Monday, September 10, 2007
Dell XPS M1210 Review
Posted by Chris Baxter in "HARDWARE" @ 07:00 AM
Battery Life, the Number One Question!
The Dell XPS comes with a 53WHr 6-Cell battery and Dell recommends you purchase the larger 85Whr 9-cell battery. Is it needed? Well as luck would have it I was able to test both. I tested the batteries under normal working conditions with the WiFi and Bluetooth radios on and with them turned off. These tests were also done while using the Dell recommended power profile. The 53WHr battery performs terribly with the radios turned on. At most I was able to get about 90 minutes worth of work time out of the laptop doing standard things like checking email, surfing the web, and balancing my check book. When I turned the radios off, I was able to use it for 3 hours and 20 minutes performing similar tasks. So by turning off the wireless and Bluetooth radios I got more than twice as much time out of the 53WHr battery.
So how does the bigger battery fare? Let’s see. The first comment I have to make is that the larger battery sticks out noticeably from the rear of the laptop, which makes the laptop look a little clunky. The second thing I noticed is that it does add weight to the laptop. Not as much as one would think, but enough to be noticeable. I'm pretty sure that we are still less than five pounds though. I did the same tests as before and this time the results were better. The real question though, is how much better were they? With the radios on I got 2 hours and 30 minutes out of the 85Whr battery and with radios off it achieved 5 hours and 20 minutes. I think that’s a big improvement over the 53WHr battery. This leads me to say that even though the extended battery does add weight and size, it's worth getting it for the extra life it gives the laptop.
Figure 3: As can be seen, the Dell extended battery sticks out quite a bit from the back of the laptop.
Benchmarks
Using a trial version of Performance Test 6.1, I ran a benchmark test comparing the laptop to the desktop I use at work. How does this little laptop compare to the desktop that I use everyday at work? Let’s find out. First, though, I should give a little info about my desktop PC. It's a Dell OptiPlex GX520 that I have been using for about a year and a half now. It has a Hyperthreading 3.0GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and an Intel chipset video card. Not exactly a monster performer, I know, but it still gets the job done. The Performance Test 6.1 software runs a battery of CPU, graphics card, and disk access tests assigning a final number that is an average of all the test scores. Of course, the higher the score the faster the PC is. Let’s see how these machines did.
As can be seen the M1210 beats the OptiPlex by 177.4 points which is quite a large margin all things considered. Based on those numbers, I think I can safely say that this laptop has the power of a desktop behind it!
Conclusions
The Dell XPS M1210 is a laptop that tries to fill two shoes. It wants to be powerful enough to replace a desktop PC while remaining portable enough to take with you anywhere. Does it accomplish this feat? Yes and no. The M1210 definitely brings the power; it soundly thrashed my work desktop, which while I will admit is slightly outdated, has never had problems performing the tasks needed of it. Is it ultra-portable? Not as much as I would have liked. I can’t see myself taking it everywhere like I do with my PDA. The size is about right, but it's just a little too heavy. Overall I think it's an excellent little laptop and a solid performer, if it were lighter and had better battery performance, nothing would to compare to it.
Chris Baxter is an IT Professional and part time Web Designer who resides in North Aurora, Illinois. Playing video games, watching movies, or reading a good book are what occupies his time when he is not fixing computers or trying to get his hands on the latest gadgets.
