As I have posted in my previous post, I am a big fan of portable laptop computers.  My first laptop was an HP and it was big.  Not to sound like a wussy and all, but carrying that thing around campus was quite a challenge, and it was only 15.4" :D.  I am not much of a gamer, so my need for a heavy-duty, 256MB video card laptop wasn't necessary, so I opted for the Dell M1330.  When I received my M1330 last week, I took a few pictures, but haven't had the time to post anything up about it, so here it is.

 

No doubt you've read about my DHL's experience for this particular laptop, but I received my laptop before I left the house last Monday morning.  The box looked rather untouched except for the opposite side, which seems a little dent.  I doubt it affected much as the items inside the box are well packaged.  The content of this shipment box are two smaller boxes on the inside.  The bigger of the two boxes (left) contains the laptop while the smaller box contains accessories.  Let's take a look what's inside of the small box first, shall we?

 

Inside of the smaller box contains:
CD/DVD: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, Vista OS Recovery, Adobe Premiere Elements 4, Drivers and Utilities, Roxio, MediaDirect
AC Adapter
Pair of earphones
IR Remote Control
Dell User's Manual Notebook
9-cell battery (Only if you ordered one)

I was quite surprised that they included a notebook to keep all of this in.  When you open the notebook, the left side contains the user's manual, while the right side has a place for you to keep your CD/DVD.  It even has a wipecloth for you to wipe your computer down with.

This isthe remote control that is included with the laptop.  Hah, I didn't even realized I took the shot upside down, maybe I'll fix it when I have the time, but not at the moment.  You can use this as a means for MCE while viewing your movies.  Even though I will not use this laptop much, but I think the remote will come in handy for powerpoint presentations.  This remote can pick up signal from about 10ft away, of course, since it is IR, you would need to have a line-of-sight for it to work.  The nice thing about this remote controll is the way it is designed to fit into the ExpressCard slot on the laptop.

 

 

 

This is the AC Adapter for the M1330, it is rather small.  The dimension for this thing is 3" x 1.75" x 1".  It fits almost anywhere :).  The difference between this adapter and my 700m adapter, except that it's half the size, is the plug itself.  The plug for the M1330 is octogonal while for the 700m it is circular.  I had really wanted to be able to use the 700m's plug on this at home while carrying the smaller plug with me when I go to school.  I was that the 700m's plug would not work.  More on this in another post though.

 Now that we've gotten most of the accessories stuff out of the way, let's take a look at the laptop.

 

 

 

The laptop came with standard packaging, but another thing that took me by surprise is the sleeve that the laptop came in.  This sleeve has a magnet inside of the flap, so there are no buttons you have to deal with.  I am unsure what the sleeve is made of, but I find myself getting shocked a few times when I touched it, of course, after moving around in carpet wearing a woolen sweater.  But I wonder what the composition of the sleeve is and if it was designed that way to prevent static shock to the laptop.  Who knows, but it sure surprised me when I got zapped.

 

Initial reaction when I took the M1330 out of the sleeve was WOW!  The design was sleek!  I saw some pictures on the internet and thought that the rear was really thick, well, it really isn't.  It's just that the front is really thin so it makes it look like the rear is thick.  Nothing too ugly in my opinion.

The aluminum palm rest is beautiful!  When I first looked, I thought that the keyboard was also aluminum, but it isn't, it sure looks aluminum from far away though.  The keyboard looks slightly beveled, and they keys are slightly stiff.  Typing on the 700m a lot, I find this keyboard to be sturdier, quieter, but stiffer.  I guess I don't mind the stiffness much, but it feeling more resistance on the typing felt odd the first few hours at it.  As you can tell from the picture, the touchpad is quite small for the laptop itself.  I really liked the Apple's design for the touchpad, wide and allows you more flexibility.  The touchpad buttons, although I don't use them much, feels much better than the 700m.  The 700m's buttons feel really cheap while this one is light yet firm.  It also doesn't make an obnoxiously loud click noise when you push on it.  Along the top of the keyboards are two buttons, the left one is for MediaDirect and the right one is to power the laptop on and off.  On the right of the power button though are capacitance touch buttons.  These things are amazing!  You just need to slightly touch them and they respond.  These buttons eject, reverse, stop, play/pause, fast forward, mute, volume down, volume up.  Below the down arrow button is the biometric fingerprint reader.  The way that it was designed, makes it hard for the reader to actually read your fingerprint.  The well that it sits in is rather deep so only parts of the finger can be read.

On top of the bright LED screen is the webcam.  Although I don't have much use for a webcam, but my girlfriend would like it for us to be able to chat when we are apart this summer.  We shall see how that goes.  Both sides of the webcam is the microphone array.  The design helps with filtering out background noise.  I don't think I would use this very often, but I will one of these days and you'll be reading about my thoughts on it.

 

 

The top is the left side of the laptop, while the right is the right side of the laptop.  From left to right for the left side is the power plug, VGA output, 10/100 Ethernet, USB port, HDMI, and 1394 (FireWire).  Although I forgot to take the picture for the whole of the right side, you can see that there's another USB port here near the bottom and on top of it, the slot load CD/DVD drive.  Not pictured is the left, which contains the slot for the ExpressCard.  Switch for bluetooth on and off, and the switch for the wireless card.  Of the few things I dislike about this laptop is that the slot load CD/DVD is loud!  It makes a lot of noise when you turn on the computer or when you need to eject something.  As I read at NotebookReview.com, the quick fix to this is to leave a CD in the slot.  Reading/writing to the CD/DVD is a lot quieter than ejecting/turning on.

Here is the front of the laptop.  The two left ports are for speakers!  The two ports allows for the possibility of two users listening to the same audio at the same time.  This is good for when you are traveling with your spouse and you're watching a DVD.  This just makes it that much more convenient, you don't have to carry any extra splitters or split the earphone between the two of you.  The other options for the two plugs can be a Quadraphonic, or a 5.1 Surround system.  You can change your settings inside the Speaker Setup portion of Vista sound.

Essentially, other than the fact that there were a few problems with my M1330.  I like it a lot.