Referring back to this post, yes, I bought the Dell Inspiron 700m (instead of the IBM X31) in the end.

Firstly, don’t ask why I needed/wanted a notebook. Considering what was happening in my life and the frame of mind I was in at that time, why I needed/wanted a notebook was not the question to ask. What buying a MYR6000 gadget would do for my psychological and emotional well-being was the more pertinent question.

But why did I choose the Dell over the IBM X31, despite the overwhelming support for the IBM among my commentators?

(1) In terms of aesthetics and design, the IBM is, to me, a better looking machine. I prefer the all-black look than the white, silver and black of the Dell. But this is very subjective and a superficial criteria.

(2) In terms of portability there wasn’t much of a choice between the two. Both were almost similar in weight and size - the differences were very marginal (in the IBM’s favour).

(3) If I wanted the IBM X31, I would have had to travel down to Singapore (by a certain tight deadline, now come and gone, in order to take advantage of a sale offer) to buy it as the X31 is no longer available in Malaysia. Considering all that was going on around me at that time, it was asking too much of my body and spirit squeezing a trip down.

(4) Comparing specifications, the Dell is a more powerful machine. ’nuff said.

(5) Overall, the Dell is a better multimedia machine - it has better screen resolution than the IBM X31. With its wide-screen format, the Dell is more suited for watching films. The IBM is designed to be a work-horse - not a fun machine. The X31’s screen is just your average standard screen. Nothing terribly exciting. Considering that I will be watching a LOT of DVDs on the notebook in the coming days and months, and that there’s a high possibility that this will be my primary entertainment system for a few years, the Dell won out on this count.

(6) The Dell was cheaper.

(7) I had the option of financing the purchase of the Dell with 0% interest payment plan over 12-months with either Citibank or Maybank.

On balance, Dell was the way to go. The only thing that the IBM had got going for it was their built-quality, their data-protection system and their “glorious” reputation. Sadly, not enough to sway me at this point in time.

So… how is the Dell then?

It was delivered to me on 13 September. I’ve had it for about two weeks now. On the whole, it’s a great machine - exactly what I was looking for.

It’s the perfect size (and weight) to carry around, yet not too small to use as a work machine. It is just slightly smaller than an A4 sheet of paper and less than an inch thick. I previously owned a Fujitsu P5010 with a 10″ wide-screen and that was far too small for most purposes - I was squinting my eyes half the time. I didn’t want a machine with a 14″ screen as that would be too big and bulky for little ol’ me to carry around.

Compared to the other Inspiron’s at the moment, the 700m has a very much better built. It feels more solid and less plastic-y. In fact, I’d even say it was better built than the Fujitsu P5010 - that felt slightly “soft” at places - the area under the keyboard where you rest your wrists tended to bend slightly with pressure. This doesn’t happen with the Dell Inspiron 700m. The 700m sports a completely diferrent design altogether from the other models in the Inspiron line (rumour has it that AOpen is the OEM manufacturer!), and I suspect this is a one-off.

The glossy screen is sharp and clear, similar to the Fujitsu P5010 - it’s very pleasant to look at. I haven’t watched any DVDs on it yet, but I’m sure the display will be fine (though I’m not yet sure if the combo drive will be so noisy that it drowns out the sound from the speakers). It might not handle games as well due to the shared graphics RAM, but then I’m not a gamer.

The keys on the keyboard are more closely spaced than your average keyboard, but I am used to tight keyboards and this is acceptable to me. I can touch-type quite comfortably. If you had bigger hands/fingers, it might be a problem - but only you would know and it would depend on how you type. My only quibble with the keyboard is with the placing of the “home”, “end” and “delete” keys. These are located in a horizontal row, right at the top right end of the keyboard. They are more difficult to access as compared with other keyboard layouts I know and I keep hitting the wrong key. As I use these keys very frequently, this is proving to be very annoying at the moment. That said, I’m sure I will get used to it at some point and my fingers will travel automatically, and correctly, in future.

The speakers are acceptable. They lie at the bottom of the screen and are sufficiently loud in a room environment. However, as with most notebook speakers, you can hardly hear a thing in a cafe like Starbucks - so bring your earphones when you go WiFi-ing.

On the other hand, the machine is surprisingly very quiet. I hardly ever hear the fan at all, unlike with the Fujitsu P5010 where I heard the loud fan almost all the time. The other thing I didn’t like about the Fujitsu was that the area under the left wrist warmed up quite a bit because that’s where the HDD was located. This doesn’t happen with the Dell.

The built-in 802.11b WiFi works. The combo drive works. I liked the power cable - it came with an attached wrap-around strap to tie the cables to the transformer, keeping it all nice and tidy. The unit came with a weight-saver that you could insert in the machine in place of the combo-drive - nice!

The unit came with two USB 2.0 ports stacked one on top of another - it could prove to be problematic if the USB connectors of your devides are too large. I also didn’t like the fact that they were placed on the left-hand side of the machine because when I plug in a USB mouse, the cable runs around the machine as I am right-handed. I would have preferred three USB ports altogether spaced around the machine and not only on one side.

The built-in SD card reader is useful - I would have also like a built-in CF card reader. The machine comes with a 4-pin firewire port, I would have preferred a powered 6-pin one for my iPod (incidentally, I’ve never seen one on Windows-based notebooks, only on Apple notebooks). But this is really asking too much of a compact and portable machine.

I can’t really comment on the system’s overall performance at this stage. I bought the notebook with only 256 MB of RAM with the intention of installing one piece of 512 MB third-party RAM at some stage. Since I haven’t done this yet, the entire (Windows XP) system can be quite sluggish, especially when I’m running multiple applications. However, I’m very glad I chose to go with the 80GB of HDD - I now have my entire music collection on board the notebook and not on an external HDD as was the case previously. It was a little cumbersome listening to music then as I had to drag the external HDD out of the cupboard, power it up and plug it in before I could access my music.

I also bought an extra 8-cell battery. The spare 8-cell battery is physically twice the size of the 4-cell battery that comes standard with the notebook. It makes the notebook half an inch deeper when attached but it definitely improves its power performance. It has been variously reported that the 8-cell battery would provide 5 - 6 hours of “normal” use and I would concur. 4 hours is a certainty and that’s longer than anyone should be sitting in front of a computer without a break.

But after all that is said… I do have issues with Dell. Not with the notebook, but with Dell. However, that is a whole different (long) story altogether and will have to wait for another blog post!

Other reviews of the Dell 700m:
* CNet
* PC Magazine
* ZDNet
* another individual’s views of the 700m

  

Posted on September 26th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Uncategorized