Guest review written by Alex Duong.

So I purchased the Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, the newest edition in Dell’s lineup of business laptops since I own an older Inspiron laptop model and it never failed me. I looked around for all different brands before choosing Dell again just to see if I could do better with the same or even $200 dollars more on the price, but I just can’t find anything cheaper with such a great host of features and excellent specs.

Upon ordering my dell laptop, I heard some people say Dell told them the Vostro laptop shipments are postponed until late August; I had ordered mine on the 12th of July. Of course I didn’t want it to be delayed, so I called them. It ended up that it is delayed due to the 800 MHz FSB processors that are only on the Vostros. Earliest shipment is August 1st. So I waited a couple of weeks, determined to get my laptop, after two weeks they called me telling me my laptop is in production and won’t ship till the 13th of August! I immediately called Dell only to be transferred 4 times before reaching someone knowledgeable about the process. I complained about the long wait, he assured me that it will be shipped on the 30th of July and that he had called the manufacturing plant to confirm. On top of that he upgraded my shipping to 2nd day for free! Now that’s great service! Even though it took a couple of transferring to reach someone knowledgeable, once I did and got his personal extension, it was easy to reach him. So my advice when ordering with Dell, make sure you find someone that knows the stuff and keep their extension just in case you want to get some questions answered, or else prepare for the wait.

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way and you have been warned about the customer service issues with Dell, let’s move on to the computer. I received my order from DHL, the laptop was nicely wrapped in a huge box, and then inside was another box holding a foam box that was holding the laptop with a plastic bag covering the laptop making sure no damage was to occur. Pretty great packaging.

Pictures of the Vostro:

The laptop is nothing different from the picture on Dell, sleek matte black finish on the outside with a brushed aluminum Dell logo in the middle make it look classy and professional. The laptop looks exactly like the new Inspirons without the color options to choose from. Open it up and you’re greeted with a metallic black layout, the screen has very little flex if any at all compared to the older Inspirons. The keys felt solid and everything in the laptop is incased in mylar for spill prevention. The laptop is shock proof and the entire casing is magnesium alloy. Now it’s not a light laptop so don’t think you’ll be running the 800yard dash with it in your arms. It comes weighing in at 6.5lbs! A heavy weight compared to Sony and HPs, but no feat for my muscular biceps…hahaha. The noise level on my Vostro is no different than the Inspirons, so quiet you won’t notice it. There are a total of 4 USB ports, 2 on the right side, 2 in the back. The DVD is situated on the right side along with the firewire, VGA port, ENET port and 8-in-1 media slot. On the left is the express card slot, headphone and microphone plugs, vent and WiFi Catcher. The back consists of the Phone Jack, AC Power, USB ports and S-Video ports. No HDMI ports here for those of you that want the super crisp big screen conversions. In the front panel is located the media buttons and underneath them sits the Infrared Red receiver.

You’ll find that the touchpad is a bit smaller, but detects your finger much better compared to the older Inspiron, the two touchpad buttons are softer and doesn’t make the annoying cheap clicking sounds. The power button at the top center is easy to the touch and requires minimal pressure and beside that on the left is the Media Direct button from Dell which allows you to access your media without booting the operation system. Everything else is self explanatory. One gripe I do have about the new Dell laptops is, and this includes the Inspirons as well is the memory slot locations. There is one below the keyboard; yes below the keyboard…why they put it there I have no freaking clue. The other one is located underneath the computer along with the CMOS battery. I didn’t have a problem upgrading my 1GB to 4GB, but removing the keyboard is not for the faint of heart. However, if you follow the instructions on Dell’s manual, there shouldn’t be any problems, took me about 5 mins to change both the memory slots.

