Am I a happy owner of M1210?

As I promised, writing again on whether I am a happy owner of Dell XPS M1210 / Inspiron 740M.

It's been 10 days now since I received the notebook and I must say that I'm happy to have Dell XPS M1210. I'm one of the lucky to receive a AUO LCD display. It doesn't have light leakage and dead pixel. The keyboard has no flex. The Intel PRO wireless 3945 and my Linksys wireless compact router are playing each other nicely. My "must-have" items in a notebook i.e. built multimedia card reader, dedicated graphics card, Core Duo processor and bluetooth module are working great.

The only issue that I have so far with XPS M1210 is the problem I mentioned on my previous blog entry. It is something that Dell will attend by sending me a replacement notebook. I have no idea yet on the date of arrival of the replacement but one thing I can really confirm is I'm keeping this little lappy that has big attitude because this is a not an ordinary or common notebook. I said not ordinary and uncommon notebook because I cannot find the same size of a notebook (at the time of this blog entry) that offers discrete graphics card.

Lenovo's ThinkPad X60 and Lenovo 3000 V100 (both has 12.1" display), Apple's MacBook - a 13.3" widescreen display notebook, Toshiba's Satellite U205-S5002 and Tecra M6-EZ6611 a 12.1" display notebook, Fujitsu's LifeBook Q2010 also 12.1" laptop only got an integrated graphics card Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 :-(

You might ask what's wrong with Integrated Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950? Nothing wrong with an integrated graphics card if you:

• don't plan to upgrade later to high-end graphics card because an integrated graphics card is not upgradable.
• don't do gaming or don't plan to use the notebook for games that requires discrete graphics card
• do not use any other application that requires high-end or discrete graphics card. Example: The upcoming Windows Vista requires dedicated graphics card. An integrated graphics card may work with Vista but you "might" get less features of Vista.

An integrated graphics card is perfectly fine as long as it the current and if you only need the notebook for some productivity stuff and web surfing. The integrated graphics will not hose the notebook's power.

Unlike desktop motherboard, a notebook motherboard do not have expansion slot (AGP or 16x PCIe slots) available to add a dedicated graphics card so before you decide in purchasing a notebook and you want to have a good graphics card... go for the notebook like Dell XPS M1210 or any other notebook brand that you like and need as long as it has dedicated graphics card.

Back to the topic, I am tiring Dell XPS M1210 from day 1 I received it and so far, it has not give me reason to return it. Dell have 30 days return policy (also known as Total Satisfaction policy) so this makes me decide to not to finalize the notebook at my end until I decide to keep it. I need to make sure that all hardware in this notebook is doing right and that I'm satisfied with the notebook before that 30-days total satisfaction policy ends. I didn't pick money from the streets easily. I am working hard and the money spent must be worth it or at least satisfy me.

I connected this little lappy to my 27" LCD TV - Olevia by Syntax and oohh... it's so cool and great. I don't have to adjust anything. I simply connect and that's it. I can view and do this and that from M1210 to the bigger LCD screen without a problem. Dell gave me free video and audio component cable so I can hear the sounds from the TV instead from the notebook.

I plugged in my Sony N1 digital camera in Dell XPS M1210 and all is just great! I've sync and transfer files from my desktop computers and Nokia N70 smartphone to this M1210 notebook... no problem at all.

So far this and that are working except the left speaker and playback thingie of M1210 but that should not be an issue anymore once Dell will replace it with a new M1210 that don't have that problem.