Features

• Intel Atom Processor N270
• Ubuntu Linux version 8.04.1
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950
• 4GB Solid State Drive

As with all the first generation Netbooks the Dell Mini uses the Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz processor. While this processor is very light weight and is not setup for heavy processing. This processor is great for small devices like this because it uses very little power.

Because of how light weight the processor is, having an OS that is not resource intensive is also very important. Linux is well known for running on hardware that would not support other operating systems. Ubuntu is one of the more popular versions of Linux and a good choice for the average user.

The Intel Graphics 950 chip is not very powerful, but it is very efficient and it does not use a lot of power. For a machine like this, efficiency is more important than processing power.

With the size of files today a 4GB drive is really small. A drive this size is really only going to be good for documents and presentations, anything more than that would need to be stored on an external hard drive.

Design

When it comes to Netbooks, size is a very important factor, but so is usability. In order to get both the Netbook must make good use of all its available space. For the most part the Dell Mini 9 does just that.

The left side of the Mini has an SD slot, 2 USB ports, the power plug and a lock.

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The right side has a headphone, and microphone jack, USB, VGA, and Ethernet port.

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The bottom has a compartment which has the memory and other cards, and the battery.

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Opening the lid reveals the screen and keyboard. On a Netbook this size the keyboard has to be really small; however, if the keys are too small then it is impossible to use. Fortunately, the letter keys are left mostly full size, it is the other keys that are made really small. I think this is a good decision, because the keys that are used the most are the easiest to get to. However, there are a couple keys are are placed in odd places. For example, check out where the right shift key is, if you cannot find it try looking to the right of the up arrow. Also, look how small the Tab and Caps Lock keys are, it is very difficult to get those right without looking at your hands.

Above the keyboard on the left side is a single button that is used for turning the Netbook on and off. You will notice a large empty space above the keyboard and to the right of the power button. At first I thought this was just a lot of wasted space; however, it is actually the top of the battery. I have never seen a battery on a laptop that actually stuck out of the top.

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Below the keyboard is the touchpad. This touchpad is also designed correctly with the buttons below the touchpad and the touchpad its self nice and big and very responsive.

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The screen is 8.9″ from corner to corner and right below the screen are two speakers. There is definitly room around the edges of the screen so that dell could make it a bit larger.

The desktop is very clean and not cluttered with a lot of junk. The menu is all icon driven and the icons are very big and easy to click, which is great because of how small the screen it. As you hover over each icon another set of icons appears to show which programs you can run.

desktop.png

entertainment.png

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Performance

So now we are on to performance testing. Unfortunately, because this is running Linux I cannot use the  same benchmark software that I usually use. So I had to go and download new software, the benchmark software that I chose to use is the Phoronix Test Suite.

The test suite is made up of lots of different tests. I could not run them all because of the limited space on the hard drive, so I choose a few to try out. The first test is the audio encoding and you can see my results here. The second test was multicore. The last test was ramspeed. However, just looking at these numbers does not do any good, so you can compare other peoples results. The tests turned out ok for a machine this small, but as you can see, the other machines easily beat it in every test.

The rest of the computer worked great. The screen is very high quality. Except for how glossy and reflective it is I could not find anything to complain about.

The keyboard is very solid and very responsive. Except for it being really small and difficult to use there is nothing else wrong with it. It responded to all my button presses and the keys felt strong and were very quiet.

The touchpad is very sensitive. It does not take much to get the mouse to move. On more than one occasion I overshot my target because of how sensitive it is. I am sure there is a way to turn down the sensitivity so I am not worried.

Warranty and Support

The warranty that comes with the Dell Mini 9 by default is a simple 1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service. If you want more you are going to have to pay for it. To upgrade to a 3 year warranty it will cost you $79, which is actually a decent price. If you read my review of the HP Mini 1000 you know that HP charges $179.99 if you want a 3 year warranty.

Conclusion

I enjoyed my time with the Dell Mini 9, but in the end this is not a machine for me. The main factor in me not liking it is how small it is. For a device this small the manufacturer should ditch the keyboard and make it into a tablet. A tablet this size can have an onscreen keyboard that you can use with your thumbs, like the iPhone. Using this keyboard long term will probably result in some major hand cramping. The only other really big annoying thing is the big VGA port. This is really old fashoned and it needs to be removed. HP managed to replace the VGA port with a nice small video out that works great, Dell needs to do the same. Everything else about the machine is good and I don’t have any other negatives. If you are a die hard Dell fan and you love the idea of typing on a really small keyboard and looking at a really small screen then you and the Dell Mini 9 will get along just fine.

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/12/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• System: 8/12-8/26: Loaded M11x with a core i7 processor only $1099 after $194 instant savings + free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10802681

  Coupon Code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
  
  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C

  Start Date: 08/12/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• E&A: Ongoing: Speed up your PC for only $59! Slow doesn’t work for you or your computer, so don’t worry! Dell has the expertise to understand what the problem is and get you back up and running!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808292

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Ongoing

  Start Date: 08/17/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• E&A: Ongoing: Tired of POP up windows, slow start up speeds, crashes and errant behavior? Get Dell’s virus spyware and malware removal starting at $129!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808290

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Ongoing

  Start Date: 08/17/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• E&A: 8/16-8/26: Internet Security from McAfee only $14.99 after $35 instant discount!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808031

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles supplies last 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/16/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• E&A: 8/16-8/26: Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 only $279.99 with Dell Wireless Mouse!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808030

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/16/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• System: 8/16-8/26: Save $74 on the Dell Mini 10, the perfect travel companion starting at $299.99!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808029

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/16/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• System: 8/16-8/26: Back to school savings! Inspiron 15 only $449.99 after $69.00 instant discount.
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10808028

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles Supplies last or 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/16/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Hitachi 500GB USB SimpleDrive Mini Hard Drive - Carbon Fiber - $64.99 after $35 off with coupon code 9K98B3$R9JWLW0
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: 9K98B3$R9JWLW0

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Hitachi 500GB USB SimpleDrive Mini Hard Drive - Carbon Fiber - $64.99 after $35 off with coupon code 9K98B3$R9JWLW0
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: 9K98B3$R9JWLW0

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Save $50 off the Cyber-shot DSC-W330 Silver or Cyber-shot DSCW330/L Blue 14.1 MP 4X Zoom Digital Camera with coupon code W4PVVR6QSR3Q97
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 600 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: W4PVVR6QSR3Q97

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Cyber-shot DSC-W310 Silver 12.1 MP 4X Zoom Digital Camera - $99.99 after $30 off with coupon code KH0V6CVBBL??V6
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10807598

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 500 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: KH0V6CVBBL??V6

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Save $600 off the Vizio 55″ VF552XVT 1080p 240Hz sps LED HDTV VIA Internet Apps with coupon code ZZ6SN5HTG6VNS3
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 115 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: ZZ6SN5HTG6VNS3

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• E&A: 8/13-8/19: Save $540 on the Mitsubishi 73″ WD-73C9 DLP 1080p HDTV with coupon code P1PP4N29SBMTMF
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/13/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/19/2010 7:00 AM or after 190 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: P1PP4N29SBMTMF

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/19/2010
  

• System: While Supplies Last: Save $500 on a loaded Studio XPS 8100, with a core i7 processor and 8GB memory with coupon code: ?PCFZ193RNDXW$
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10807565

  Coupon Code: ?PCFZ193RNDXW$
  
  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While supplies last

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: While Supplies Last
  

• System: While Supplies Last: Save $400 on a loaded Studio XPS 7100 with coupon code: ZLD1KD0CTSN?07
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10807500

  Coupon Code: ZLD1KD0CTSN?07
  
  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While Supplies Last

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: While Supplies Last
  

• System: 8/13-8/26: Ships Fast! Get the Inspiron 17R for only $799.99 with webcam, 4GB memory and HD screen + free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• System: 8/13-8/26: Ships Fast! Dell Inspiron 14R for only $599.99 with a webcam, core i3 processor, 4gb memory and 320gb hard drive perfect for school + get free shipping!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10807498

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• System: 8/13-8/26: Ships Fast! Loaded Inspiron 15R only $649.99 perfect for back to school with Office Home & Student + get free shipping!
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/26/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: 08/26/2010
  

• E&A: Ongoing: Introducing the Dell Streak. The perfectly-sized, go-anywhere entertainment, social connection and navigation device!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10807495

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Ongoing

  Start Date: 08/13/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• System: 8/11-8/25: Buy More Save More! Save up to 15% on customized Aurora and Area 51 Alienware desktops!
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/25/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/11/2010
  

  End Date: 08/25/2010
  

• System: While Supplies Last: Studio XPS 16 only $999.99 after $319 instant savings! Get this great deal while supplies last!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10802680

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While supplies last/ongoing

  Start Date: 08/11/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• System: While Supplies Last: Back to school savings! Save up to 25% on five of Dells most popular laptops starting as low as $299.99!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10802407

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While supplies last/Ongoing

  Start Date: 08/11/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• System: 8/9-8/12: Studio XPS 8100 only $999.99 after $409 instant savings + free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10805748

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/09/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: The perfect system for back-to-school - comes with Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010 only $649.99 after $85 instant + free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10805746

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/09/2010
  

  End Date: MM/DD/YYYY
  

• System: 7/28-8/12: Back to school savings! Save up to 28% on popular Dell laptops + get free shipping on systems over $599 with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 07/28/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Save 20% on Fuji and Olympus Point and Shoot cameras with coupon code CMMMRLW7NRHGCJ
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: : 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 500 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: CMMMRLW7NRHGCJ

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Sony Cyber-shot W310 Black 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 2 GB Memory Card and Bag - $109.99 after $50 off with coupon code 7JLHQNX2ZHM44C
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804451

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: : 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 800 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: 7JLHQNX2ZHM44C

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Iomega 500GB Midnight Blue eGo™ Compact Portable Hard Drive - $69.99 after $30 off with coupon code KK?D2ZRNZR0?T0
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804450

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: : 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: KK?D2ZRNZR0?T0

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Sharp AQUOS 60″ LC-60E88UN 1080p 240Hz LCD HDTV - $1599 after $800 off with coupon code JQHVFPQ3H74RLJ
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: : 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: JQHVFPQ3H74RLJ

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Sharp LC-52D78UN 52-inch LCD TV - $1099.99 after $400 off with coupon code QXNXR27NK1QN3W
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: QXNXR27NK1QN3W

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Mitsubishi 73″ WD-73C9 DLP 1080p HDTV - $1179 after $520 off with coupon code F6LHMHVP9M4N96
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804446

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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 200 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: F6LHMHVP9M4N96

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/5-8/12: Vizio 55-inch E550VL 1080p LCD HDTV - $1049.99 after $350 off with coupon code L1DC37ZJR1KK44
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/12/2010 7:00 AM or after 250 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: L1DC37ZJR1KK44

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/5-8/31: Save up to 15% on the Alienware M15x!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804436

