House of Dell | The Unofficial Dell Weblog, with News, Reviews, and Information.

(Source: NotebookReview.com)

Being one of only two workstation-class notebooks in Dell’s catalog (officially at least, since a couple of XPS-class notebooks could probably pass as workstations), the Dell Precision M65 certainly has to be a strong offering, but how strong?

According to NotebookReview.com’s recent review, the M65 offers “…an excellent combination of workstation performance (including OpenGL compliance), solid build and businesslike appearance, in a 15.4″ notebook package that doesn’t preclude limited portability.”

As expected, performance, build and OpenGL graphics were plus points, though the M65’s relatively weak GPU was a definite drawback. But if the combination of a 1.83GHz Core Duo T2400 processor and 512MB NVIDIA Quadro FX 350M isn’t enough for you, then the sub-US$2000 price tag should compensate.

Overall, the 15.4″ machine gets a thumbs up and a solid verdict: “Though I don’t need OpenGL graphics, and any number of other business-class machines would probably have been fine, everything about this particular notebook suits me and the resolution alone has made me forget about the little bit of time, effort and money involved in replacing the e1705 and getting everything else sorted out. In addition to being a replacement for the e1705, this notebook is also a fine successor to the T40, and that’s just what I was looking for.”

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(Source: bit-tech.net)

The oh-so-delayed Dell XPS 700 finally falls into the hands of a review site, which is none other than bit-tech.net.

It’s a pity, however, that despite having the yet-to-be-released nVidia nForce 590 chipset, performance of Dell’s gaming monster failed to match bit-tech.net’s own custom rig - mostly due to Dell’s pathetically slow memory. The XPS 700’s design received mad props though.

Overall, they conclude that, “Dell has done what many thought would be beyond it - created a decent gaming system that hardcore enthusiasts would be happy to have on their desk. The engineers have nailed the industrial design and the core internal design, but the guys haven’t quite managed to get the components and the pricing right. But for all our ragging on the component specifications, Dell has really got the core of this system spot on, and for that it earns our Recommended award. However, we hope Dell takes our comments on board and sorts future machines out with the kind of components that will really make the Core 2 Duo processor shine - and at the right price.”

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(Source: PC Advisor)

1.86 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 15″ LCD screen, 60GB HDD and 512MB DDR RAM. Which notebook? Well, the title of this post tells it all, but without it, I doubt anyone would be able to point me a model. The Dell Latitude D520 is just another 15″ laptop, with nothing particularly outstanding feature or design-wise.

But if that was all, PC Advisor probably wouldn’t have awarded it a 9 out of 10 rating for Value for Money in their recent review of the machine. Yep, as usual, it’s the price tag that brings the D520 to the fore. But admittedly, at £763 or US$1439 (including VAT) [before the traditional discounts BTW], it doesn’t really look it.

Anyway, their verdict? Well, “Provided you don’t want it to double up as an entertainment tool, the Latitude has everything that a good business laptop should have: a good turn of speed, long battery life and high build quality. The price tag should please, too.”

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CNET Australia recently got a chance to sit down with Dell founder, Michael Dell, for an interview, and here’s the resulting transcript.

Among the issues posed to the founder of the World No. 1 PC vendor were his early experiences with PCs, his decision to start Dell Corp., and the future potential of both Dell and the PC market in general.

Give it a look.

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(Source: Terralab)

One of the last few Dell MP3 players gets reviewed again - this time by PC World Canada.

It seems to have impressed its reviewers, with a score of 76/100 being awarded to it, though that really shouldn’t be surprising considering its solid feature set and price (~US$120).

The verdict: “If you’re looking for a cheap, lightweight player to take to the gym, this is a good option, so long as you don’t want to adjust settings or find specific songs while on the treadmill. That combination of activities sounds like a recipe for a broken leg.” Agreed… really.

Read more news and reviews on the Dell DJ Ditty MP3 player.

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(Source: TrustedReviews)

The 24″ Dell 2407WFP LCD screen gets another review, this time by bit-tech.net. As per the prior reviews, they found the 2407WFP to be one excellent product.

