If you look carefully, you'll see that the photos (and the design of the laptop) is intended to visually hide how THICK it is.
In the past 3 years Dell has been producing junk laptops.
I will not buy one again and I caution anyone who thinks of buying one to see it in person first, lift it, and check if it's constructed well before purchasing it. Lately they have cheap keyboards, awful trackpads and buttons, and they are ridiculously thick.
This is basically flamebait, but I disagree. Dell are the biggest low-end computer manufacturer which are, for the most part, significantly cheaper than their competitors. You sacrifice build quality and design to get that.
I actually think their build quality has improved recently too after a dark period - their newer laptops feel better built for the cost - and the M1330 is well-designed well-built at a very competitive price and is among the best products Dell have ever come out with.
There's too few details to make any opinion on this product, but writing Dell off is foolish.
I haven't seen the M1330, but I have been burned twice by buying Dell laptops. This is after a run of about 3 great ones. The problem started when they went to the thick unrounded two-tone cases with silver on top (at least in the Inspiron line). A friend ordered one of their newer ones (with the led backlight, core 2 duo, etc.) and in spite of its > $2K pricetag it has terrible build quality and flexes and groans when picked up. It feels like a toy.
I am not totally writing off Dell, but it's going to take a lot to win me back as a customer. To make matters worse, a few years ago I ordered a bunch of servers from their small business division and the way they do sales is totally annoying. The only person you can talk to is your own rep and if he's on the phone or out of the office you get voicemail. Also, if you don't negotiate hard (or buy small business stuff online) you get ripped by about 20% -- why can't they just publish a good price on the web and let people order it w/o having to talk to someone 3 times just so they take off that 20% markup?
Back to laptops -- I got a high end Toshiba and it's been great.... surprisingly, far better (battery life, heat dissipation, build quality) than any of the Dells I've had.
"Dell are the biggest low-end computer manufacturer which are, for the most part, significantly cheaper than their competitors. You sacrifice build quality and design to get that."
You do have to sacrifice SOMETHING, and you're right that it's usually build quality and design... but you can do better than Dell for the price:
www.powernotebooks.com
They have a 99% rating on Reseller Ratings, and I got a better price from them even though I can get a company discount buying from Dell (my employer buys a lot of stuff from Dell, but I don't work for Dell).
I'd like to find out who actually makes the laptops for Dell. I'd guess that Dell uses several of the major laptop ODM's.
I agree. I have a dell (supplied by my employer), which while powerful, it is very heavy, the screen sucks, the battery went dead after one year and a little bit, and it came preloaded with lots of crap, and it is fugly dark grey color.
Their monitors are decent and cheap, (I have had few, with no problems), but their laptops seems to have suffered a lot in the cost cutting department.
I am not familiar with their consumer-grade machines but my Latitude D620 is tougher than a ThinkPad. It fell out of my bag while I was biking and hit the pavement, and the battery case split open and keyboard pried off. After fitting them back into place it's as good as new (scratched, but not dented). Everything works fine on it and I get 5.5 hours of battery life.
They use those at the company I currently contract for. Decent workhorses. Not so pretty that I would consider buying them at home, but for businesses they make perfect sense.
Could you mention which "junk" models you were using, because my XPS (M1330) has been far from that. I was about to recommend another Dell laptop to a friend.
I had two junk insprions (9200 and I forget the model number of the other one). A friend just bought one of the newer high end laptops and it performs great but the build quality is sub-par and a piece fell off the front in the first week (not to mention that it flexes and groans when picked up by one edge)....
It just seems to me that Dell is trying to squeeze every penny of profit out of each laptop and is not thinking about build quality.
Also, painting the bottom half of the laptop black and showing it on a black background to create the illusion that it's thin when in fact it's quite thick is just plain dishonest.
In the past 3 years Dell has been producing junk laptops.
I will not buy one again and I caution anyone who thinks of buying one to see it in person first, lift it, and check if it's constructed well before purchasing it. Lately they have cheap keyboards, awful trackpads and buttons, and they are ridiculously thick.