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles supplies last or 8/31/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/31/2010
  

• System: 8/5-8/31: Buy More, Save More! Save up to 15% on the Alienware M11x!
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles supplies last or 8/31/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/31/2010
  

• System: 8/5-8/12: Our new Inspiron 17R with 17” HD+ Screen, brushed finishes,& Intel® core i3 processor - perfect for watching movies! Free 24 hour shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/5-8/12: Back to school savings! The Inspiron 14R for only $599 with a core i3 processor, Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010 + it ships in 24 hours!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804433

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/5-8/12: Introducing the new M101z 11” laptop with full keyboard, starting at only $449.99!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804423

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/05/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/6-8/9: Three days, three discounts. The deals shrink as days go by. Act fast and save big on select PCs.
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10804332

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Discount Details: 8/6 6AM – 8/7 6AM 30% Discount, 8/7 6AM – 8/8 6AM 25% Discount, 8/8 6AM – 8/9 6AM 20% Discount

  Start Date: 08/06/2010
  

  End Date: 08/09/2010
  

• E&A: 8/4-8/12: Protect your PC from viruses, hackers and blended threats on the Internet with the AntiVirus Plus 2010 – essential for only $19.99 after $35.00 instant savings!
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles Supplies Last or 8/5/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/04/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/4-8/12: Back to school savings! Save 32% on the Studio XPS 7100 with THX TruSound for PC and 6 Core Processor only 699.99 + get free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

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  Start Date: 08/04/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 8/4-8/12: Save $124 on the Inspiron 17R with Blu-Ray and core i5 processor only $999.99 + get free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/04/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/3-8/12: Save $22.99 on Microsoft Office Home and Student with a free Connect sleeve bag!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10803723

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: Whiles supplies last or 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/03/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• E&A: 8/3-8/5: Save $800 on the Samsung 46-inch UN46C6300 1080p, 120Hz, LED, HDTV with FREE Harman Kardon BDP-1 Blu-Ray Disc Player
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While supplies last or 8/5/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/03/2010
  

  End Date: 08/05/2010
  

• System: 8/3-8/12: Big back to school savings! Save 23% on the Inspiron 15R with core i3 processor, Microsoft Home & Student and McAfee security only $599.99 + free shipping with coupon code ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: While supplies last or 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 08/03/10
  

  End Date: 08/12/10
  

• E&A: 7/31-8/5: 16GB Zune HD + Ultimate Ears 700 earbuds - $329.99 after $100 off with coupon code NNZ8MXLXQTKNFN
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  Start Date: : 7/31/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM or after 750 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: NNZ8MXLXQTKNFN

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• E&A: 7/31-8/5: Vizio 47″ SV472XVT 1080p 240Hz sps LED HDTV VIA Internet Apps - $1099.99 after $500 off with coupon code W6DZT2$$ZFJL2Z
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 7/31/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM or after 80 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: W6DZT2$$ZFJL2Z

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  End Date: 08/05/2010
  

• E&A: 7/31-8/5: Iomega 1 TB USB 2.0 Prestige Desktop Hard Drive - $59.99 after $40 off with coupon code 2M4RQ0PPMB63VR
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  Start Date: 7/31/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM or after 500 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: 2M4RQ0PPMB63VR

  Start Date: 07/31/2010
  

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• E&A: 7/31-8/5: Iomega 1TB Home Media Network Hard Drive- $109.99 after $50 off with coupon code SF4LTRL?TJ1097
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  Start Date: 7/31/2010 7:00 AM End Date: 8/5/2010 7:00 AM or after 300 redemptions (whichever comes first) Coupon Code: SF4LTRL?TJ1097

  Start Date: 07/31/2010
  

  End Date: 08/05/2010
  

• System: New System: Introducing the new XPS 9100, with a core i7 processor, Tri Channel DDR3 memory and NVIDIA GeForce G310 512MB4 DDR3 standard starting at only $949!
  Expiring Soon
  
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10802682

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  Ongoing

  Start Date: 07/29/2010
  

  End Date: Ongoing
  

• System: 7/29-8/12: Loaded M11x with a core i7 processor only $1099.99 after $194 instant savings + free shipping with coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C
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  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date 8/12/10 5:55 AM CT coupon code: ?8CN$RJ?W5TQ0C

  Start Date: 07/29/2010
  

  End Date: 08/12/2010
  

• System: 7/29-8/2: Studio XPS 16 only $999 after $354 instant savings! Get this great deal while supplies last!
  Tracking URL: http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-1633345-10802680

  Additional Information or Restrictions:

  End Date: 8/2/10 5:55 AM CT

  Start Date: 07/29/2010
  

  End Date: 08/02/2010
  

windowslivewritera97a06b58ebf-fdedmini-inspiron-2.jpg

windowslivewritera97a06b58ebf-fdedmini-inspiron-open-2.jpg

Some specs have been leaked and if they end up being real it looks like a great system.

untitled.bmp

The leaked release date is August 22nd. Lets cross our fingers and hope there are no delays.

Reasonably priced, quality All-In-One photo printers are hard to come by. Dell is trying hard to create a printer that is not only inexpensive, but also produces quality images. The Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 926 is their latest attempt at that very market.

Features

• All-In-One Design!: Combines USB connected PC printing, scanning and faxing with stand-alone copying in a compact box.
• Fast: Prints up to 20 pages per minute in monochrome and up to 15 pages per minute in color (Actual print speed will vary with use).
• High Quality: Produces high quality photos and documents with print resolution up to 4800 x 1200 dpi

The Dell 926 printer uses three ink cartridges, but only two at a time. The cartridges are: Color, Black and Photo Color. Because you can only use two at a time you will have to swap out cartridges depending on what you are printing. If you are printing text or color documents then you will use the Color and Black Cartridges. If you are printing photos then you will use the Color and Photo Cartridges. The Color cartridge costs $17.99 each, the Black cartridge costs $13.99, and the Photo cartridge costs $25.99. There are also High capacity cartridges that almost double the amount of pages that you can print. The High capacity Color cartridge costs $23.99, and the High capacity Black cartridge costs $18.99. I would recommend the high capacity cartridges because you get almost double the ink for only about $5 more.

While the printer has the ability to send faxes, there is no built-in fax modem. Instead, this printer will use a modem that is in your computer. If your computer does not have a modem then you will not be able to send faxes. If you have a computer with a modem you can use either the computer or the printer to start the faxing process.

The scanner is fairly standard and provides scan resolutions of up to 1200 x 4800 dpi in 48 bit color. The maximum document size that can be scanned on the flatbed scanner is 8.5″ x 11″. Scanning can be started from either the printer or the computer. In order to start scanning from the computer, the printer must be connected directly to the computer with USB.

The copier is very basic. You have a few options to choose from while copying like zooming, lightening or darkening the picture. The copier is able to produce copies at about 1200 x 1200 dpi.

Design

Dell 926 is very small and equally light. Because of the small size and light weight it feels really fragile. The printer has dimensions of 17.36″ x 21.22″ x 7.2″ (W x D x H), and a weight of 11.9 lbs. The printer is small enough that it could fit on the same desk as your computer with out taking up much space.

The front of the Dell 926 is where you will find the paper output, media card slots, and a PictBridge connection. There are only two media card slots, so you are limited to what you can use. The two slots only support CompactFlash Type I & II, Microdrive, MultiMedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital (SD), Memory Stick (MS), and xD-Picture Card. The PictBridge handles all the standard functionality.

Paper output tray

Media slots

On top of the 926 is the scanner, a small screen and a few controls. The controls consist of 7 buttons. These buttons don’t do much in respect to the printer; they are mainly used to change the settings. The green button on the right side is used to start the copier, scanner and fax. The button on the bottom of this area is used to turn on and off the printer.

Controls

On the back is the USB port and the power plug.

Back

Opening up the printer reveals a space where you install the print cartridges. Dell has made this easier by only giving you the ability to use two cartridges at a time. Normally you will have one black and one color cartridge. The color and photo cartridges each have three colors which have benefits and downfalls. The benefit is the easy install, and the downfall is not having individual colors and you may end up throwing away a cartridge that is not empty. Because the color and photo cartridges each have 3 colors in them, it is possible to use up only one of the colors. Even though the other two colors are not empty you still have to replace the whole cartridge. Dell also made it easier by putting the print heads right on the cartridges. In case the print head gets clogged, there are no expensive repair costs — you just throw away the cartridge and replace it with another. A downfall of putting print heads on the ink cartridge, and not having separate colors, is that every time you change the cartridges the printer has to realign the print heads. In order to do this the printer has to print out a special page it uses for aligning. This process uses ink and therefore the more you swap cartridges, switching from photo colors to regular colors, the more often you will run out of ink. Dell could solve this by providing individual ink cartridges for each color, and then the only time you have to switch cartridges is when you run out of ink.

Ink setup

Performance

Setting up the printer is really easy. All you really need to do is take it out of the box, install the ink and software, plug it in and start printing. When you install the print cartridges, and every time you change them, the printer will automatically align the print heads. If for some reason the print head alignment does not start automatically you can start it manually by using the display and controls.

If you purchased the Wireless 3300 print server you will need to install that first, and it is separate from the 926 install program. After several attempts and a firmware upgrade I was finally able to get the wireless printer server connected to my network and the 926 printer. After it was connected it worked great with no further problems. The print server does not have a wired Ethernet port, so if you do not have a wireless network you will not be able to network this printer. For only $99, the 3300 is a really good deal if you have more than one computer and a wireless network.

Dell wireless 3300

Wireless 3300 back

Printing to the printer is as easy as just pushing the print button from your favorite program. There are many options in the print menus that you can use to customize your print. Among these options is the ability to set the print quality, and the paper type. One of the things that you need to watch out for when printing is that setting some of the options in the software will cause other settings to reset. For example, if you choose the paper type, 4 x 6, and then choose borderless printing the paper type will reset to 8 1/2 x 11. I made this mistake several times when printing photos and ended up wasting a lot of ink and photo paper before I figured it out. Also, if you choose photo quality before you choose glossy paper, the resolution of the photo will be set to 1200 DPI instead of 4800 DPI. Because of these things I would recommend that Dell rearrange the settings so that the borderless setting is first, then paper type, and then finally quality. Either way you should really double and triple check your settings so you don’t miss anything.

Printing Preferences 1

Printing Preferences 2

Scanning is something you can start from a computer or from the printer. Either way it will need to be connected to a computer or else it won’t have anywhere to send the scan. You will also need to be running a program that can accept a scanned document or image. Luckily, the Dell 926 ships with one such program, Corel Paint Shop Pro X. It can even scan to e-mail by opening a new e-mail message on your PC and attaching the scan as a file. The quality of the scan is excellent, as you can see from the following images. The black and white, and color charts both came out looking great. Scanning a full size document at 100 DPI took about 8 seconds, and a color document took 10 seconds.