Here’s what they said about it: “Providing you get a 2407WFP with the updated firmware and panel, it is a great monitor at a competitive price, and is certainly one that you should be considering it you’re looking to get drawn into the marvels of widescreen gaming. This monitor was fantastic for gaming - widescreen gaming is the way forwards and monitors like the 2407WFP make widescreen gaming a reality. However, if you’re wanting to play games at its native resolution, you’re going to need a fast video card to hook up to it. If you don’t already have a fast video card, we will have a few that might tempt you early next week.

The only qualms that we have are with banding in synthetic tests and some slight colour compression when looking at high-resolution photographs. We had to say that, given that this price is almost the same as the Samsung 244T, you’d possibly want to consider the Samsung, which has absolutely spot-on colour reproduction - although it only has two side-mounted USB 2.0 ports and no card reader. Also, we’d argue that it doesn’t look quite as nice as the 2407WFP on your desk. ”

Read more news and reviews on the Dell UltraSharp 2407WFP LCD monitor.

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(Source: NotebookReview.com)

You might call the XPS M1710 one of the most powerful notebooks in the market at the moment. I call it one of the most reviewed notebooks this year. Here’s the latest review of the 17-inch powerhouse by BIOS Magazine.

They loved the Intel Core Duo processor, the GeForce Go 7900GTX graphics card and the great display. But the fact that the M1710 was supposed to be a top-of-the-line gaming notebook prompted them to question why it comes only with a single graphics processing unit, no integrated camera or dual-layer burner on default.

Despite their objections, however, they arrived at a 9 out of 10 overall rating - one of the most favourable to the machine so far. Did I say that it even got BIOS’ Editor’s Choice award?

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(Source: CNET)

If you’ve been keeping up with the recent torrent of news, you’d know that the delayed Dell XPS 700 gaming powerhouse will come equipped with Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processors. But more likely than not, the XPS 700 is far too high-end (and far too pricey) a PC for even the gamers in most of us.

So, what do you get if you really, really need to test out Intel’s latest microprocessor offering? Get a Dell XPS 410 - a Core 2 Duo E6600-powered replacement of the aging XPS 400. CNET already has a review for it too, and they say it’s fast. Ironically though, it’s also pretty expensive - value for money-wise, that is. But its US$2K+ price is surely leaps and bounds away from the US$4K+ Dell is demanding for the XPS 700.

So, if you’re looking to own the latest in processor technology, and want a PC that’s on the high-end - though not too high - give the XPS 410 a shot. After all, 7.2 out of 10 from CNET is still pretty respectable.

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(Source: NotebookReview.com)

Here’s yet another review of the Dell XPS M1710 notebook - this time from About.com. As usual (that is, with respect to About.com), it’s only a tech. specifications review (i.e. no benchmarks, pictures, etc.), but it follows the downwards trend begun by BusinessWeek Online by awarding an overall rating of only 3 out of 5.

So, it shouldn’t be surprising to see a reasonably positive, yet very qualified bottom line: “Dell’s XPS M1710 is certainly a very stylish and high performance system, but the high cost and recent drop in Dell’s support make this a very specialized system that will appeal to a very specific audience.”

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(Source: TrustedReviews)

Servers are a rarity when it comes to reviews, so we should cherish every one of them - including today’s review of the Dell PowerEdge SC430 by TrustedReviews.

Specs-wise, the SC430 is healthy, but not particularly amazing. With a 2.8GHz Pentium D processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM and up to 1TB of SATA or SCSI storage (much less than 1TB for SCSI), it’ll do what most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) need it to do, but don’t expect it to power production-level web applications.

Given its competitive price though, it scores a strong 8 out of 10 overall rating, with a favourable verdict: “The SC430 is certainly a good candidate for very small businesses on a tight budget looking for their first server. You don’t get any management or monitoring features and the embedded SATA controller doesn’t support RAID arrays but the server is very well built, it includes a good specification for the price and workers in small offices will appreciate its near silent running.”

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