Well, I've had my D800 for a few weeks now and I really wanted to give my opinion on it. I felt i've used it enough to know the quirks and what not. To my surprise the unit isn't really that big. I had *no* problems taking the notebook with me on a cross country flight. I watched DVDs, played games, browsed the net (cached pages) and everything was awesome. I pretty much lug it around everywhere I go and the weight / size has not been an issue for me. I'm used to lugging around smaller notebooks as well (iBook, Sony SuperSlim R505GL) And I have found the size increase not to difficult to adjust to.
What I really wanted in a notebook, I have not found in my year long search. My criteria was very difficult to match. I wanted ; er no.. HAD to have WIDESCREEN, a semi thin case, IEEE1394, built in wireless, built in Bluetooth, USB 2.0, Trackpad and Eraserhead, Centrino Processor, Excellent battery life, user removable HD, memory and CPU. I wanted something with good support and a good reputation. My primary use would be to lug it around and carry my files, digital camera pics, etc.. I had to have something powerful enough to decode my .RAW picture files in Photoshop. (I'm a semi-pro Digital Camera photographer) and be able to run all the apps flawlessly and effortlessly while in battery mode.
Build Quality
The build quality is typical Dell. Pretty solid, but little creaks here and there. Nothing to bad though. The top piece is made of some sort of metal, and with the majority of the notebook being plastic. The only real noticable flaw I had on my notebook was that the keyboard would flex when you typed on it. Not too bad and very typical problem with this model. I removed the keyboard and put some toilet paper to cushion it and the problem was gone
.. The only other problem I had was that the AC adapter would make whinning noises. I hear thats already fixed with the later REV AC adapters, so I will have to call them to get it replaced. Overall the Build quality is good. Not IBM or Toshiba solid, but well enough to take the beating of travelling and what not. I'm sure this unit will last for quite sometime. One feature I really liked was that removing the processor and fan is literally a 2 screw operation. The fan / cpu is easily replaced if something were to happen. The unit doesn't really get to hot either. The 2 hotspots I noticed were the left palm rest (the HD is right underneath) and the memory cover plate. The palmrest did not bother me at all. Some complained about the heat on the Dell forums, and I think its only because the right palm rest does not suffer from this problem. Really, I have a 5400RPM drive and I just feel a little warm spot. Nothing bad at all. The memory cover plate on the other hand is somewhat toasty. I would probably classify it as being a between warm ~ hot. Not sure if it's because I have 1GB memory (2x512 SODIMMS) The fan that blows the cpu air, only turns on 50% of the time and is VERY quiet. Overall, the system is very quiet and I have no problems leaving it on 24x7.
The size and weight is actually pretty good. The unit is a lot slimmer than I thought it would be.. About an inch and half in height and 7 lbs. in weight. What's cool is that I can fit this on my standard size laptop case despite the wide screen aspect of the notebook. The more I use it the more I realize how much they packed into the notebook despite the size of it. Overall i'm really satisfied with the size even though I had reservations before seeing it in person.
Display
The screen I got (WUXGA) is awesome! best screen i've ever seen on any notebook. You can display 2 word pages side by side and it looks great. The unit I have does not suffer from burn in problems or any dead pixels. Its cyrstal clear and super bright. You can also look at the screen from different angles and you can see it perfectly. The pixels on a WUXGA screen is 1920x1600 and the icons / text are somewhat small. I'm not really bothered by this as I would rather have the screen real estate. When viewing my digital camera pics, it looks great and the colors are very true. However, for me, I can never really trust an LCD to edit pics as they still don't have the same color depth as a high end CRT, but for the road, this screen cannot be beat. When playing a game outside of native resolution, the screen will stretch out to fit. I have found that it is very smooth and perfectly acceptable to play my games in 1024x768. When compared to my friends 1600x1200 UXGA / ATI M9, you can see that the NVIDIA solution is a lot more smooth when running in a resolution other than native. It's very obvious. Overal i'm very satisfied with the display / graphics. I'm not gonna be using this strictly for gaming, but it's nice to know I can play the occasional CS
Performance
Performance wise, the system is great. Very quick and fast. I felt no difference in speed when doing normal tasks between the D800 and my home rig (P4 2.0) The system boots up, suspends and hibernates faster than any machine i've ever used. The system Bios is very detailed and tells you a lot of info. Not too much you can tweak though. Overall, i'm sure this notebook will last quite sometime in regards to speed. The Centrino processor runs very cool and the fan (as mentioned above) hardly spins up. On my particular system, I have a 60GB 5400RPM drive and 1GB of memory. With this setup, I can run all and any apps I can imagine and with great speed.