Black and White Chart

Color Chart

Color Chart Close

This printer also has the ability to fax, but you need a computer with a modem before it will work. My computer does not have a modem so I was not able to test it.

Copying, unlike faxing and scanning, is something you can do without the need of a computer. I ran a few tests and found that copying color, and black and white, took about the same amount of time. The only thing that changed the copy time was if I changed the quality. I copied a 4×6 photo at photo quality and it took 2 minutes and 48 seconds, but I don’t recommend that you copy photos because the quality is not very good.

Overall the printing, scanning, and copying were good quality and quick. To test the printing I printed off several pictures, some black and white text, and some color documents. The pictures turned out ok, but as you can see they were not quite as good as the store. The text turned out ok, as you can see from the image below the text is a bit blurry close up, but it is readable. Also, if you print text that is really small, around 6 points, the printer will have a hard time. Color documents seem to be where the printer does its best. If you don’t have a lot of text then you will not have any problems. It took about 2 minutes and 45 seconds to print a 4×6 photo quality picture, 7 seconds for text, and 28 seconds for color documents. According to the costs, I mentioned above, and the yield of each cartridge the price per print of a 4″ x 6″ photo quality picture, using a high capacity Color cartridge, is about 46 cents. A full sized page of mixed text and color, using high capacity Color and Black cartridges, is about 22 cents. If you use the standard capacity cartridges your cost will go up to about 25 cents for color documents. It would be nice to see a high capacity Photo cartridge, which could lower the cost of photos. I print my photos at a store, and they charge $0.15 to print 4″ x 6″ photos. Because of this buying a printer just for photos does not make a lot of sense. Not only does it cost two times as much to print individual photos, but the cost of the printer is enough to print several hundred pictures at the store.

Dell 926 text

HP 5L text

Original text

Dell 926 Picture

Store Picture

Dell was nice enough to send me a Bluetooth adapter to use in my testing. The Bluetooth printing was flawless. I used my Treo 650 to take a picture and then sent that picture to the Dell 926. If you have a Bluetooth camera the $36 Bluetooth adapter is a really great deal.

Bluetooth Printing

Printing from a media card is a little different then I expected. When you put in a media card you can either print out all the pictures or a proof sheet. The proof sheet will have thumbnails of all the pictures on the card. Under each thumbnail are a series of bubbles that you can fill in to set the number of copies of each picture, and there is also a bubble for removing red eye. Above the thumbnail section is a set of bubbles for setting the size that you want the photos and for what type of paper you are using. Once you have filled in all the bubbles, you then place the sheet on the scanner and choose the option to scan the proof sheet. Once the proof sheet is scanned the printer will proceed to print out everything you chose. Assuming you filled everything out correctly, a little while later you will have all the photos you selected. When I tried this it actually worked well. I did not have any trouble with the quantity, size or paper type selections.

Proof sheet

If you are connected directly to the printer with USB you can also use the Memory card manager to access your pictures. This program which comes with the printer will allow you to make simple changes to the pictures, like rotating them, and print pictures directly from the memory card. In addition with a direct USB connection you can access the memory card directly and copy the images to your hard drive, open them with a photo editing program or anything else you normally do with images.

Memory Card Manager

Warranty and Support

Dell offers several different warranty options. They start with a 1 year warranty and you can upgrade to a two year for $19 and three years for $29. Dell provides 24/7 toll-free phone support. If you have a less urgent problem you could use the live chat, email, or check the user forum. Dell’s website also has downloadable drivers, software, and user guides. You can also find tips and how-to’s on the website. All of these things are organized by product, so they are really easy to find.

Conclusion

This printer has a lot of great features for its price. With Media card slots, PictBridge, Bluetooth, and wireless networking; you can connect it to just about any computer. I would recommend to Dell that they add a wired Ethernet port to the print server to accommodate users that don’t have a wirelessnetwork. If Dell improves the photo quality to match what you get from a store then this will be an excellent printer. Dell could also solve a lot of problems by using individual ink cartridges for each color. With a very low starting price of $99 you can get yourself a printer that will be good at text and color documents. If you are looking for something to print pictures on, I recommend that you stick with the professionals at your local store.

The market for All-In-One photo printers is getting more and more crowded. In order to stand out you really need to have a great set of features, a low price and excellent quality. The Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 966 is Dells latest offering in this tough market.

Features

• 4-in-1 Design: Combines printing, scanning, and stand-alone faxing and copying in one compact unit.
• Fast: Prints up to 32 pages per minute in black and 23 pages per minute in color (Actual print speeds will vary with use)
• High Quality: Produces professional-grade documents and photos at up to 4800 x 1200 dpi
• Photo Printing: Print borderless photos up to 8.5″ x 11″ directly from a digital camera or memory card
• Flexible: Features standard 50-sheet scanner document feeder, optional two-sided printing, and second paper drawer

Features, Features, Features, this printer has so many features that in my short testing I will probably never discover them all. So let’s start with obvious ones. When you first look at the printer you will notice the screen. The 966 sports a tilting 2.4”color LCD screen. This screen is used to display all the menus, photos that you are printing from a memory card or Bluetooth device, and show ink levels and other system information. The screen tilts so that you can adjust it for optimal viewing. This screen is especially nice because it gets rid of a lot of clutter that you find on other printers that don’t have nice screens. Instead of tons of buttons that do everything, you get a few buttons to navigate menus and in the menus you can change the settings.

The Dell 966 printer uses three ink cartridges, but only two at a time. The cartridges are: Color, Black and Photo Color. Because you can only use two at a time you will have to swap out cartridges depending on what you are printing. If you are printing text or color documents then you will use the Color and Black Cartridges. If you are printing photos then you will use the Color and Photo Cartridges. The Color cartridge costs $23.99 each, the Black cartridge costs $20.99, and the Photo cartridge costs $25.99. There are also High capacity cartridges that almost double the amount of pages that you can print. The High capacity Color cartridge costs $31.99, and the High capacity Black cartridge costs $25.99. I would recommend the high capacity cartridges because you get almost double the ink for only about $5 more. According to the costs and the yield of each cartridge the price per print of a 4″ x 6″ photo quality picture, using a high capacity Color cartridge, is about 32 cents. A full sized page of mixed text and color, using high capacity Color and Black cartridges, is about 11 cents. If you use the standard capacity cartridges your cost will go up to about 17 cents for color documents. It would be nice to see a high capacity Photo cartridge, which could lower the cost of photos. I print my photos at a store, and they charge $0.15 to print 4″ x 6″ photos. Because of this buying a printer just for photos does not make a lot of sense. Not only does it cost twice as much to print individual photos, but the cost of the printer is enough to print over a thousand pictures at the store.

The fax uses a built-in 33.6 Kbps color fax modem. Even though it is a slower modem you will probably not max it out because most public telephone lines limit you to 28.8 Kbps or lower, depending on telephone line conditions. With this modem you can transmit in Color and Black and White. Make sure the other end also has a color fax otherwise you are wasting your time. You can also program in speed-dial numbers for up to 89 individuals and 10 groups (with 30 numbers each).

The scanner is fairly standard and provides scan resolutions of up to 1200 x 4800 dpi in 48 bit color. The maximum document size that can be scanned on the flatbed scanner is 8.5″ x 11″. The automatic document feeder (ADF) can be used to make scanning easier by letting you load 50 pages to scan, and then walk away and come back when it is finished. The ADF also allows you to photocopy or scan legal-size originals.

The copier offers a lot of useful features. It is able to copy in color and in black and white. There are also many other features that you can use when you copy like: 4 on 1, 2 on 1, Image Repeat (4, 9, or 16), Collate Copy. The copier also allows you to reduce and enlarge from 25% to 400%.

The optional duplexer allows double-sided copying and printing. The duplexer costs $79.

The optional Wireless/Ethernet card allows you to setup your printer anywhere in your home or office and use it from any computer on your network. If you have more than one computer, then this is a fantastic feature. With the Canon MP530 I either had to keep one computer on at all times and share the printer, or I had to move the USB between the different computers. With the Canon MP530 moving the USB cable back and forth was the only way that I could access all the functionality from both computers. With the Dell 966 using the network gave me access to all the functionality.

Design

When you first open the Dell 966 you will be impressed at how Dell fits so much into such a little package. Even though it is compact, with dimensions of 18.0″ x 15.1″ x 10.6″ (W x D x H), it is not a tiny printer. Add to that a weight of 22 lbs. and you are looking at something you won’t want to move every day. I recommend a separate table or stand for the printer because it would take over any desk it was put on.

The front of the Dell 966 is where you will find the controls, paper output, Media card slots, and a PictBridge connection. The controls consist of about 23 buttons which control every aspect of the printer and the display. Thirteen of those buttons are set aside for the Fax functionality. You have 12 for dialing numbers, just like on a phone, and a pause button. The buttons to the left of the fax buttons are for accessing the menus and starting the copier, scanner, or fax. Left of those buttons is the LCD screen and left of that is the power button.

Printer unpacked

Below the control panel is the paper output tray, media card slots, PictBridge connection and a paper cartridge. The media card slots are fairly standard. They support just about every type of card, but in order to use a Mini SD or Memory Stick Duo you will need an adapter. The PictBridge handles all the standard functionality, but also adds the ability to connect a USB drive. The paper tray can hold about 150 sheets of paper. The optional paper tray adds an additional 150 page capacity to the input for a total of 300 pages. The lid of the paper try is the output tray and also the manual paper loading slot. You can use this slot to load paper that you don’t use very often so you don’t have to unload the main paper tray. The manual paper loading slot is really deep inside the printer so it is a little difficult to get to.

Media card slots close

There are several things you need to keep in mind when you go to use the media card slots. If you want to print directly from a memory card or a flash drive you can only print JPEG files. If you have a camera that saves images in any format other than JPEG then you must first transfer the pictures to a computer and then print them. The Once you have those things taken care of you can then view the contents of a card in a slide show, print all the photos, and print selected photos. Before you print the images you have the option of modifying the image. The options you have for modifying the image are to rotate, crop, correct red-eye, and adjust brightness. You can also use the media card slots to save the contents of a card to your PC by choosing that option in the control panel. When you select this option Dell’s Memory Card Manager utility will open on your PC. This utility is where you select the images you want to move. This is not the fastest option if you are in a hurry. The Card Manager typically takes a long time to display all the thumbnails of a large card, but you can still select the images you want to copy even if the thumbnails are not showing. The card manager can only be used when you are connected directly to a computer with a USB cable.

On the top is the Automatic Document Feeder. This will hold up to 50 pages at a time and can be used for the Fax, Scanner and Copier.

On the back is a space for the duplexer, the USB port, power plug, modem and wireless network card slot. The modem can be used as a pass through so you can plug in a phone, answering machine or anything else that needs a phone line.

