Living in a tiny apartment, my husband and I don’t have room for two desktop computers.  It is easiest for me to use a laptop as my primary computer. Luckily, a few years ago I purchased a laptop to keep at my now-husband’s apartment, so it was an easy transition. I overused my old Dell Inspiron 6000. It was falling apart! The hinges loosened and cracked, in addition to some more minor malfunctions.  It became very apparent that a replacement was in order.

Purchasing a laptop is a big project for me.  My laptop must be able to fulfill all my computer needs. I like to multitask. At any given time I have 5-6 programs or windows up. It’s not unusual for me to work on a review in Microsoft Word with several browser windows, iTunes, and photo editing software running in the background. I enjoy playing games and play a few massive multiplayer online role playing games, necessitating a system with plenty of memory and powerful graphics. My interest in digital photography also necessitates higher end graphics, along with a large hard drive. I like to keep my photos on the computer for easy access and it also allows me to have another copy of the data on my external hard drive in case of a crash. I also wanted to consider the option of mobile broadband connections to allow me to be productive on my commute.

One would think this would be an easy task. After all, there are plenty of gaming laptops available in electronics stores. While this is true, I’ve noticed that almost all gaming laptops sold in stores have 17 inch screens. It seems manufacturers think that all gamers want the largest screen possible. While I’m sure some do, large screens add a significant amount of weight to the laptop. I’m a tiny female and a ten pound laptop would be very difficult for me to commute with. I decided that custom building a laptop was my best option. I chose to purchase the laptop through Dell because I loved my laptop and liked the options they offered. My new Dell XPS M1530 Laptop is everything I hoped it would be.

Design

The design of my Dell XPS M1530 can definitely be described as sleek. It is thinner than previous laptops I have owned, weighing less than five pounds. My last laptop weighed around seven pounds and I was thrilled about how much more portable this one is. Two pounds really does make a difference. Even the battery is smaller, being about 2 ½ inches by 8 inches. This is a welcome change as my last laptop battery could have easily weighed the same as a small laptop by itself!

This laptop is available in a number of colors and designs. I chose to spend the little bit of extra money to get the midnight blue casing, just to make it a bit easier to distinguish from my husband’s laptops.  It’s a very pretty shade of blue.

The laptop is laid out as you would expect most laptops to be. The ports are located along the front and side edges of the laptop. The left edge houses a port for the power supply, along with an Ethernet and 1394 port. Also on this edge is a VGA port for easy hookup to a monitor. An HDMI port is located on this side as well. Two USB 2.0 ports are on this edge while another is positioned on the right edge. Three USB ports is at least one too few for my usage. When I’m using it at home, I usually have a mouse and chill pad plugged in, which leaves me only one port for other peripherals. Four would have allowed me to plug my iPod and flash drive in too. I’m considering buying a chill pad with a USB hub to alleviate this problem. The right edge of the laptop is home to the slot loading DVD+/-RW drive and the switch that enables and disables the wireless internet.

The M1530 features a 15.4 inch widescreen with a 2 megapixel camera built in. I chose the LED LCD option in hopes of it being lighter and brighter. It is the brightest laptop screen I’ve ever seen. At maximum brightness, I can even see the screen in bright sunlight. The brightness is adjustable, which helps conserve the battery life. When I’m running the laptop on battery power, I usually keep it on the second and third brightest settings. The picture is clear and crisp. My only complaint about the screen is that it picks up fingerprints very easily. They’re easily removed with screen cleaner, but are a bit of an inconvenience.

The hinge between the screen and laptop base is designed differently than my previous laptop. There seems to be much more support and I think it would prevent the hinge problem I eventually experienced. Adjacent to the hinge on the base is the laptop speaker. Below the speaker are short cut buttons for ejecting disks, media playback, and volume, in addition to the power button.

The laptop features a QWERTY keyboard without the number pad. Some of the keys, such as the home, end, and delete keys, are arranged on the side instead of their normal positions to fit in the space. All of the keys are full size. I found the keyboard very easy to adjust to from my last laptop. The mousepad is located under the keyboard. I found it to be very responsive and like the horizontal and vertical scroll short cuts. A fingerprint reader is located under the keyboard as well.

Primary Configuration

The performance of this laptop is excellent. Being customizable, the laptops ability depends on how you configure it. I’ve been extremely happy with this configuration.