The video card of choice for me was the 32MB GeForce 4 5200. The card plays all my 3D accelerated games just fine (CS, Tony Hawk4, Warcraft3) As well as my 2D games (Mame, Starcraft). Although I do wish I got the 64MB card for the 128bit bandwidth (32MB cards have 64bit bandwidth).. FYI- I get about 6600 on 3D Mark 2001SE. Not to shabby IMO. Another thing I liked was that the Video card was user removable. I hear that Dell is releasing a revised D800 with the new 128MB GeForce FX Go in the upcomming months, so If I really wanted to, I can upgrade to that card at a later date. But so far, the card is more than enough for my uses and i'm really pleased with the performance and stability.
Battery life was something I was really concerned with when I was researching which notebook to get. I knew I wanted Centrino for the extended life and my notebook HAD to have widescreen. As much as I liked the Powerbooks, I already have an iBook and I can't use a Mac as my 'main' notebook. With the D800 under normal real life usage, I get around 3 hours per battery. I took advantage of the Dell free battery offer and with 2 Batteries i've got 6 hours of *real* life usage which IMO is pretty good. I've already ordered a module bay battery so I can take out the optical drive if I really wanted long life w/o taking my spare battery out. The battery is a long rectangular in shape and is quite light. You can also see how much battery life is left on the battery w/o inserting it by pressing a little button on the battery itself.
Overall, when using the system, I really don't pay much attention to the battery. I just use it and charge it whenever the plug is nearby or convenient. I've actually taken the notebook to work w/o the AC adapter and used it sparingly throughout the day and it will last the whole day on one battery. I just let the notebook suspend whenever possible.
Features
Feature wise, the notebook CANNOT BE TOUCHED. I don't care what you have, you cannot beat the feature set from this notebook.. Bluetooth? got it.. Gigabit network? got it.. IEEE1394? got it.. Smart card reader?.. got it.. Basically everything under the sun. My system came with WXP Pro. I'm not a big fan of OEM preloaded OS'es. I've always found some ugly apps and doo-dads that I have no need for. This is where Dell exceeded my expectations. If you choose to 'reload' everything, you basically put in Disk1 of the restore CD (basically its just an XP CD designed only to install on Dell systems. No need to activate or input any Serial numbers) It will install the OS.. THATS IT. No drivers, no apps nothing. Basically a clean install of XP w/o the need to Activate or register. This makes reinstalling a simple and elegant thing to do. Should you choose to install all the included apps, you will have to insert another disk after the OS is up. When browsing Dell's website, I see all the drivers and patches neatly organized and easy to find. Very nice indeed. I had no problem doing a clean install with just the drivers loaded.
Since i'm a big audiophile nut, i've decided to put in a few words about the headphone output. While the audio card (AC97 (Soft Audio) does a good job and the onboard speakers are better than average, I have found when using my high end headphones (Etymotics ER4-P) there is a nice amount of hiss. Let me be the first to say that i'm VERY picky when it comes to audio, so this may not bother most people. Overall, I found the audio on my iBook a better example.
Value
I can't really go to in-depth here since it is very subjective.. I do note that for the features and warranty (standard 3 years for Latitude and 1 year for Inspiron) I found the D800 to be a pretty good value. I have ZERO regrets getting this notebook and with Dell's coupons, free shipping, free DVD/CDRW/memory upgrades, etc.. You really begin to see the value in the system.
Pros
Cons
Specs
Here are the specs to my notebook. To make my notebook completely 'Centrino' qualified, I got the Intel Pro Wireless card. I have no complaints with this card as it seems to have pretty good range. The only problem I had was with the Intel ProSet app crashing with my Nortel VPN client. This is a well reported problem and should be fixed by either Intel or Nortel soon enough.
Intel Pentium M Processor - 1.60GHz Centrino
Microsoft Windows XP® Professional SP1
1GB PC2100 DDR Memory (2x512)
60GB HD (interestingly enough, it came with a 4200 RPM Hitachi unit w/o the 5400 60GB as an option. I quickly swapped that out with a 60GB 5400 RPM Toshiba unit I bought from Newegg.)
15.4" WUXGA (1920x1600)
NVIDIA GeForce 4 4200 Go 32MB graphics chipset
Combination DVD/CD-RW drive 8X/24X/10X/24X (I've only burned one disks and it burns fine at 24X)
Intel PRO Wireless 2100 WLAN (802.11b) mini-PCI card
Built in:
2X USB2.0 ports, 4-pin IEEE1394, Bluetooth, Wireless, Smart Card reader, VGA out, TV out, 56K V.92 modem, 10/100/1000 NIC, 1X PCMICA Slot
Conclusion
Very satisfied would happily buy again. Zero regrets. Very feature rich and with a touch of fun to it. I simply smile everytime I open the lid and bootup to the nice widescreen display. Lots of ohhs and ahhs when you take this thing out in public. I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a notebook with similiar requirements as I.
