Monday, September 10, 2007
Dell XPS M1210 Review
Posted by Chris Baxter in "HARDWARE" @ 07:00 AM
Other Details
The Dell XPS M1210 ships with Windows Vista Home Premium installed. The 12.1” widescreen display delivers an amazingly sharp and crisp picture. With the brightness setting at 50%, I had no problem seeing the picture on the screen in most lighting conditions and with it set at 100% it does well in bright sunlight. The 1280 x 800 resolution is a good fit for the screen, everything is small enough to seem like you're working with a larger display, but not too small that it’s hard to see. One cool feature of this laptop is the built-in Logitech 1.3 megapixel webcam. It's located on top of the display and can swivel around so you can also use it as a digital camera. This is definitely one of the better webcams that I've used. The picture quality is good; it tracks motion smoothly, has a great low light filter, and can be set to track up to 2 faces at the same time. With the built in microphone, video conferencing is a snap. Plus it can also record video at a resolution of 640 x 480, and take pictures.
Figure 2: The mighty rotating camera. One of the cool features of the Dell XPS M1210. It is located on top and in the center of the LCD.
The keyboard is good, and doesn't feel cramped at all despite being part of such a small laptop. The tactile response is nice and it executes keystrokes quietly. The touchpad, while being responsive, is just a tad too small for my tastes. While there is no room to make it taller, there is plenty of room to make it a little bit wider and doing so would not affect the symmetry of the laptop at all.
The laptop also includes the following list of ports and connectors:
There is nothing really new to report here, just your standard ports and connectors that are found on most laptops these days. The 4 USB ports are divided between the right and left side of the laptop, which is nice. The multi-card reader is hidden away under the DVD burner so nicely that one could almost overlook it. The Ethernet connector is the only connector that is located on the rear of the laptop. The M1210 also has a hardware switch for turning on and off the WiFi and Bluetooth radios. If you slide the switch forward it automatically launches an application that searches for WiFi access points. Another feature this laptop has comes in the form of a piece of software called MediaDirect. It's possible to boot the M1210 directly into MediaDirect to watch movies, listen to music, or even view PowerPoint presentations. MediaDirect is great for those situations where you don’t need a full blown OS to accomplish what you are trying to do. There are hardware buttons on the front of the laptop for direct control of a DVD or CD while using the MediaDirect software.