Opening up the printer reveals a space where you install the print cartridges. Dell has made this easier by only giving you the ability to use two cartridges at a time. Normally you will have one black and one color cartridge. The color cartridge is a 3 color cartridge which has benefits and downfalls. The benefit is the easy install, and the downfall is not having individual colors. Dell also made it easier by putting the print heads right on the cartridges. In case the print head gets clogged, there are no expensive repair costs — you just throw away the cartridge and replace it with another.

Printer open

Ink cartridge install 1

Ink cartridge install 2

Ink cartridge install 3

Ink cartridge packages

Ink cartridges

Ink cartridge install 4

Ink cartridge install 5

Performance

When you first open the box you will notice that you will need to install some things, especially if you bought the wireless card or the duplexer. To install the wireless card you simply have to turn the printer around to the back, remove the plastic cover, unscrew the metal cover, insert the wireless card and screw it in. The next step is installing the print cartridges. Because there are only two this is not difficult. Also, Dell puts the print heads right on the cartridge so installing everything is really simple. Installing the duplexer is also easy. There is a space in the back and all you do is snap the duplexer in place.

Wireless card front

Printer wireless install 1

Printer wireless install 2

Printer wireless install 3

Printer back

Printer with duplexer

Printing to the printer is as easy as just pushing the print button from your favorite program. There are many options in the print menus that you can use to customize your print. Among these options is the ability to set the print quality, paper type, and even do double sided printing. On a printer like this, double-sided printing is a very nice feature. Once you have it setup, double-sided printing works great.

Printer preferences 1

Printer preferences 2

Printing status

Scanning is something you can do from the computer or from the printer. Either way it will need to be connected to a computer or else it won’t have anywhere to send the scan. You will also need to be running a program that can accept a scanned document or image. Luckily, the Dell 966 ships with one such program, Corel Paint Shop Pro X. The quality of the scan is excellent, as you can see from the following images. The black and white chart came out a little purple, but the color one looks great. Scanning a full size document at 100 DPI took about 8 seconds, and a color document took 10 seconds

Black and White chart

Color chart

Color chart close

Faxing is one of the tasks that you can do without the aid of your computer; because of this, it is important for it to be easy. Faxing a document is only as difficult as dialing a phone number and making sure your paper is in the ADF with the text facing up. Because there is not a duplexer on the ADF, you can only send single sided documents. If you have a double sided document you will have to copy one of the sides onto another page, and then fax it as two single sided documents. I really had no problems setting it up. Dell has made this really easy by putting all the setups in a program that runs on your computer. I was even able to set up the fax to only pick up on a double ring, a double ring is a distinctive ring my phone company set up to indicate a fax was coming.

Fax dialing setup

Fax ringing setup

Fax printing setup

Fax speed dial setup

Fax cover setup

Fax info setup

Copying, like faxing, is also something you can do without the need of a computer. Like faxing, you can only copy single sided documents, but you can copy two single sided documents onto one double sided page. There are also many other options like reducing or enlarging your copy. I ran a few tests and found that it takes about 18 seconds to copy a Black and White page of text. It takes about 50 seconds to copy a color document. Copying a 4×6″ photo took 1 minute 45 seconds, but I don’t recommend that you copy photos because the quality is not very good.

Overall the printing, scanning, and copying was good quality and quick. To test the printing I printed off several pictures, some black and white text, and some color documents. The pictures turned out ok, but as you can see they were not quite as good as the store. The text turned out really good for an ink jet and the color documents were equally good. It took about 88 seconds to print a 4×6 photo quality picture, 8 seconds for text, and 12 seconds for color documents.

Dell 966 text

HP 5L text

Original text

Dell 966 photo

Professional photo

Dell was nice enough to send me a Bluetooth adapter to use in my testing. The Bluetooth printing was flawless. I used my Treo 650 to take a picture and then sent that picture to the Dell 966.

Bluetooth adapter package

Bluetooth adapter plugged in

Bluetooth printout

Setting up the wireless was the only thing that really gave me trouble. When I first got the printer I could only connet with wireless if I turned off all my security. I called Dell about this and they sent me a fireware update. After applying the firmware I could not even connect with the security turned off. The wired connection always worked during all this so I at least had a fall back plan.

Warranty and Support

Dell offers several different warranty options. They start with a 1 year warranty and you can upgrade to a two year for $39 and three years for $49. Dell provides 24/7 toll-free phone support. If you have a less urgent problem you could use the live chat, email, or check the user forum. Dell’s website also has downloadable drivers, software, and user guides. You can find tips and how-tos on the website. All of these things are organized by product, so they are really easy to find.

Conclusion

This printer has a lot of great features, more than any other All-In-One printers that I have tested. There are many features that make printing really easy. With Media card slots, PictBridge, Bluetooth, wire and wireless networking, you have all the connection options you need. If Dell improves the photo quality to match what you get from a store then this will be an excellent printer. With options and features galore, and a decent warranty, you can count on this printer to last a long time. Add to that a low starting price of $199 and you have a good printer.

Features

• Watch DVDs in natural format and run multiple applications simultaneously
• Wide aspect panel improves productivity with less scrolling and toggling
• Supports advanced features like PIP (Picture in Picture) and PBP (Picture By Picture)
• Delivers distortion-free, sharp images with 1000:1 contrast ratio
• Panels pivot, swivel, and tilt to optimize viewer comfort
• 19-in1 Card Reader

The Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW is so big that it is difficult to see the whole thing in one view. With all the features of a TV, this monitor could be the center of your entertainment center. When mated with a high performance computer like the Velocity Micro Gamers Edge this monitor really shines. With support for up to 5 different video types you are sure to find one that fits your computer. The Dell 2405FPW supports D-SUB (VGA), DVI-D, S-Video, component, and composite. VGA is what an older computer would use, this is also referred to as analog video. DVI-D is a newer digital video which is suppose to produce a cleaner picture, S-Video and component is what comes out of your DVD player and composite can sometimes be found on video cameras and VCRs. Keep in mind that because this is an LCD, you are only suppose to use it at its native resolution. So, people with older computers and video cards may not have the capability of delivering a picture at 1920 x 1200.

The Dell 2405FPW really has a lot of features that make it a multi-use device. With Picture in Picture (PIP) you can display two different video sources on the same screen. This monitor does not have a TV tuner so it does not support direct coaxial input, but it does have S-Video so you could have your DVD player in one corner of the screen and the rest of the screen would be used for your computer. Of course if you already have a DVD player in your computer you can do this by moving the DVD window up into the corner and setting it to always be on top. In fact this is often more useful because you don’t lose any screen space and you can hide the DVD program when you need to.

This monitor also supports Picture by Picture. This is similar to Picture in Picture except that the two pictures are side by side. In this mode both screens are made smaller and placed side by side. The only way I found this useful is when you have more than one computer and you need to see them both at the same time.

In addition to all the other great features the Dell 2405FPW also has 4 USB ports. There are 2 on the side and 2 on the bottom. These are great for devices that you do not want to leave attached — things like joysticks and external hard drives. You should plug your mouse and keyboard into the back of your computer so that the cables are not dangling from your monitor. In addition to the 2 USB ports on the side there is also a 19-in1 Card Reader. This is very nice because you have quick easy access to the card reader from the side of the monitor, unless you have the monitor in a hutch.

IMG_1116.JPG

Design

The design is very clean and flat. The monitor is all black except for a small band of silver that runs around the side of the monitor. All your controls are located in the bottom right corner of the monitor. With these controls you can switch between the different inputs and also access the menus. With the menus you can adjust the brightness, colors, turn on and off the PBP and PIP and much more.

buttons_big.jpg

The stand is well designed also. It has a black neck to match the monitor with a silver base that matches the band that goes around the monitor. It is balanced to the weight of the monitor so the spring inside helps you lift and lower the monitor without much effort. In Landscape mode, the neck raises 3 inches to bring the panel to the huge height of 25 inches. The stand also makes it possible to rotate and tilt the monitor. The stand can tilt the monitor 5 degrees forward and 20 degrees back, and it swivels 40 degrees to the left and the right. If you don’t like widescreens or you just want to have a tall monitor, then the stand lets you pivot the monitor so it is tall rather than wide. However, the monitor does not come with any pivoting software so it is harder to pivot the operating system from a wide screen to a tall screen. There is a user guide on the CD that comes with the monitor that tells you how to get the monitor to pivot with certain graphics cards. The cable holder in the back helps the design a lot. This helps so that you don’t see lots of cables dangling about when you are sitting at the computer. The cable holder can sometimes get in the way; for example, if you want to raise the monitor or turn it you may have to manually re-adjust the cables because the cable holder is not slick enough to let the cables slide.

All of the inputs and another set of USB ports are all located on the back of the LCD. This is nice because it keeps the cords out of the way so you don’t see them, but it is difficult to connect new things with out having to tip the monitor on it back. The monitor is so big that it can be difficlut to find a space big enough on your desk to hold it.

IMG_1117.JPG

Performance

As I tested the Dell 2405FPW I really noticed how sharp the text was and how clear and crisp the colors were. I did not find much that I could complain about. Although, I did notice that during the monitor setup process for Windows Media Center I was not able to get the screen to go as dark as the setup recommended. You will also notice, if you look really closely, that some of the colors are not as bright in the corners. This is more noticeable when you are in a dark room and you have the entire screen one solid color. This can be duplicated by turning on the blank screen saver and turning off your lights. This anomaly is called backlight bleeding and all LCDs suffer from it. As LCD technology gets better the effects of this are less noticable. The 2405FPW suffers much less from this than it predecessors.

I also watched several movies and played several games on this screen. I didn’t have any problems with games. This is great because previous LCD monitors have had trouble with ghosting and streaking. This was primarily because of the refresh rate of the LCDs. Actually, I did have one problem with games, but it was not the monitors fault. Most games do not support the 16:10 aspect ratio that this monitor needs. So a lot of games don’t fill up the screen, or are stretched to fill the screen. Using the monitors controls you can choose whether or not to have the picture streached, but it sure is nice when you can play a game at the full 1920 x 1200. The only game in my collection that supported the 16:10 aspect ratio was Half Life 2. Movies were also very clean looking. The colors were good. Even thought this is a wide screen monitor there is still a considerable amount of black space on the top and bottom of your widescreen movies.

Warranty and Support

The Dell 2405FPW comes with a three-year warranty. Toll-free technical support is available from Dell for the life of the warranty. The Dell 2405FPW did not come with a printed user guide, but the manual on CD is good. Unfortunately, if you cannot get the monitor working and you don’t have another computer it is kind of hard to see the user guide. Dell’s Web site offers online support in the form of answers to FAQs, a searchable knowledge base, troubleshooting tips, and downloads and upgrades.

Conclusion

These wide displays are perfect for working with multiple windows or extremely wide documents and spreadsheets. They are rather expensive, so be sure to look for sales and coupons. If they would get rid of PIP and PBP, and reduce the price, I think it would be for the better. If you are an extreme gamer or you work with a lot of windows or wide documents, then you will probably find a use for this. Most everyone else will probably do fine to stick with a standard size monitor.

