20 out of 20 people found this review helpful.
Nice build, fast and quiet - a few quirks
Date of Review: May 2, 2006
The Bottom Line: Good laptop for the price. 8X DVD Burner (sony) may have issues.
I have owned more than 5 dell laptops in the past. This one is the best one I've owned. My E1505 configuration:
Core Duo 1.86G
15.4" WXGA Screen (Truelife glossy coating)
ATI x1400 256MB Video Card
8X DVD Burner
Bluetooth/Dell 1390 TrueMobile Wireless
60GB 7200 RPM SATA
PHYSICAL SHAPE, SIZE & WEIGHT
This is a fairly large laptop as one can expect since the screen is 15.4" (diagonally). The laptop is a inch or few bigger in length/width and about 1.5" thick. At ~6lbs, it's pretty hefty. I'm not a internet cafe wanderer, but the laptop is heavy to carry around. Though if your looking at Dell's X140 - it's only about 0.5lbs lighter. I do like the look of the laptop though the white trimming looks cheap to me.
FUNCTION
E1505 comes with a decent array of functionality including: 4 usb 2.0 ports, expresscard (hardly used yet - future expansion), firewire, 5-in-1 reader(sd, mmc, xd, mem stick/pro), media access buttons, vga/svideo out, modem/ethernet, and wireless. All of which work well.
Processor:
I like having dual-core processors. This makes for doing simultaneous multi-tasking much quicker. For instance, I can burn a dvd, watch a video and surf at the same time hardly taxing the processor. With the task manager I can also force certain applications to affinity with a particular core, allowing me to reserve one core for other tasks. Excellent!
The fans are usually inaudible, unless I'm at 50-100% process utilization and even then the fans aren't obtrusive.
Memory and Video:
No matter what video card option one chooses for this laptop, the video card will lock and consume a portion of the RAM. Dell does not indicate, but the x1400 will consume 128MB System RAM (256MB total video ram combined), x1300 = 64MB System RAM (128MB total video ram combined) and Intel GMA950=128-256MB (all System Ram). One will need to take that in consideration when deciding on how much RAM to purchase. The laptop has 2 So-dimm expansions for memory. My configuration yielded one slot filled. Dell's configuration shows which memory configuration will utilize how many slots. Keep in mind, the videocard is NOT upgradable after purchase.
The WXGA 15.4" (1280x800)screen is excellent, much brighter than all the dell laptops I have owned. I was hesitant to purchase a TrueLife (glossy) screen, but I'm amazed at the clarity now. Another benefit of the glossy screens is that they are more visible in sunlight, paradoxically (one would think not since the extreme glare).
Two reasons I didn't go for the WSXGA+ screen (1650x1400). One, I've lived that life with my previous dell and the fonts are tiny. Dell attempts to correct this problem by increasing the DPI from 96 to 120, but that will cause problems to certain websites among other issues. My eyes are pretty good and I want to keep them that way. Second, the maximum performance video card, ati x1400, appears to only support the current games smoothly up to 1280x800 and will only get worse as games become more complex.
The WSXGA screen runs natively at 1650x1400 which is much higher than what the maximum performing videocard can support. So why not drop the resolution on the WSXGA (1650x1400) to 1280x800? The reason is that if you run LCD screens at a lower resolution than native, the image will be far less sharp. But some do prefer smaller fonts and the high resolution screen does excellent for video/photo applications.
SOUND:
The speakers sound decent thought the default HD Soundcard works very well. I'm comparing the sound card with a non-HD soundcard that's in my Dell Inspiron 9300. The first the I noticed was less pops here and there from the system engaging the sound card. The music/sounds appear to have less noise. Supposedly, HD soundcards allows the system to project different sounds though different outputs such as: watch a movie through the speakers simultaneously listening to music through the headphones. I've yet to test these features, however.
HARD DRIVE:
I opted for the 60GB 7200RPM SATA Hard drive. It's fairly fast though not as fast as a desktop 7200rpm drive. I ran some benchmarks it it was approximately 75% of the performance of a desktop 7200rpm. One thing to note, the laptop ships with dell's restore utility, which utilizes ~5-10GB of your HD for restoring the laptop to it's original state (OS,applications, etc.) That space is not accessible and the drive will showup 5-10GB smaller to Windows.
DVD BURNER 8X Dual Layer (sony):
The is probably the quirkiest component of the system and I might have a flawed drive. When I was installing a mult-disc game, if I hit the eject button before the spin-down period (which I could only tell though listening and watching the light), the game will not recognize the subsequent disc and I would have to start back over. This happened to me after the 4th disc in a 5-disc series, requiring me to uninstall the application and then re-install it. I've not had this experience in all my prior computers.
MEDIA DIRECT BUTTON: This is a dell feature which allows one to play a CD/DVD without the need to boot Windows. Works well, though I typically listen to music in windows so I can do work at the same time.
CONCLUSION:
Excellent laptop for the price. The 8X DVD burner (sony) may have some issues.
