On the outside Looking In
Getting at the guts of a laptop is
often a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. Some are more difficult than others, but XPS
M1730 actually comes apart pretty easily. The only potential difficulty is that
there are a lot of screws to remove, but once you have taken all of them out
the case comes apart with only a little force required. Most users will never
have the need to take apart their laptop, other than removing the bottom covers
to access the memory and hard drives. However, it is possible to replace the
CPU with a bit of effort, and down the road we might actually see Dell sell an
upgraded GPU module. There's no promise on the latter, though, so until/unless
you hear something official plan on using whatever GPUs your system comes with.
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Opening the bottom panels is simple,
with the center area providing access to the memory slots. The hard drives are
on the left of the unit, in a small cage with rubber grommets acting as shock
absorbers/noise dampeners. The laptop is powered by a large 9-cell 85Wh (Watt
Hour) battery, and the optional Bluetooth module fits underneath the battery.
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Here's a comparison of the (massive!) power brick of the XPS M1730 to the power brick that comes with Clevo M570RU-U GeForce 8800M GTX notebooks. The Clevo model (also used on branded notebooks from WidowPC, AVADirect, Hypersonic, and many other notebooks) is rated at 120W, compared to the 230W M1730 adapter. If you're planning to carry the notebook back and forth between two locations on a daily basis, you might want to seriously consider purchasing a second power brick. The notebook weighs in at around 10.6 lbs; including the cable, the power brick adds another 3 lbs., not to mention it can be rather bulky trying to fit it into a laptop carrying case.
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FXi - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
If folks are going to be told that a laptop performs extremely well, I think it would be fair to throw at least a single desktop system (mainstream enthusiast level, nothing over the top) into the charts for comparisons. I realize it could stunt the graphs a bit, but folks really need to understand what they are buying into with these machines, and all too often they think they are getting something that is 90% of a desktop's power, and that's rarely the case.If it breaks the grapsh too badly, throw a couple of graphs in the end of the article (much like you have a couple of pages dedicated to "overclocking performance") that give the fair comparison. I'm not saying that lappies aren't worth it, just people should be fully aware of what they are paying for.
7Enigma - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
I would completely agree with you up until the conclusion of the article. I have never owned a laptop, and probably won't for quite some time. Because of this I don't follow the laptop-only parts (CPU/GPU/RAM/etc.) much and so thought, "This is a crazy fast laptop but I wonder how it compares to a Q6600 with 8800GTX".The conclusion really put the laptop in perspective for me. Basically its a top of the line desktop system from a year ago. That's all I needed to hear. I think it is quite a feat to have a laptop capable of performance a year behind current tech. Yes it is more desktop in a small form factor, but it is a easily portable computer that behaves like a very capable desktop system.
With all that said, I can't wait to build my new system after 3 years with my current un-upgraded one. Just waiting on the 45nm quads and the new 9800's to pull the trigger...
funky24 - Friday, February 29, 2008 - link
man they got the best job in the whole world do u keep all hardware u test here ,man that is one mean laptop would kill to have it lolPlasmaBomb - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
Nope, they have to give it back :(Baked - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
This is totally necessary... You can probably murder somebody w/ the power brick if they try to take the "notebook" from you.PlasmaBomb - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
What size and rating does the power brick on this beast have?JarredWalton - Thursday, February 28, 2008 - link
It's the biggest power brick I've seen to date, rated at 230W output. So assuming ~80% efficiency, even at the maximum load with overclocking it still has some remaining capacity. Heck, the power brick probably weighs as much as a Mac Air! ;)PlasmaBomb - Saturday, March 1, 2008 - link
Cheers for the info, any chance of a piccy?It must get rather hot, if indeed it's 80% efficient it is dumping 50W when drawing 260W from the plug!
JarredWalton - Sunday, March 2, 2008 - link
Image added. And it could be less than 80% efficient, but the point is the laptop uses nearly as much power as an entry level desktop with discrete graphics.Direct link to image:
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/2008/de...">One big power brick
PlasmaBomb - Monday, March 3, 2008 - link
Cheers for the pics, good job btw :)