Features

• Print, Scan and Photocopy
• Up to 20 ppm (pages per minute) black, 16 ppm color
• Up to 17 cpm (copies per minute) black, 12 cpm color
• Borderless Printing
• 6 color printing with optional photo cartridge
• Wireless capability

Most All-In-One (AIO) Printers are a printer, scanner and fax. Dell has deviated from that design and instead of a fax they have included a PictBridge for printing directly from your digital camera. Not having to include a fax modem probably decreases the cost a little, which explains the low retail cost of $89. To make up for this the 924 can scan to just about any fax software and then you use the modem in your computer to send the fax.

Because this is an AIO photo printer you have the choice of either 4 color printing or 6 color printing. This can be achieved by installing either the black and tricolor cartridge that it ships with , used for four-color printing or replace the black with a photo cartridge for six-color printing. While this sounds like a clever feature we will talk later about how this may be more of a bother than a help.

The scanner is fairly standard as far as scanners go. It supports resolutions up to 19,200 interpolated and outputs at 48 bits. It is a standard flatbed scanner without an automatic document feeder (ADF). For a scanner that is fine because you will mainly use it for scanning photos and an occasional document. For a copier it is terrible, how many of you want to stand there for an hour while you scan a large document by hand? For this to really succeed as a copier, it really needs an ADF.

In case you don’t have a spare USB port, or you don’t have one close to you, there is the option of purchasing a wireless adapter for the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924. With the wireless adapter you can quickly turn this into a network printer and share it will all the computers in your home or office. You also have the freedom of placing the printer in a central location that may not be near a computer. The wireless adapter costs $99 so if you have the money I think the investment is well worth it.

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Design

With dimensions of 11.4 by 17.2 by 17.5 inches (HWD), the 924 is very compact. Most All-In-One printers are not known for their compact design. In fact they look more like copy machines then printers. This printer is small enough to share a desk with other devices or keep nearby on a flat surface. Because it lacks an ADF you may spend a lot of time copying pages if you have a lot.

Because this is a photo printer it supports 6 color printing. The way that Dell implemented this is a little different and not all that great. By default the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924 ships with one tricolor (cyan, yellow, magenta) cartridge and one black cartridge. This gives you 4 colors which is just fine for standard document printing and really good photo printing. If you want to do even better photo printing you can replace the black cartridge with another tricolor (black, light cyan and light magenta) cartridge. I have always questioned why a printer would use multicolor cartridges rather then separate cartridges for each color. The only reason I can think of is that multicolor cartridges are smaller and because of this the printer can be smaller. While this is a space saving design it is an ink waisting design. You will probably never use all the colors in a cartridge equally and because of this when you run out of one color you have to replace the other colors even if they are not empty. In addition to waisting ink when you put in the photo colors what are you suppose to do with the partially used black cartridge? You don’t want it sitting around drying out. So far I have not found a good solution for this, so if any of you have any suggestions please let me know. I would ask Dell to revamp their design to allow for single color cartridges so that we don’t have to waist so much ink. Especially since it costs $55 to get a black and color cartridge. Over the life of the printer you will probably spend hundreds of dollars on ink.

Performance

For a photo printer the only real question is how do the pictures look? Well in order to really answer that question I tried several different things. I printed all the following pictures on 4×6″ photo paper that was supplied to me by Dell. I first printed a picture with my old Epson Stylus Color 900, this would give me a way to compare the pictures. I also went down to the store and had a picture printed professionally. Now I have the low end and the high end. I expect the 924 to fall in the middle somewhere, hopefully closer to the high end then the low end. For good measure I am also including the original digital image, reduced in size, so that you can see what it originally looked like. I first printed the picture using the 4 color process. Even for a 4 color process the picture looks really good, especially when compared to the Epson. If you look closely though, you can see that it is not as good as the store printed picture. I then took out the black cartridge and put in the photo cartridge and printed the picture again with 6 colors. This picture is better than the 4 color picture and it is fairly close in quality to the store and original picture. If I were to use this as just a photo printer I would probably forgo the black cartridge and just use the photo and color cartridges.

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The speed of the printing was really good. On full color the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924 averaged about 1 minute and 14 seconds for each 4-by-6, and 2 minutes and 42 seconds for each 8-by-10. For text and other black and white, the printer was much faster. The print time for an 8-by-10 page full of text it only took about 10 seconds. For a page with graphs and things other than text it took about 40 seconds. This is about on par with most laser printers that often cost much more.

The quality of the text is also a consideration when you purchase a printer. Most people don’t have the luxury of owning both a laser printer and an inkjet, so they have to buy one that does both photos and text. Inkjets have never been able to produce crisp text like a laser printer and they have even had more trouble with text that gets smaller than 6 pts. As you can see the text quality of the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924 is really good. I do not have any complaints about this, obviously it is not as good as a laser printer, but you are also not paying as much for the printer. If you are going to be doing a lot of professional document printing I highly recommend a laser printer.

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Another part of the performance that most people don’t consider is how long the photos will last once they get on the paper. This is affected by so many different things including the quality of the paper, ink and the environment that you keep the picture in. Pictures printed on the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924, if used with the special photo paper, have a life span of 50 years. Dell will soon be releasing a new type of paper that will extend that to 80 years. Of course since this is an ink jet the photos are not water proof. If you live in a very humid climate you may want to consider having your pictures printed at the store.

When you are printing, the software not only gives you the amount that is done, it also tells you approximately how many more printings you can do and it shows you a graphical representation of how much ink you have left. When you have the tricolor cartridges in then the graphic changes to let you know. One strange thing that I noticed is that the CPU usage while printing is rather high. I have a 1.4 GHz AMD processor and it seemed to really raise the usage up to the maximum. I am sure that if you have a faster CPU then you will not see quite the same spike.

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The scanner is also a huge part of the system so lets see how it performed. I tried scanning several different images at different resolutions and the results I got were promising. To scan a 8.5 x 11 full color page at 600 DPI it took about 2 minutes and 6 seconds. To scan a 4 x 6 full color page at 600 DPI it took 1 minute and 15 seconds. These are great numbers especially for the resolution. 600 DPI is the highest that this scanner can go so this is not intended for really high resolution scans. The above pictures, that I used to compare the print quality, were also scanned using this scanner.

Conclusion

For the retail price of $89 you are not going to find a printer that prints a better photo. I am so impressed with the quality of the scans and pictures that the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 924 puts out that I cannot say enough about it. If that is what you are looking for then you will also be really happy. The part that I am not happy with is the handling of the cartridges. All my feelings were expressed earlier, but to sum them up I do not like multicolor cartridges and I don’t like having to switch between black and photo cartridges. Currently Dell is running a sale on these printers and you can pick one up for $79. For that price I would be willing to put up with a few quirks and I think that you will also.

Features

• Bright 3,300 ANSI Lumens (Max)
• Superior high contrast ratio of 2500:1 (Full on/Full off)
• DLP DDR technology from Texas Instruments
• Native SXGA+ (1400 x 1050), with autosync up to UXGA (1600 x 1200)
• Supports full range of television and video standards, including NTSC, NTSC 4.43, PAL (B/D/G/H/I/M/N), SECAM (B/D/G/K/K1/L) and HDTV (480i/P; 576i/P, 720P; 1080i) Built-in 1 watt amplifier and speaker
• Separate HDMI and Component video input

Every projector needs a way to get video into the device. The Dell 5100MP projector actually provides 7 built-in video connections. You can choose from a M1-DA terminal, S-Video, HDMI, Component, BNC, VGA and composite video terminal. Since this is a Home theater projector I would highly recommend that you use the higher quality Component, HDMI, VGA or BNC connectors. Composite is such a bad connector that I am surprised Dell even included it in a projector of this caliber. Composite is something that you would expect to see in a sub $1000 projector. S-Video is good, but compared to the other high quality inputs, it is not the best.

HDMI is a new type of connection. It provides digital audio and video signals in the same cable. With this format you are able to use a single cable to connect you stereo and TV or projector. Components that use HDMI have the ability to interact in ways that were never possible. Unfortunately the technology is still very new and expensive. A single 8ft HDMI cable from Dell costs $120.

The Dell 5100MP projector also includes a VGA video out connector. This can be used to hook together more than one projector, or a monitor to the projector. Keep in mind that this is a pass-through connector so it will only display video that comes in via the VGA or M1-DA connector.

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There is also an audio in and an audio out plug on the back of the Dell 5100MP projector. This allows you to use the internal speaker or send the audio to another device. The speakers are small and only have a 2 watts of output. This means that you are not going to get any real good performance out of them. They are better then your average laptop speakers, but no where near the quality of even the cheapest stereo speakers. I am very surprised that Dell would even include speakers in the projector. I would hope that if you are going to spend $3500 on a projector that you will have an equally impressive stereo. By removing the speakers they may have been able to reduce the price slightly.

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The Dell 5100MP projector also has a manual focus and zoom. This gives you more flexibility when you are placing the projector. You can make the picture up to 1.2 times larger. Focusing is done by turning the lens and zooming is done by moving the lever on top of the lens. Incorporating an automatic focus would have been a nice time saver. Dell was nice enough to include a Focus screen. This screen is all black with some white text and color bars. Using this screen to adjust the focus is much easier than focusing on a movie or picture.

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There are 4 ways that you can interact with the Dell 5100MP projector for manging the settings. The first way is manually with the buttons that are on the projector. The second way is with the remote. The third way is with an RJ232 cable. The fourth way is with an RJ-45 cable. RJ232 is a really old format for connecting to devices, so if you don’t already know how to use it then you probably don’t need to worry about it. Using RJ-45 you can actually connect the 5100MP to your home network and adjust the setting via a web browser. In the settings you can specify an IP address for the projector or just turn on DHCP. This is very nice for homes that already have a network and the projector is in a place that is not easily accessible.

Network management is great. Especially if you have lots of projectors to manage and they are not located closely together. This would be good if you were using them in a theater like environment or something similar. From the network you can manage many of the options like contrast, brightness, network settings, passwords and much more. You can even setup the projector to email you or someone else when there is an alert like a lamp warning, low lamp life and a temperature warning.

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Design

Because this is not a projector that is intended for traveling it is not small or light. In fact it is quite cumbersome to move around and carry. Weighing in at 8.20 lbs and with dimensions of 13″ x 10.3″ x 4.5″ this is best mounted and left alone.

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The Dell 5100MP projector does not come with a nice carrying case like the 3400MP does. Instead the 5100MP only comes in a fabric bag. This is very understandable, why provide a case if all you are going to do is mount it and leave it alone. If you are going to transport it often then you will want to purchase the optional carrying case for $149.

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Even though you should mount the 5100MP on your ceiling, the projector has adjustable feet in case you want to put it on a shelf. There are 3 feet, one in the front and two in the back, and they are all spring loaded for quick extension. The front foot is extended by pressing a button on the front. The rear feet are extended by a button on each side. The rear feet also allow for fine adjustments by twisting them.