What I really wanted in a notebook, I have not found in my year long search. My criteria was very difficult to match. I wanted ; er no.. HAD to have WIDESCREEN, a semi thin case, IEEE1394, built in wireless, built in Bluetooth, USB 2.0, Trackpad and Eraserhead, Centrino Processor, Excellent battery life, user removable HD, memory and CPU. I wanted something with good support and a good reputation. My primary use would be to lug it around and carry my files, digital camera pics, etc.. I had to have something powerful enough to decode my .RAW picture files in Photoshop. (I'm a semi-pro Digital Camera photographer) and be able to run all the apps flawlessly and effortlessly while in battery mode.
Build Quality
The build quality is typical Dell. Pretty solid, but little creaks here and there. Nothing to bad though. The top piece is made of some sort of metal, and with the majority of the notebook being plastic. The only real noticable flaw I had on my notebook was that the keyboard would flex when you typed on it. Not too bad and very typical problem with this model. I removed the keyboard and put some toilet paper to cushion it and the problem was gone
.. The only other problem I had was that the AC adapter would make whinning noises. I hear thats already fixed with the later REV AC adapters, so I will have to call them to get it replaced. Overall the Build quality is good. Not IBM or Toshiba solid, but well enough to take the beating of travelling and what not. I'm sure this unit will last for quite sometime. One feature I really liked was that removing the processor and fan is literally a 2 screw operation. The fan / cpu is easily replaced if something were to happen. The unit doesn't really get to hot either. The 2 hotspots I noticed were the left palm rest (the HD is right underneath) and the memory cover plate. The palmrest did not bother me at all. Some complained about the heat on the Dell forums, and I think its only because the right palm rest does not suffer from this problem. Really, I have a 5400RPM drive and I just feel a little warm spot. Nothing bad at all. The memory cover plate on the other hand is somewhat toasty. I would probably classify it as being a between warm ~ hot. Not sure if it's because I have 1GB memory (2x512 SODIMMS) The fan that blows the cpu air, only turns on 50% of the time and is VERY quiet. Overall, the system is very quiet and I have no problems leaving it on 24x7.The size and weight is actually pretty good. The unit is a lot slimmer than I thought it would be.. About an inch and half in height and 7 lbs. in weight. What's cool is that I can fit this on my standard size laptop case despite the wide screen aspect of the notebook. The more I use it the more I realize how much they packed into the notebook despite the size of it. Overall i'm really satisfied with the size even though I had reservations before seeing it in person.
Display
The screen I got (WUXGA) is awesome! best screen i've ever seen on any notebook. You can display 2 word pages side by side and it looks great. The unit I have does not suffer from burn in problems or any dead pixels. Its cyrstal clear and super bright. You can also look at the screen from different angles and you can see it perfectly. The pixels on a WUXGA screen is 1920x1600 and the icons / text are somewhat small. I'm not really bothered by this as I would rather have the screen real estate. When viewing my digital camera pics, it looks great and the colors are very true. However, for me, I can never really trust an LCD to edit pics as they still don't have the same color depth as a high end CRT, but for the road, this screen cannot be beat. When playing a game outside of native resolution, the screen will stretch out to fit. I have found that it is very smooth and perfectly acceptable to play my games in 1024x768. When compared to my friends 1600x1200 UXGA / ATI M9, you can see that the NVIDIA solution is a lot more smooth when running in a resolution other than native. It's very obvious. Overal i'm very satisfied with the display / graphics. I'm not gonna be using this strictly for gaming, but it's nice to know I can play the occasional CS
Performance
Performance wise, the system is great. Very quick and fast. I felt no difference in speed when doing normal tasks between the D800 and my home rig (P4 2.0) The system boots up, suspends and hibernates faster than any machine i've ever used. The system Bios is very detailed and tells you a lot of info. Not too much you can tweak though. Overall, i'm sure this notebook will last quite sometime in regards to speed. The Centrino processor runs very cool and the fan (as mentioned above) hardly spins up. On my particular system, I have a 60GB 5400RPM drive and 1GB of memory. With this setup, I can run all and any apps I can imagine and with great speed.
The video card of choice for me was the 32MB GeForce 4 5200. The card plays all my 3D accelerated games just fine (CS, Tony Hawk4, Warcraft3) As well as my 2D games (Mame, Starcraft). Although I do wish I got the 64MB card for the 128bit bandwidth (32MB cards have 64bit bandwidth).. FYI- I get about 6600 on 3D Mark 2001SE. Not to shabby IMO. Another thing I liked was that the Video card was user removable. I hear that Dell is releasing a revised D800 with the new 128MB GeForce FX Go in the upcomming months, so If I really wanted to, I can upgrade to that card at a later date. But so far, the card is more than enough for my uses and i'm really pleased with the performance and stability.
