Dell XPS M1530 First Impressions and of course, Vista

Barring any unforeseen breakdowns, the Dell experience ended up being solid. The estimated delivery date of 30 days was way off. It took 8. I even delayed the courier by a day so I could take delivery. Bear in mind however that apart from upgrading the screen everything else was uncustomised, so perhaps that makes a difference.

One word of warning if interested in this machine. Most reviews talk of high quality noise cancellation ear buds included in the package, as well as an XPS branded CD holder (of less interest). Neither were included in my package, and whilst I will put in a call to see if I can wangle something, I expect to be told that they weren't listed in the quote. Something to ask about up front i'd say.

It does come with a perfectly good sleeve which barely gets a mention as you're encouraged to buy a heavy duty carry case. The sleeve is actually slightly heavier duty than I had expected, although it's not going to be able to carry anything besides the machine itself.

Moving past accessories, lets talk aesthetics. It's a very nice looking laptop. On the inside it looks very much like a Macbook Pro but less bland. I thought i'd have preferred the red option, but now I see the machine in the flesh I think black was a good choice, as the exterior matches the interior trim. None of this is hugely important, but let's not pretend this isn't a factor.

Getting into the detail: I find this screen fantastic. I was scared into upgrading to the higher resolution screen by a post in a forum pointing out that 1200x800 is the widescreen equivalent to 1024x768, which is pretty much the bare minimum resolution acceptable any more. I didn't quite twig that 1920x1200 is significantly higher. Even higher than the resolution i've been using on my 22" desktop display in fact. Everything is very small, but that gives me loads of space. The screen, as pointed out elsewhere, is a little shiny, but I like this.

I'm a little disappointed that the media buttons don't seem to be willing to drive third party software, but I won't admit defeat on that just yet.

The trackpad is smaller than I'm used to, but its only been 3-4 hours and I'm already getting used to it. The keyboard layout is great. I can't recall ever taking to a laptop keyboard as quickly as this one.

First impressions of Vista? I like it. Bear in mind this only refers to time spent setting up, installing a few applications, a bit of browsing the file system and control panel etc. Up to this point, I haven't seen anything that XP did better than this does. Complaints over speed aren't going to be something I can comment on as this is a new and reasonably well specified machine. I can certainly tell i'd have no chance of running it on the machine i'm leaving behind.

It's a nicer looking environment than XP and Ubuntu, more akin to Leopard, whether anybody cares to agree or not. The Alt-Windows-Key task switching method looks great but is more than just eye candy. The mind has an image of the window I want to return to, and this allows me to select it from flying slabs (apart from Winamp which appears in it's unskinned unextended form for some reason). Maybe OS X did this first. I have no idea.

Certainly my original thoughts on perhaps installing XP as the second OS after Ubuntu on this machine are changing. I think I will install Hardy in the next few weeks, but I'm going to keep Vista. I always thought all the hatred for this product seemed to lack substance, so I'm not in the least bit surprised by my own reaction. It was entirely expected.

So, mostly pros so far all around. A few cons:

- I cannot get the fingerprint reader to accept my swipe as being good enough. I am wondering if it works properly, but I don't really need or want to use it, and it would be an enormous ball ache to have to send this back just for that. Hopefully I'll try again with more success.

- The internal speakers are only average, which I was prepared for by many reviews. They are perfectly fine for what they're intended.

Things i'm looking forward to trying:

- HDMI output to an HDTV which I'll eventually buy.
- Playing more with the webcam
- Spending more time not at the desk in my bedroom.
- Figuring out how to have speakers to plug this into in the living room without it looking messy.

So, that's the first impression. Based on almost a day's use, I don't regret buying this machine in the slightest. It cost just over £800 all in. Still quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent Mac.

PS - if anybody knows anything more about the bundle stuff I mentioned earlier, i'd appreciate a comment, cheers.