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The remote is also designed very well. It has buttons to perform just about any function that you could do with the buttons on the device itself. You can open the menus and change any value. When you are hooked up to a computer with USB you can even control the mouse cursor. This means that if you are showing a movie from your computer you can start and stop it with the remote by moving and clicking mouse. You can connect to a computer two different ways. The first way is like the 3400MP, this is done by plugging the M1-DA to D-sub/USB cable into the projector and computer. The second way is to use a small USB key that is housed inside the remote. When you push on it it will come out. If you plug this into one of your computers USB slots it will allow you to use the remote to control the mouse. There are also IR ports on the front and back of the projector. This means you can be in front or behind the projector when you are controlling it. Located on the remote is also a built-in laser pointer.

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The menus are very well laid out. I had no trouble finding the different settings and quickly setting the different options to meet my needs. There are tons of settings and more then you will probably need, but be sure to go through them all and make sure they are correct for your situation. The menus will also enable and disable themselves based on what kind of video connection you have. This is nice because you don’t always have to search through tons of menus to find the options that are currently valid. I have included some pictures of the menus below which demonstrate some of the different things you can change.

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Some of the more notable menu options include: reversing the image for rear projection, brightness, contrast, aspect ratio and video mode. Video mode will adjust the settings of the projector based on which kind of image you are projecting. If you are hooked up via S-Video it automatically selects Movie mode. These are also user selectable, so if you are connected with a computer and it selects PC mode but you want to watch a movie on your computer, you can change it to Movie mode.

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It is inevitable that you will have to replace the lamp. Even though each lamp is suppose to last about 2200 hours in eco-mode. If you watch 4 hours of movies a day that is only 1.5 years. To make this process easier Dell provided a lamp door on the bottom. It is really easy to unscrew and open. Once you have it open you then need to unscrew the actual lamp enclosure. There is a small metal handle on the enclosure that helps you to remove it. The whole process is easy and can be done in about 5 minutes. The only down side is that replacement lamps cost about $399. Replace the lamp a couple times and you have paid for the projector all over again.

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Performance

When you talk about the performance of a projector you talk about the ability of the projector to display a picture with accurate colors and contrast. This projector does a really good job.

While I am keenly aware that you cannot judge a projector by lumens alone, having 3,300 lumens sure makes the Dell 5100MP projector nice. Add to that a big contrast ration of 2500:1 and you are going to get a fairly good separation of colors and black and white. DLP projectors are very different from LCD projectors in the way they handle the light. With an LCD projector you don’t want to exceed about 1000 lumens otherwise the picture gets washed out. With DLP projectors you can go much higher. With 3,300 lumens this projector is slightly too bright. I found that I needed to decrease the brightness slightly in order to dim the picture so that the colors were not washed out. This is more noticeable when white is right next to other colors. This can also be exaggerated by using the projector in a small room. With the high brightness you really need to use this projector in a big room.

The Dell 5100MP projector also supports picture-in-picture and picture-by-picture. This is great for working with two different video sources. Because this is a home theater projector most people will probably not use this feature. If you do connect a computer then it will be useful so that you can work on stuff and watch a movie at the same time. This is also nice if you need to manage multiple computers. With a little work I was able to get the same DVD signal to go out two different cables, so I could see how the PIP and PBP worked and compared the images. I did notice that the second picture is not as high quality as the first; there was a bit of distortion going through the second picture. Also you are not able to adjust things like brightness and contrast for the second image, at least I couldn’t figure it out.

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Sound levels from the fan are not usually a problem. The normal noise from a home stereo should easily drown out the noise produced by the cooling fan. If you want to reduce the fan noise then you can always switch to eco-mode. This not only slows down the fan, but extends the life of the bulb. With eco-mode turned on you will notice a slight decrease in the brightness of the video. In fact because of the brightness problem that I mentioned above, turning on the eco mode actually improves the picture because it dims the bulb. You will also want to watch out for the heat that this projector puts out. If you happen to be sitting right next to it you may find yourself getting uncomfortable. Make sure you give the projector plenty of breathing room so it can circulate the air.

The sound that comes from the speakers is obviously weak. It was not designed for surround, bass or anything else you want when you watch movies. You will definitely want something more powerful when watching movies.

One of the notable downsides of the Dell 5100MP projector is the perceptible rainbow effect that plagues edges of objects. You really only notice this when you move your eyes back and forth really fast or you look away from the picture and back again. If you are going to use this as a home theater projector, then I recommend that you make the picture small enough and sit back far enough so that you can see the whole picture in one shot and you don’t have to move your eyes back and forth. This is something that affects all DLP projectors so keep this in mind when you are choosing between DLP and LCD. Also some people that I had look at this projector could not see the Rainbow effect so you will want to demo one at a store before you make your final decision. The Rainbow effect is not as bad as the 3400MP, but if you look for it you will find it.

Another of the downsides would be the extreme brightness. I tested the Dell 5100MP projector against two other projectors, the HP vp6320a and the Panasonic PT-AE700U. I was disappointed in the performance of this projector with bright scenes in movies in small rooms, this can be fixed one of two ways. The first is by lowering the brightness. The problem with this option is you then have to raise the brightness back up with movies that are dark. The second way to help with the brightness is to have a big room. The further away you can get this projector from the screen, the better picture you will get. I would recommend nothing smaller than a 100″ diagonal. That would require you to have the projector at least 17′ away from the screen, so this is certainly not for small rooms. The manual recommends that you do not go beyond a maximum distance from the screen of 39′ which will produce a picture of about 295″. That is a huge picture. I did find solace in the fact that none of the three projectors had one setting that worked best for all movies. If you want the best picture every time you watch a movie, you may need to make small adjustments each time you put in a different movie. The thing I was happiest about was that this projector was much sharper than the other two. You could see details with this projector that were fuzzy and not clearly visible with the other two.

For those who are interested, here are a couple of images that show the difference in picture between the 5100MP and 3400MP

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Conclusion

I can easily recommend the Dell 5100MP projector for a home theater. With right size room and some slight adjustments you can really make this projector put out a breathtaking picture. This is not for people with a small room or a tight budget, at $3,499 it requires a bit of cash to buy. If Dell would remove a couple of unnecessary features like speakers, composite video, PIP and PBP then they might be able to reduce the price and make it more affordable. The bulb life is also a slight disappointment, but like I said this is not for people on a tight budget. Hopefully in the future the prices for bulbs will go down. If you are trying to put together a home theater and you have the right room and a high budget then I highly recommend this projector.

Features

• Bright 1,500 ANSI Lumens (Max)
• Superior high contrast ratio of 2100:1 (Full on/Full off)
• DLP DDR technology from Texas Instruments
• Native XGA (1024 x 768), with autosync up to UXGA (1600 x 1200)
• Supports full range of television and video standards, including NTSC, NTSC 4.43, PAL (B/D/G/H/I/M/N), SECAM (B/D/G/K/K1/L) and HDTV (480i/P; 576i/P, 720P; 1080i) Built-in 1 watt amplifier and speaker
• Built in advanced motion adaptive hardware de-interlacing

Every projector needs a way to get video into the device. The 3400MP actually provides 3 built-in and one optional way to input video. You can choose from a M1-DA terminal, S-video and composite video terminal. An optional component-video adapter allows High-Definition signals of up to 1080i resolution to be fed into the 3400MP. If you are going to use this as a home theater projector, then I highly recommend the extra quality.

Back

There is also an audio in and an audio out plug on the back of the 3400MP. This allows you to use the internal speaker. The speaker is small and it only has a 1 watt output. This means that you are not going to get very good performance out of it. In fact I would expect most people to just use the speakers in their laptops instead.

Connectors

The 3400MP has a manual focus and zoom, which gives you more flexibility when you are placing the projector. You can make the picture up to 1.15 times larger. Focusing is done by turning the lens and zooming is done by moving the lever on top of the lens. Incorporating an automatic focus would have been a nice time saver.

Design

When you are on the go the last thing you want to do is lug around a 10 lb projector. The 3400MP only weighs 2.40 lbs and is super small. You will hardly notice the extra weight in your luggage or in your briefcase.

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The 3400MP even comes with its own carrying case. This would make it really easy to take it as a carry on or stash it in your luggage. The case is made out of nice firm foam that is fitted to the exact size of this projector. This means you don’t have to worry about it sliding around and getting broken. The case also has spaces for the remote and additional cables that you might bring. The only bad thing I can say about the case is that the outside is made of the same foam like material that the inside has. This means that if you lean the case against a corner or you set it on something it will leave an indention.

Case

Case Open

The 3400MP is not designed for ceiling mounting. If you want to mount it you will have to buy a 3rd party kit and doing this may void your warranty. This projector was designed for presentations and sitting on a table or desk. To help you position it correctly there are three feet that can be raised and lowered to level the projector on your screen. In the front there is one foot that is raised and lowered by pressing the button in front of it. This foot is spring loaded so it will pop down. In the back there are two feet, but they twist in and out so you can make fine adjustments.

Bottom

The remote is designed very well. It has buttons to perform just about any function that you could do with the buttons on the device itself. You can open the menus and change any value. When you are hooked up to a computer with USB you can even control the mouse curser. This means that while you are giving your presentation you don’t have to go back to your computer to switch slides or start a program. This can only be used when you have Dells M1-DA to D-sub/USB cable plugged into the projector and computer. There are IR ports on the front and back of the projector, so you can be in front or behind the projector when you are controlling it. There is a built-in laser pointer located on the remote.

Remote

The menus are very well laid out. I had no trouble finding the different settings and quickly setting the different options to meet my needs. There are tons of settings and more than you will probably need but be sure to go through them all and make sure they are correct for your situation. The menus will also enable and disable themselves based on what kind of video connection. This is nice because you don’t always have to search through tons of menus to find the options that are currently valid. I have included some pictures of the menus below which demonstrate some of the different things you can change.

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Some of the more notable menu options include: reversing the image for rear projection, brightness, contrast, aspect ratio and video mode. Video mode will adjust the settings of the 3400MP based on which kind of image you are projecting. If you are hooked up via S-Video it automatically selects Movie mode. These are also user selectable, so you can change them any time you want.

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It is inevitable that you will have to replace the lamp. Even though each lamp is suppose to last about 4000 hours in eco-mode. If you watch 4 hours of movies a day that is only 2.5 years. To make this process easier Dell provided a lamp door on the bottom. It is really easy to unscrew and open. Once you have it open you then need to unscrew the actual lamp enclosure. There is a small metal handle on the enclosure that helps you to remove it. The whole process is easy and can be done in about 5 minutes. The only down-side is that replacement lamps cost about $349. Replace the lamp a couple times and you have paid for the projector all over again.

Bulb slot

Bulb

Performance

When you talk about the performance of a projector you talk about the ability of the projector to display a picture with accurate colors and contrast. For the size and price, this projector actually performs very well.