Battery life was something I was really concerned with when I was researching which notebook to get. I knew I wanted Centrino for the extended life and my notebook HAD to have widescreen. As much as I liked the Powerbooks, I already have an iBook and I can't use a Mac as my 'main' notebook. With the D800 under normal real life usage, I get around 3 hours per battery. I took advantage of the Dell free battery offer and with 2 Batteries i've got 6 hours of *real* life usage which IMO is pretty good. I've already ordered a module bay battery so I can take out the optical drive if I really wanted long life w/o taking my spare battery out. The battery is a long rectangular in shape and is quite light. You can also see how much battery life is left on the battery w/o inserting it by pressing a little button on the battery itself.
Overall, when using the system, I really don't pay much attention to the battery. I just use it and charge it whenever the plug is nearby or convenient. I've actually taken the notebook to work w/o the AC adapter and used it sparingly throughout the day and it will last the whole day on one battery. I just let the notebook suspend whenever possible.
Features
Feature wise, the notebook CANNOT BE TOUCHED. I don't care what you have, you cannot beat the feature set from this notebook.. Bluetooth? got it.. Gigabit network? got it.. IEEE1394? got it.. Smart card reader?.. got it.. Basically everything under the sun. My system came with WXP Pro. I'm not a big fan of OEM preloaded OS'es. I've always found some ugly apps and doo-dads that I have no need for. This is where Dell exceeded my expectations. If you choose to 'reload' everything, you basically put in Disk1 of the restore CD (basically its just an XP CD designed only to install on Dell systems. No need to activate or input any Serial numbers) It will install the OS.. THATS IT. No drivers, no apps nothing. Basically a clean install of XP w/o the need to Activate or register. This makes reinstalling a simple and elegant thing to do. Should you choose to install all the included apps, you will have to insert another disk after the OS is up. When browsing Dell's website, I see all the drivers and patches neatly organized and easy to find. Very nice indeed. I had no problem doing a clean install with just the drivers loaded.
Since i'm a big audiophile nut, i've decided to put in a few words about the headphone output. While the audio card (AC97 (Soft Audio) does a good job and the onboard speakers are better than average, I have found when using my high end headphones (Etymotics ER4-P) there is a nice amount of hiss. Let me be the first to say that i'm VERY picky when it comes to audio, so this may not bother most people. Overall, I found the audio on my iBook a better example.
Value
I can't really go to in-depth here since it is very subjective.. I do note that for the features and warranty (standard 3 years for Latitude and 1 year for Inspiron) I found the D800 to be a pretty good value. I have ZERO regrets getting this notebook and with Dell's coupons, free shipping, free DVD/CDRW/memory upgrades, etc.. You really begin to see the value in the system.
Pros
- Great performance and all the features packed into one good lookin' sturdy case.
- Best LCD i've ever seen in a notebook. Seems Dell is big enough to always get all the latest and greatest technology.
- Dell support is good (compared to other manufacturers.)
- Battery life is excellent.
- Very nice restore image process that only loads the OS and w/ nothing else.
- Easily transportable and mobile despite it's "desktop replacement" nomenclature.
Cons
- Dell should really have stricter quality control.
Specs
Here are the specs to my notebook. To make my notebook completely 'Centrino' qualified, I got the Intel Pro Wireless card. I have no complaints with this card as it seems to have pretty good range. The only problem I had was with the Intel ProSet app crashing with my Nortel VPN client. This is a well reported problem and should be fixed by either Intel or Nortel soon enough.
Intel Pentium M Processor - 1.60GHz Centrino
Microsoft Windows XP® Professional SP1
1GB PC2100 DDR Memory (2x512)
60GB HD (interestingly enough, it came with a 4200 RPM Hitachi unit w/o the 5400 60GB as an option. I quickly swapped that out with a 60GB 5400 RPM Toshiba unit I bought from Newegg.)
15.4" WUXGA (1920x1600)
NVIDIA GeForce 4 4200 Go 32MB graphics chipset
Combination DVD/CD-RW drive 8X/24X/10X/24X (I've only burned one disks and it burns fine at 24X)
Intel PRO Wireless 2100 WLAN (802.11b) mini-PCI card
Built in:
2X USB2.0 ports, 4-pin IEEE1394, Bluetooth, Wireless, Smart Card reader, VGA out, TV out, 56K V.92 modem, 10/100/1000 NIC, 1X PCMICA Slot
Conclusion
Very satisfied would happily buy again. Zero regrets. Very feature rich and with a touch of fun to it. I simply smile everytime I open the lid and bootup to the nice widescreen display. Lots of ohhs and ahhs when you take this thing out in public. I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a notebook with similiar requirements as I.
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