During my last freelance contract in the city, I decided it was time to reevaluate my laptop situation.

At the time, I had a Dell e1405 14.1″ notebook with 2GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 32GB MTRON Solid State Disk.

Its been a great machine, with zero hardware issues, for about 18 months of daily use. However, most of that use was at home and did not involve travel. While the 5+ lb weight was fine for my 2-3x year cross-country trip, it wasn’t going to cut it for daily commuting. It was too heavy. It was too big. The screen needed to be brighter to compete with ambient daylight on the train. Plus I wanted the option of EVDO for wireless internet on the train and in the city.

I put the decision off for a long time, but an incredible Dell deal just before Christmas made me bite the bullet and get the notebook I had my eye on - the Dell XPS M1330. Fully equipped,I was able to get the $2500 machine for just under $1430 with free overnight shipping and a $200 gift card, with 0% financing on my Dell Preferred Account for 1 year.

Thats not just a good deal, its ridiculously great, and one of the reasons I have been sticking with Dell for notebook and server hardware for the last few years. I subscribe to the SlickDeals.net ‘Hot Deals’ RSS Feed to keep on top of these deals.

Now, I am not one to go for the fancy notebook. I like getting the $1000 notebook that travels ‘ok’ occasionally, has great battery life, and performs well.

The XPS M1330 is not that machine. Its lighter. Its smaller. Its stylish. Its feature-packed. However, unlike most ultraportables, it also has a full range of processor options up to 2.2GHz and a dedicated Nvidia Graphics card. Despite this, the notebook also has great battery life. It’s the best of all worlds.

Arguably, the one tradeoff is that it is not the smallest ultraportable on the block, and for this reason is considered to live in-between the ultraportable and thin-and-light in terms of class. It is indeed 4lbs, whereas ultraportables are usually playing in the 2-3.5lb zone. However, most recent ultraportables use ultra-low-power CPUs like the Intel 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo or Core Solo. The XPS 1330 uses the standard notebook Core 2 Duos, all of which are much faster. As such, the M1330 is sort of in a class of its own.

I will review the XPS M1330 fully, but will start with this post regarding unboxing and general specifications

Specifications:

• Dell XPS M1330
• Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 (2.2. GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
• Tuxedo Black
• 3GB Shared DDR2 @667MHz
• Slim and Light LED Display
• Built-in VGA Webcam
• 128MB Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS
• 160GB Sata Drive (7200 RPM)
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• 10/100 Network Card
• Slot-loading DVD+/-RW Drive
• Creative Audigy Software Edition HD Audio
• Intel 802.11n wireless card
• 9-cell 85 Whr Li-Ion Extended Battery
• 3-yr in-home service, parts, and labor, 24×7 phone support
• Biometric Fingerprint reader
• Internal Verizon Wireless EVDO-Rev A card
• Internal Bluetooth 2.o EDR

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The first thing I noticed when I opened the shipping box was the stylish packaging of the inner box. As I usually get the ‘white-box’ notebook, I was unused to this and it added a bit to the excitement of the unboxing.

Inside the top of the box is a faux-leather case for storing the users manual and most of the software media for the system. This is a really nice and useful added touch, with an annoying caveat - many of the CD-ROMS which come in the box have important information on their sleeves, and there is no way to keep the sleeves with the CDROMs in this case, so it kind of falls down as an all-in-one tidy solution.

If Dell really wanted to do this right, they would ship all of the software for the system *in the case* already, and print any information on the internal sleeves or - better yet - on the CD itself (that will be the day!). As it is, however, its a welcome addition which will at least serve part of its purpose of keeping some of this stuff safe.

Next in the box is the backup media for the installed software, plus the power supply, headphones, and remote control. The remote control is a nicely designed unit which is stored with a click into the Expresscard slot, and can control the Dell MediaDirect software both under Vista and when MediaDirect is booted to directly from the special button on the lid (more on this later).

The headphones are provided by Creative Labs, and aren’t too shabby. They are the in-ear type, which I prefer, fit well, have 3 different ear cups sizes, and a carrying pouch. The black headphones sound great when plugged into the notebook, although I suspect I heard more noise through them than my Shure e210 headphones. The noise was only noticed when there was no sound.

Underneath the media layer is a smaller styled box , which contains the notebook itself packed in styrofoam sleeves around the included nylon carry case. The carry case itself is quite attractive and durable. It has no strap, but makes for great protection when throwing the notebook in a carry-on or unpadded messenger bag, for example.

In our next post, I will pop this bad boy out of its case and take a look at styling.