While I am keenly aware that you cannot judge a projector by lumens alone, having 1,500 lumens sure makes the 3400MP nice. Add to that a big contrast ration of 2100:1 and you are going to get a fairly good separation of colors and black and white. DLP projectors are very different from LCD projectors in the way they handle the light. With an LCD projector you don’t want to exceed about 1000 lumens otherwise the picture gets washed out. With DLP projectors you can go much higher.

Sound levels from the fan are not usually a problem. The normal ambient noise from an office or the noise from a home stereo should easily drown out the noise produced by the cooling fan. If you want to reduce the fan noise, then you can always switch to eco-mode. This not only slows down the fan, but also extends the life of the bulb . With eco-mode turned on you will notice a slight decrease in the brightness of the video. You will also want to watch out for the heat that the 3400MP puts out. If you happen to be sitting right next to it you may find yourself getting uncomfortable. Make sure you give the projector plenty of breathing room so it can circulate the air.

The sound that comes from the single speaker is obviously weak. It was designed to play simple sounds that you might find in a presentation or something. For movies you will certainly want a separate speaker system.

The only notable downside of the 3400MP is the perceptible rainbow effect that plagues edges of objects. You really only notice this when you move your eyes back and forth really fast or you look away from the picture and back again. If you are going to use this as a home theater projector, then I recommend that you make the picture small enough and sit back far enough so that you can see the whole picture in one shot and you don’t have to move your eyes back and forth. This is something that affects all DLP projectors so keep this in mind when you are choosing between DLP and LCD. Also, some people I had look at this projector could not see the Rainbow effect, so you will want to demo one at a store before you make your final decision.

For those who are interested, here are a couple of images that show the difference in picture between the 5100MP and 3400MP.

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Conclusion

I can easily recommend the 3400MP for any sort of business application. The lightweight and small design make this perfect for anyone that travels and needs to take a projector with them. This will also be good as a budget home theater projector. By messing with the brightness and contract I was able to get a good picture. The low price tag of $1299 sure helps to make the projector more appealing. Especially since Dells next best projector costs $3499.

Features

• Watch DVDs in natural format and run multiple applications simultaneously
• Wide aspect panel improves productivity with less scrolling and toggling
• Supports advanced features like PIP (Picture in Picture) and PBP (Picture By Picture)
• Delivers distortion-free, sharp images with 600:1 contrast ratio and 12 millisecond response time
• Panels pivot, swivel, and tilt to optimize viewer comfort

The Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW is a fantastic monitor. It is so big it could be considered a small TV. With all the features of a TV, this monitor could be the center of your entertainment center. When mated with a high performance computer like the Dimension XPS Gen 5 this monitor really shines. With support for up to 4 different video types you are sure to find one that fits your computer. The Dell 2005FPW supports D-SUB (VGA), DVI-D, S-Video and composite. VGA is what an older computer would use, this is also referred to as analog video. DVI-D is a newer digital video which is suppose to produce a cleaner picture, S-Video is what comes out of your DVD player and composite can sometimes be found on video cameras and VCRs. Keep in mind that because this is an LCD, you are only suppose to use it at its native resolution. So, people with older computers may not have a video card capable of delivering a picture at 1680 x 1050.

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The Dell 2005FPW really has a lot of great features to make it a multi-use device. With Picture in Picture (PIP) you can display two different video sources on the same screen. This monitor does not have a TV tuner so it does not support direct coaxial input, but it does have S-Video so you could have you DVD player in one corner of the screen and the rest of the screen would be used for your computer. Of course if you already have a DVD player in your computer you can do this by moving the DVD window up into the corner and setting it to always be on top.

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This monitor also supports Picture by Picture. This is similar to Picture in Picture except that the two pictures are side by side. In this mode both screens are made smaller and placed side by side. I found that the screens were so small that it was very difficult to see anything. I did not find this very useful.

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In addition to all the other great features the Dell 2005FPW also has 4 USB ports. There are 2 on the side and 2 on the bottom. These are great for devices that you do not leave attached — things like joysticks and external hard drives. You should plug your mouse and keyboard into the back of your computer so that the cables are not dangling from your monitor.

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Design

The design is very clean and flat. The monitor is all black except for a small band of silver that runs around the side of the monitor. All your controls are located in the bottom right corner of the monitor.

The stand is well designed also. It has a black neck to match the monitor with a silver base that matches the band that goes around the monitor. It is balanced to the weight of the monitor so the spring inside helps you lift and lower the monitor without much effort. In Landscape mode, the neck raises 5 inches and in Portrait mode, it raises about 3.5 inches to bring the panel to the huge height of 23.5 inches. The stand also makes it possible to rotate and tilt the monitor. The stand can tilt the monitor 5 degrees forward and 20 degrees back, and it swivels 40 degrees to the left and the right. If you don’t like widescreens or you just want to have a tall monitor, then the stand lets you pivot the monitor so it is tall rather than wide. However, the monitor does not come with any pivoting software so it is harder to pivot the operating system from a wide screen to a tall screen. There is a user guide on the CD that comes with the monitor that tells you how to get the monitor to pivot with certain graphics cards. The cable holder in the back helps the design a lot. This helps so that you don’t see lots of cables dangling about when you are sitting at the computer. The cable holder can sometimes get in the way; for example, if you want to raise the monitor or turn it you may have to manually re-adjust the cables because the cable holder is not slick enough to let the cables slide.

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Speakers and a headphone jack don’t come standard, but you can add both with Dell’s AS500 Sound Bar.

Performance

As I tested the Dell 2005FPW I really noticed how sharp the text was and how clear and crisp the colors were. I did not find much that I could complain about. Although, I did notice that during the monitor setup process for Windows Media Center I was not able to get the screen to go as dark as the setup recommended. You will also notice, if you look really closely, that some of the colors are not as bright in the corners. This is more noticeable when you are in a dark room and you have the entire screen one solid color. This can be duplicated by turning on the blank screen saver and turning off your lights. This anomaly is called backlight bleeding and all LCDs suffer from it.

I also watched several movies and played several games on this screen. I didn’t have any problems with games. This is great because previous LCD monitors have had trouble with ghosting and streaking. This was primarily because of the refresh rate of the LCDs. Actually, I did have one problem with games, but it was not the monitors fault. Most games do not support the 16:10 aspect ratio that this monitor needs. So a lot of games don’t fill up the screen or are stretched to fill the screen. Using the monitors controls you can choose whether or not to have the picture streached, but it sure is nice when you can play a game at the full 1680 x 1050. The only game in my collection that supported the 16:10 aspect ratio was Half Life 2. On movies, the picture was really good, but not as crisp as a CRT TV. The amount of fuzziness was not overwhelming, but it was noticeable if you looked for it. Since this is only a computer monitor and not a TV this is workable, but it certainly would be better if the picture was sharper.

Warranty & Support

The Dell 2005FPW comes with a three-year warranty. Toll-free technical support is available from Dell for the life of the warranty. The Dell 2005FPW did not come with a printed user guide, but the manual on CD is good. Dell’s Web site offers online support in the form of answers to FAQs, a searchable knowledge base, troubleshooting tips, and downloads and upgrades.

Conclusion

These wide displays are perfect for working with multiple windows or extremely wide documents and spreadsheets. They are rather expensive, so be sure to look for sales and coupons. If they would get rid of PIP and PBP and reduce the price I think that would be for the better. If you are an extreme gamer or you work with a lot of windows or wide documents then you will probably find a use for this. Most everyone else would probably do fine to stick with a standard size monitor.

Features

• Intel® Pentium® 4 processor with HT Technology
• Intel® 955X Express chipset
• Microsoft® Windows® XP
• Front bezel and badge lighting with 7 color options
• 8 USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 5 back, 1 internal) and front headphone jack
• Convenient front flip covers conceal front I/O ports and drive bays
• Clam-shell design provides easy access. Opens with one latch.
• 3 chassis fans for cooling. 2 more dedicated to the power supply.
• 3 – 5 1/4″ external bays
• 3 – HDD bays
• 3 PCI slots, 1 PCIe x 1 slot, 1 PCIe x 4 slot, 1 PCIe x16 (graphics) slot

The Dimension XPS Gen 5, like all dell machines, is completely customizable. It is hard to list all the possible combinations so I will list just those that came with the machine that I am reviewing. The first and most notable is the processor. This machine has a Intel Pentium Extreme Edition Dual Core Processor with HT Technology. The processor is running at 3.20GHz with an 800MHz FSB and 2MB cache. One of the unique things about this processor is that the Extreme Edition processor is user-overclockable in BIOS to 3.40GHz and 3.60GHz. Not only is it overclockable, but you do not void your warranty if you overclock it. The computer does give you a warning that you may reduce the life of the processor by overclocking it. Dell is just hoping that the processor won’t die until after your warranty has expired.

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Another BIOS setting that caught my attention was the ability to disable one of the two cores that come with the dual core processor. I don’t know why you would want to do this, but in case you do, then you can.

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Another notable feature is the hard drive space. The Dimension XPS Gen 5 can support up to 3 hard drives. This means that if you want you can have up to up to 1.5TB (3 drives x 500 GB) of internal RAID storage. This is an incredible and unprecedented amout of storage for a desktop. Plenty for just about everything you could ever need. The machine that I received has 2 x 250 GB hard drives in a raid 0 configuration. This gives me a total of 500 GB.

This machine also came with a Dual TV Tuner + Remote Control setup. This is very handy — especially in a machine like this. It is perfect for performing PVR functions, especially with the large amount of storage that is possible. With 500 GB of storage I am able to store more than 150 Hours of the best quality video. With 1.5 TB of storage you should be able to store more than 450 hours of PVR video. You will obviously have to subtract the space you use up with the programs that you install, but you should still have more than enough for your videos. Included with the tuner is also a remote. This remote is very useful for accessing all the features of the Media Center. If you plan on having this computer hooked up to your TV you will really enjoy the remote.

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Dell sent a 256MB PCI Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon 850 XT Platinum Edition video card with this machine. The default is a 256MB PCI Express x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) NVIDIA GeForce 6800. Both cards are excellent and you will definitely be able to play any video or game you want. The ATI Radeon 850 XT Platinum Edition is currently the top-of-the-line GPU that the Dimension XPS Gen 5 supports.

The Dimension XPS Gen 5 supports up to 4 GB of either DDR2-667MHz or DDR2-533MHz memory. The machine that I received has 1 GB of DDR2-667MHz memory.

This computer can also be configured with any of the flavors of Windows XP including Home, Media and Professional editions. The computer that I received came with windows XP Media Edition. This edition has full support for the PVR recording. If you get the Dual TV Tuner then I highly recommend that you also get Media Edition so you can take full control of its abilities.

Design

One of the greatest things about a well-built machine is the design. Not only the look of the outside, but also how it is all put together inside. Companies like Dell have the ability to really test out parts and make sure they are compatible and stable together. All the pieces fit together really nicely and they look good together. The only problem with this is that you usually have to buy your replacement parts from the original builder in order to make sure you get the same color and size as your original part.

