is not really a high end machine worth benching.

 

Forgot battery life.....pretty nice...went more than four plus hours and still had plenty of juice left when I opted to update the bios and had to switch to AC for it

 

That's impressive - a 9 cell battery order coming in 10 days. I canceled my first order for a few reasons(mainly because when I ordered I knew nothing about laptops), and because the 9 cell caused huge delays(was 12 days in and still in production). I found out about the deal and upgraded everything for the same exact price. My ship date is a week earlier than my original ship date.

I sure hope I don't have those problems - I fear having to open up my first laptop.

 

I opened it this morning! No fear! Dell's manual is on the website, and it isn't hard to open it, anyways I "repaired" the keyboard flex (rubber pad, guitar pick, some folded tiny pieces of paper...hahaha), it doesn't flex that much anymore!
Laters!

 

It's not hard to open...two screws beneath the battery to remove the top plate, , remove the plastic keyboard surround (pop up with a plastic tool) then three screws to tilt the keyboard up and remove.

The connection to the multimedia touchsensitive pad is a pain to remove and reinsert, but the keyboard connector was very easy (the power supply for lighted keyboard is seperate).

The real pain is that neither the touchsensitive pad or keyboard were fully inserted--I shouldn't have to open a laptop for something like this.

I'm sure that it is a rarity, though.

If it were a laptop for me, though, I don't think I could get by the dreadful speakers. The longer I have played with this, the more stupifying it is getting. How could they put such crap speakers in here? I have this old am transister radio from the 1960s and it sounds about the same....very sad.

 

i think people who got the studio made an early choice, dell sold you their beta machines. im sure they will get much better after a year or 2.

my 1720 has been there for a couple years and now that i got it i think they almost fixed all flaws.

 

Got mine yesterday night (Spring Green). Totally agree with you on everything - terrible speakers, lots of flex in the keyboard, great screen (even the non-WLED one that I have)

 

Levon, I don't see these as bugs--these are deliberate decisions that were made in the design process.

A flaw is something like pressure on a hinge that leads to stress fractures after a while. A choice is to put in cheap, cheap, cheap speakers.

The gauge of the plastic for the wrist rest and surrounding plastic could have been made 10 percent thicker and led to a much more substantial feel.

I recognize the laptop for what it is...it is an OK laptop beyond the intolerable speakers. It is intended for people who want something a little different looking, but aren't particularly interested in quality.

There is a lot to like for that crowd, however, the styling and name brand are driving this price up beyond real value--and Dell is counting on that.

I have played with 1720s, and an m1330 xps--these are very nice machines comparatively speaking.

My keyboard, touchpad and multimedia pad issues aside, if I had to give this notebook a grade it would be a tepid C+