Dell XPS M1330 review

Average user rating

4.6

mediocre

Average user rating from 10 users

See all user reviews

Agree? Disagree? Write your own review of the Dell XPS M1330

Rate this product

Dell XPS M1330 user reviews

August 13, 2008

Posted by: XPS_user

"Fundamentally flawed"

What I like:

The form factor, the LED display and the performance.

What I don't like:

Affected by the NVidia m8400/m8600 GPU problem.

Review:

The XPS m1330 and m1530 are great notebooks. Sadly however, I would caution against buying the XPS m1330 or any other laptop (from Dell, HP, Acer, Asus or Apple) that comes with the faulty Nvidia m8400 or m8600 graphics GPUs. Nvidia has finally admitted that there is a problem involving "a weak die/packaging material set" in their GPUs (see http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html).

These laptops are dying at an alarming rate. Mine died 3 times in the last 10 months. In each case the GPU was the cause and the "fix" was a motherboard replacement. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the replacement will last!

DELL and other manufacturers have offered graphics drivers and system bios updates that cause the system fans to run more frequently thereby delaying the failure. However, they are yet to address the real problem which is faulty hardware. HP has offered free warranty extension for affected systems but other manufacturers including Dell are yet to follow.

There are hundreds of articles like this one (http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/26/dell-explains-nvidia-gpu-issues-throws-out-bios-updates-to-help/) that describe the problem. There are even videos on YouTube showing XPS m1330 dying ( see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkw47rprZU8).

To make matters worse, the XPS m1330 has inferior heat sink design that makes the faulty GPU even more vulnerable. Some users have come up with a mod that improves the heat sink using a piece of copper (see http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3725405). Dell doesn't recognize the heat sink design as a contributing factor and subsequently won't recommend the heat sink mod.

So keep an eye for updates on this saga. In the mean time, stay clear of affected laptop models and configurations until the manufacturers own up to the problem and recall or offer upgrades for affected systems.