I chose the Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9300 after checking reviews on all of the processor options offered. This one received sparkling reviews across the board. It operates at 2.5GHz with 800 MHz front side bus and a 6MB Level 2 Cache. It was an easy decision to choose this one over the processor below it, as the simple upgrade doubled the Level 2 Cache. I chose not to get the highest processor, as the specifications only differed by 0.1 GHz in the processor speed. I felt like such a small jump wasn’t worth $200.

I chose to upgrade the random-access memory (RAM) available for this system: 4 gigabytes (GB) DDR2 667 MHz 2 Dimm. It’s very easy to have too little memory, but never too much. This is especially true for users who like to multitask. The system is upgradeable to 8 GB of RAM, but at the time, this was the highest option available.

There were a number of hard drive options for this laptop. I chose the 250 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive. My old laptop had a small, 80GB hard drive. This time I wanted a drive that would allow me to keep a copy of my data on hand at all times. I decided it was also worth the money to upgrade to a 7200 RPM drive over the 5600 RPM option. I felt like upgrading to 320 GB would be overkill for my needs. I seriously considered the 128 GB solid state hard drive that was available, but even with faster access times and more durable date, I couldn’t justify $450 for the upgrade. It was even less worth it due to the smaller storage space. 128 GB would have been insufficient for my needs.

Being a gamer, video was high on my priority list. I chose the highest video card option offered: the 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. Sound is less important to me as laptop speakers rarely do a good sound card justice. I only use the audio for games. If I want to play music, I usually use my husband’s desktop or our iPod speakers. I chose to stick with the onboard audio (Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy) rather than upgrade the sound, though it would have been a $50 upgrade.

For my optical drive, I chose the 8x DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive. There was a blu-ray option but I didn’t think I would get enough use out of it to justify the price. I don’t see myself burning them anytime soon and we have a blu-ray player at home. I do occasionally watch DVDs on my laptop and burn CDs.

Wireless is my internet lifeline at home so I chose to upgrade to the Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini card. We currently have a G router but may be upgrading to N in the near future. I wanted to be prepared for that. I also chose to add a Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband (EVDO Rev A) card. I have a long commute and I liked the idea of being productive in transit. This option was $125, in addition to the monthly fee based on your provider and plan. In my case, I chose the higher allowance plan (5GB) for $59.99 per month. For those who plan to use it less often, there is a 50 MB for $39.99 per month plan, but this is a very low limit to exceed. For someone using it so infrequently as to not surpass this, it may not be worth the $40 per month charge.

The system came with Windows Vista Premium Home Edition installed and I also opted for Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition.

Performance

Now that you have a basic idea of the specifications of this laptop, you probably want to know how it performs. Thus far the system has performed very well in every circumstance.

General operations are lightening fast. The system takes about one minute to boot up and performs other tasks proportionately. Programs open instantly. I’m able to navigate and search the hard drive with almost no lag time.

Multitasking is easy for this system due to the processor and memory. At any given time I have 6-7 programs open at a time. I often play games while having 4-5 browser windows up, with Microsoft Word and Excel documents and iTunes open in the background. The computer never seems to slow. The only time I ever encounter problems is with Internet Explorer with certain add-ons, but that’s the buggy browser’s fault rather than the computer. A more recent switch to Mozilla Firefox has seemed to alleviate the issues.

This system really shines with gaming. City of Heroes and City of Villains look amazing. I consistently play the games at the highest graphic settings with no lag. While my old laptop originally played the games well, time and graphics upgrades left me playing it at the lowest settings. I can now see textures and effects I never new existed. I’m especially thrilled about this since these games have one of the most customizable character creation applications available. I can now fully appreciate these options and design costumes based on texture too! Warhammer Online also runs very well on the system. The graphics card and screen really do justice to both games. It runs a bit hot during game place so I keep it on a chill pad to prevent overheating. I haven’t experience any problems due to this and the laptop has never had any major temperature issues.

My Dell XPS M1530 has also served my media needs well. I can store a backup of all of my pictures and music, with plenty of extra space. The burner is faster than my last one, which was especially helpful before our wedding. Our favors got a bit out of hand (we had three) and one was a CD with our wedding song and all of our guests’ wedding songs. Because there were so many, they were double CDs, requiring us to burn 200 copies of the CD. I was able to complete the project in less than two days with this system. I like the slot loading feature, as it seems to load and eject discs faster than a tray based optical drive. I also like the short cut buttons. They make playback and ejecting disks that much faster. Being a sucker for pretty lights, I also like that they light up blue upon being touched.  Music playback is adequate. Don’t expect great sound quality – the speakers won’t even play that loud, but it has been fine for my usage.