My configuration consists of:

VOSTRO

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 1.6 GHz
• Nvidia GeForce 8600m GT w/256mb and up to 1GB with Turbocache
• 15.4inch UltraSharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 120GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Basic
• Standard 1 year warranty
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at PC4200 533 MHz

INSPIRON 1520

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2.0 GHz
• ATI Radeon 1400x w/256mb
• 15inch Ultrasharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 160GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Premium
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM at PC5300 667 MHz

INSPIRON 6000

• Pentium M 1.7 GHz
• ATI Radeon X300 w/128mb
• 15inch Ultrasharp WXGA+ Widescreen 1650×1080 res
• 120GB HDD 5400rpm
• 8x DVD-RW Burner
• Vista Home Premium
• 2GB DDR2 SDRAM PC5300 667 MHz

STARTING UP:
Turn the power on and you’ll be greeted with the sexy blue leds on everything from the HDD lights to the battery light. (It’s a refreshing look from the last year’s dull green leds on the Inspirons). The computer was of decent speed when I first started running it on Vista Basic, but I wanted everything so I quickly upgraded with Vista Ultimate which I purchased from my University at $35! It quickly became slow due to the inefficient memory that came with my laptop, knowing that this was going to happen I had already purchased a 4GB OCZ DDR2 PC5400 memory sticks (2×2GB). Yes my ram is overclocked from the factory. It cost me an addition $250, but is well worth it for the trusted brand and the speed. My ass immediately noticed the improvement in speed. Windows started up without hesitation, LostPlanet played decently, while still not able to conjure up a decent 60fps I was able to play the graphics intensive game at low settings. I then tested Transformers, which ran perfectly at Ultrasetting and Quake 4 Arena again ran perfectly at High Setting, but slowed down a bit at Ultra setting. Now remember that Vista can only take up 3.5GB of RAM max, but since I have turbocache on my graphics card, 768mb of my ram filled that up to 1GB of graphics memory, which worked out perfectly. Well enough of my opinion on the laptop, let’s see some benchmarks right? Below are several benchmarks that I composed from various programs compared to several other machines.

PERFORMANCE TESTS:

As you can see the Vostro with 4GB ram is pretty darn fast in 3dMarks with the 2 GHz Core2Duo slightly ahead. Processor speed makes a huge difference here.

Here the 2 GHz zooms past the Vostro and the Pentium M. The 4GB ram didn’t make a big difference in this test. So processor speed is what you want if you want a great future proof PC (bundled with an excellent graphics card of course).

GAME TESTS:

I won’t be doing any timedemos as I was hoping to since the commands specified by the websites I found seem to work only for the full game, I was unable to use those commands to my advantage. However, I did play Doom 3 and Quake 4 Arena and it did run very smooth at High Quality 1024×768 res. So don’t worry, you won’t have any problems running either of those games. I also play Warcraft 3 at Max settings consistently without any hesitations so no worries there either. The only thing you’d have to worry about is the 60hz refresh rate on laptop monitors while playing FPS games.

CONCLUSION:

While the Vostro doesn’t come with HD or BluRay DVD players, it is really the exact same thing as an Inspiron if not better. The tests that I did only proves that the Vostro is identical to the Inspirons be it each of my system configuration is different; the performance on all three is exactly what you would see when compared to an Inspiron. At a $100 price difference between an equally built Inspiron and Vostro, I’d definitely pick the Vostro over the Inspiron any day. Pros and Cons of the Vostro compared to the Inspiron of the same specs are listed below:

Pros of Vostro:

• Spill Proof Keyboard (Entire system overlayed with Mylar)
• Shock Proof HDD
• Full Magnesium Alloy Casing
• No Trialware
• Black Casing

Pros of Inspiron:

• HD or BluRay DVD Rom option
• Personal Cover Color Choices
• HD Screen
• Trialware

As some of you that want the colorful laptops that bring out your personality, then the Inspiron is the way to go as the Vostro only comes in black. For me, I prefer the black because I think it looks sexy and professional. The Inspirons’ silver paint fades in time anyway. =P The choice is yours, if you want to pay 700 more for BluRay drives, go for the Inspiron, but until I see the difference between BluRay and DVDs with my own eyes, I’ll love my Vostro just the way it is.

Filed under: Dell, Laptop, Vostro