Alex Jurkiewicz's technical blog

Vostro 1310 Review - It Doesn't Suck

I recently brought myself a new Dell Vostro 1310 laptop. This is the from the 'new' series of Vostro laptops. Specs of mine:

• Intel Core2 T8300 2.4Ghz. The new 'Penryn' series of core2 chips. Single interesting new feature is SSE4.
• 3gb RAM.
• 250gb Hard Drive. My other option was a 160gb with 'free fall sensor', which reduces the chance the drive will die if you drop it. Nothing important / not backed up is going on this laptop, so I'm happier with more space.
• TrueLife screen. Sucks outside, which is where I use this on the weekend. It's usable outside, but only if you can angle the screen so it's reflecting something dark. Significantly better than non-truelife when used inside.
• 6-cell battery. The standard size is 4-cell. Ubuntu estimates the lifetime of my 6-cell at 2hrs, while idle.
• 8400GS Video Card. It plays Tux Racer, I’m happy. When I get around to it, it will also play Civilization IV for me and other games from that era or before.
• 15-day money back guarantee. What really convinced me to buy this laptop. If I find it’s too small for me, I can swap it after a week and get a 14 or 15” instead. w00t.
• All the other standard stuff that comes with every laptop.

The chassis is solid, not flimsy like some smaller laptops. It strongly reminds me of an IBM ThinkPad, which is not a bad thing at all -- hopefully some of the indestructibility has been carried over.

Various interesting things I noticed:

• Front top corners are hard edges. This means you can’t rest the side of your palms on the edge of the laptop. You won’t notice this while typing (I don’t, and I have big hands), but it’s just a weird design choice.
• Slot load optical drive rather than a tray.
• Really nice fan on the side. This fan is smaller than the one in my old 15” Inspiron I’m replacing, but it pushes out a lot more air. While the fan is running the machine is not exactly quiet, but it’s not an annoying sound. There’s another fan on the bottom for the video card, it didn’t spin up unless I was doing something 3d.
• Capacitance touch media buttons up the top, including one to eject the CD. Capacitance touch is cool and all, but they are (obviously) hypersensitive. While stretching out my fingers I mushed them more than a few times, doing weird things to my media playback and/or CD.
• Power plug is on the right hand side, Ethernet port on the rear left, headphones on the left side front. Are they trying to make me have to keep every side clear?! I much prefer the layout of my (admittedly bigger) Inspiron, which seemed saner in general.
• My Vostro came with Windows XP Home. On the Dell website, you can’t go lower than XP Professional, but when I called up they were more than happy to downgrade to Home.

I’ve installed Ubuntu 8.04 x64 and tested everything I can. Everything I tested works perfectly, unless noted below:

• Fingerprint Reader not tested
• Memory card reader didn’t read an ancient MMC card I have lying around. Works fine with SD.
• Microphone port not tested
• VGA out not tested

Raw hardware data from the machine after the jump.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 23
model name	: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T8300  @ 2.40GHz
stepping	: 6
cpu MHz		: 800.000
cache size	: 3072 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 2
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 2
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 10
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 lahf_lm ida
bogomips	: 4792.40
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400M GS (rev a1)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev ff)
08:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02)
08:05.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02)
08:05.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 01)
$ lsusb
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 006 Device 004: ID 0c45:63e0 Microdia
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:8140 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

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