My wireless internet works well using both cards. At home, I am connected to our wireless network. On the go, I am able to connect to Verizon’s wireless broadband service. I like that this functionality was integrated into the laptop rather than requiring an additional piece of hardware. Dell provides software to manage both and seems to do so efficiently.

There are two standard features included with all Dell XPS M1530 laptops: a fingerprint reader and the Dell Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module. I have no immediate plans to use either, but should that change I will update the review.

Battery Life

I ordered this laptop with the basic, 56 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion P Primary Battery. Depending on my screen brightness and usage, I get up to 4 hours with this battery. I use the laptop on the bus for word processing. I usually keep the screen just below full brightness and have the wireless internet connected. Under these circumstances, I typically get 2 hours of battery life. It takes about 1 ½ hours to charge fully with the included AC adapter.

Software

Changing to Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 were both unwelcome changes that I’m still getting accustomed to. I find Vista irritating when I’m trying to navigate through my files. Microsoft Office has been severely changed and, in my opinion, not for the better. Thus far I’ve found it very difficult to navigate. I’m hoping to pick up a “For Dummies” book to learn the program inside and out.

The system also came pre-loaded with a 2 year subscription to McAfee Security 9.0. Thus far I’ve found the program to be effective and unobtrusive. I’m not sure if it’s actually programmed this way or if the system is powerful enough to keep me from noticing it running in the background.

Durability

Though I never intentionally rough up my electronics (and highly recommend against it), I have knocked this laptop around occasionally. It seems quite durable and doesn’t have a scratch on it. I added two years of Accidental Coverage to this laptop just in case, so I have some degree of peace of mind.

Warranty and Support

I purchased the two year extended warranty on this laptop, but I did have a problem with it right out of the box. The Verizon Wireless Broadband did not work out of box. The Dell ordering process allows you to pre-activate the hardware and link it to an existing cellular phone account. We did this and it appeared on our account with a number assigned to it. Upon receiving the laptop, I followed the instructions for the final step of the activation process and attempted to connect with no success. I downloaded patches from Dell’s website to no avail. I literally spent hours on the phone with Verizon and Dell going back and forth about the issue. Dell wanted to blame Verizon. Verizon was sure it was Dell and their case was more convincing – if our account was fine, it should be working. Their national service wasn’t down and therefore, it was not their end. Convincing Dell of that was not so easy. Their tech department was helpful, but no willing to take responsibility. Finally, we took the laptop to Verizon to have it inspected. Verizon noted on the account that this was a hardware issue. On our last call to Dell, they called Verizon and found out this information. The next day (New Year’s Eve – yes, sadly this dragged on for months due to the phone calls mixed with my crazy work schedule and our wedding) a technician came out to our apartment and installed a brand new card. It has worked since that day on with no issues. We’ve been very happy with it ever since.

The laptop came with an owner’s manual and Dell Resource Back-up DVD. Besides the aforementioned problem, I have had no problems with this laptop. The computer also came with a 50GB Datasafe online back-up, which I’ve used as an additional back-up for some of my data.

I also added 2 years of LoJack protection, because it was very inexpensive and made me feel a little more secure about traveling with the laptop.

Price

Dell releases an overabundance of coupon codes. For this purchase, I was able to find a 25% off coupon. The cost of my Dell XPS M1530 before taxes and shipping (found a free shipping code too) was $1839.00. So far it has been worth the cost.

**UPDATE**
This computer turned out to be quite the lemon. Within a year and a half, I had three service calls for overheating. The temperature was so hot at times that it warped the metal around the CPU vent. Dell tried replacing the motherboard and heat sink at first, then eventually replaced the motherboard, heat sink, and wireless card. The technician I dealt with pointed out that the flat-bottom design isn't conducive to effective cooling, but said that he didn't usually see such massive overheating on the model I owned. Dell eventually decided to replace the system under the warranty. I was sad to give this machine up because it ran so well (aside from the heat issue). Overall, I would still recommend it, especially with the warranty.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 1839
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50