Lets start by looking at the outside design, then we will look at the inside. The first thing you will notice about the outside design is the large shiny silver badge on the front. It serves no useful purpose except to make the outside look cool. When the machine is turned on the badge will light up with a back-light. This back light can change colors. This change is made in the BIOS and your color options include ruby, emerald, sapphire, amber, topaz, amethyst and diamond.

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Another notable aspect of the outside is the door for the drives. This machine hides the CD/DVD, floppy and card reader behind a silver colored door. This is nice because when it is closed it makes the machine look really clean. But it is also a pain to have to deal with opening and closing the door when you want to use your drives. Most people will want to leave this open all the time. Dell made a good choice when they designed the hinges for this door. Unlike most doors, this does not just swing open, but it also tucks in the side of the machine. This puts it out of the way so you don’t bump it or accidentally break it off.

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Also on the front of the Dimension XPS Gen 5 is a smaller door just to the right of the large
door. This little door when opened revels a headphone jack, microphone jack, 2 USB Ports and a
FireWire port.

The back of the machine is loaded up with the normal plugs and connectors. From top to bottom there is one FireWire port, two PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse, 5 USB 2.0 ports, and a Network cable plug. Below these plugs are all the add in cards that you have like Video, Sound and TV tuners. The back of the machine also houses the 5 fans that cool this machine. Having 5 USB ports on the back is a really good thing. In fact I would almost recommend to Dell that in the next model that they add more. So many devices are starting to use USB and that really eats into those ports. With the setup that Dell sent me, I was using 4 of the 5 ports. This only left me with one more in the back that I could use with another device. The 4 ports were going to the keyboard, mouse, monitor (it has a hub) and the remote IR device for the TV tuners. Granted I still had the 4 ports on the monitor and the two ports on the front of the XPS, but who wants cables coming out of the front of their computer or their monitor?

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If everything is working properly you should never have to open the box. But we all know that nothing ever works properly all the time. So if you want or need to open this case you have two options. You can leave it standing up or lay it on its side. Both options do not require the use of any tools. I really recommend that you lay it on its side. This machine is really heavy so brace yourself if you have to lift it. I found that putting it on a raised surface like a counter or table made things easier, because it was at a better height to work on. Once you have it on its side with the back facing you, there is a small sliding latch in the rear that you need to move to unlock the case. After you unlock the case then you simply lift up on the back of the case to open it. It will open on a hinge that is located in the front. It does not open all the way, instead it opens to about a 45 degree angle. This can seem kind of cramped, but it keeps you from pulling the plugs out of their sockets by stretching the cables. When you open it you will notice that it is very clean and open inside. This is probably the most notable thing about this design. Dell does a great job with cable routing. This makes sure that you don’t have cables blocking your access to the guts of the system. It also helps with airflow in the computer which keeps it cooler. If you choose not to lay the machine on its side then when you open the door you will notice that the door rests on a small leg. This leg is not super strong so be careful not to put too much weight on it. I would recommend to Dell that they get rid of the leg and just extend the entire door down so it all rests on the floor.

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The CPU is covered by a large Green case. This case routes the air from the fans in the back so they blow directly on the CPU. This allows fans to be larger and spin more slowly, so they don’t make as much noise. This plastic case is removable, but unless you have a reason to open it I don’t recommend that you take it off, because if you don’t get it back on just right, the CPU may not get the air flow that it needs to stay cool. Having it set up this way really does a good job cooling the system and it also makes it much quieter than other computers. In fact most of the time you can hardly hear it. When you are doing CPU intensive tasks then the fans will speed up. At full speed the Dimension XPS Gen 5 can be quite loud. It almost sounds like a miniature jet. Dell may want to consider a water cooled system in one of their future versions of the XPS.

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Next to the CPU is the graphics card. You will notice a small brace that comes up from the motherboard and covers part of the graphics card. This prevents the graphics from being removed easily or from falling out of place. I don’t know why Dell decided that the graphics card needs this, because none of the other cards have it.

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The door that opened is where all the hard drives and CD/DVD drives are located. There is considerably more cable clutter here then on the motherboard, but this is because each drive needs to be connected to power and to the motherboard. Dell has made this as clean as possible, but it would be nice if all these devices where somehow connected wirelessly. The hard drives are hidden behind a green panel. The panel does not serve any special purpose except to hide the cables and a little of the clutter. The system has slots for 3 hard drives. I don’t know why only 3, because I thought that serial ATA made it possible to have more.

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I did notice a couple of strange slots in the back of the machine when it was opened. I don’t know what they are or what purpose they serve, I guess they could be used to keep the area open for air flow but I could be wrong. If any of you know what they are for please post it to the form and let me know.

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One interesting thig you may notice is that the power supply is located at the bottom of the case instead of the top back like most other cases. This offers several advantages and one possible disadvantage. One of the biggest advantages is that you can route the power cables more easily from the bottom up rather then having to go across the motherboard. Also because the entire bottom of the box is the power supply, it is a lot thinner than the bulky boxes that we are used to. This saves space on the inside of the box. The one possible disadvantage is that next to the CPU the power supply is probably the biggest producer of heat. Since heat rises, having the power supply at the bottom of the box may add to the overall heat of the system. To help keep this from happening, Dell installed twofans in the back of the power supply which pump out as much heat as possible to keep it from going into the box.

Performance

For the most part Dell machines are not speed demons. In fact, I think they are going more for stability than extreme speed. They don’t overclock the graphics cards and by default they don’t overclock the CPU. This means they probably won’t win any awards for the absolute fastest computer in the world, but they are also not the slowest. Personally, I would rather have a fast stable machine than an extremely fast, but unstable machine. I think this is also the case for most consumers.

This does not mean that the Dimension XPS Gen 5 is slow. This is by far the fastest desktop that Dell sells and is very fast in its own right. Because this is not just a gaming machine, it has not been tweaked just for games. The Dimension XPS Gen 5 is a well rounded gaming/media machine and it performs all its functions is plenty of power.

To test the power of the Dimension XPS Gen 5 system I ran a couple benchmarks. I used 3Dmark 2005 to test the graphics and PCMark 2005 to test the rest of the system. Both programs returned very good results. As you can see from the images below the scores are very high.

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Because Dell supports overclocking the CPU, I wanted to perform the same tests with the CPU set to 3.6 GHz and see if there was much of a change in the scores. As you can see from the images the scores did increase. I was expecting just the CPU score to increase, but it seems like the whole system benefited from the increased CPU speed.

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Numbers like those that come from 3DMark and PCMark are great for getting a feel for the system as a whole, but what gamers really want is to know how the machine will play their favorite games. Two of the most demanding games for a computer are Doom 3 and Half Life 2. So I decided to test those games in addition to the other tests. To test these I created a couple demos of each game and then played them back several times with different resolution settings to see what the frames per second (FPS) would be. First, I played Half Life 2 at 1024 x 768 with 4X AA and 8X AF. Everything else was set to high. At these settings I was able to get 101 FPS. At 1600 x 1200 and everything else the same, I got 66 FPS. Since 60 FPS is the goal, with any game it seems like the Dimension XPS Gen 5 can handle the task. Now on to the Doom 3 tests. With the game set to 1024 x 768, 4x AA and everything else turned on I was able to get 66 FPS. When I turned the resolution up to 1600 X 1200 the FPS dropped down to 38. Even though we were shooting for 60 FPS 38 is still playable. So I have to give it to the system for being able to play games with high FPS.

The ATI Radeon 850 XT Platinum Edition video card that Dell sent with this computer has both analog and digital monitor connectors. Supposedly the digital connector, when plugged into a digital monitor, is suppose to produce a better picture because it does not have to convert the video signal to analog. I tried connecting both the analog and the digital cables to the computer and I couldn’t tell a difference. You are only allowed to connect one of the cables at a time — for some reason when both are connected no signal was getting to the monitor, probably because the card was confused about which connector to use.

Fortunately recording TV does not take up that much memory or processing power. This means that when the machine is recording you can still do normal things like play games, edit movies and surf the Internet. You can see from the images below that recording one or two shows does not take up much memory or CPU. With this particular TV turner you can even record two shows at the same time or watch live TV and record another. This makes having a VCR obsolete for recording TV.

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Media center uses its own proprietary format (dvr-ms) to save the TV shows in and before you can edit them, you must convert them to Windows Media Video format (WMV). Something funny I noticed is that Nero DVD authoring software would recognize and burn the dvr-ms format but Windows Movie Maker would not. It just goes to show that sometimes even the operating system cannot recognize its own format. With 500 GB of hard drive space I am able to save over 150 hours of video. Of course you can always reduce the quality of the recording and save more video, but if you are diligent about removing your old videos or burning them to DVD you should never have to worry about not having enough space. At the best quality a 30 minute video takes up about 1.5 GB and a 2 hour video takes up about 6 GB. When you convert the videos to WMV the same videos take about 379 MB and 1.5 GB respectively. Of course converting the videos is quite CPU and memory intensive, so you should make sure you are not doing anything else while you convert your videos.

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I did have trouble with the TV tuners. Every once in a while, one or both of the tuners would stop functioning. Usually it was only one, so if the other one was not busy the machine would automatically switch to use the good one. This was only a problem if I was trying to record two shows at the same time. It also only seemed to happen if I left the computer on for several days at a time. To fix the problem I usually needed to restart the computer, but sometimes the computer had to be turned off. For some reason restarting the computer didn’t seem to clear it up every time. I don’t know why the tuner would die, or even if it was hardware or software related, but because it would only happen about once a week it didn’t seem that big of a deal.

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Warranty & Service

As with all Dell machines the warranty is dependent on your budget and how much you want to spend. I highly recommend that you get something, even if it is just for a couple years. You never know when you are going to get a lemon. There is no way for anyone, including Dell, to know when one piece of hardware is going to go bad. If your budget is tight you probably don’t need the nights and weekends support and you can get along fine without the accidental damage coverage, unless you have kids.

There is one unique thing about the XPS machines support, you get a dedicated team of professionals who are specially trained to work just on the XPS. This is especially important if you happen to venture into overclocking your machine and you end up crashing or breaking something. These support individuals can help you get back to running normally.

Dell computers also come with the Support Center software. If you leave this software running it will notify you when there are updates for your computer. This can be really useful in making sure your computer has the latest updates so it is as stable as possible.

Conclusion

Overall I am very impressed with this computer. With Dells easy to use website you can configure the price and performance to match your needs and budget. The design is solid and the performance is fantastic. If you use the coupons that are on this site you can even save yourself quite a bit of money. Be smart and don’t overspend, but make sure you plan for future uses because not many people can afford to buy one of these computers every year. I am sure that you will be happy with this computer. If you don’t need the flashy case, you may want to look into getting a Dimension 9100 — it has most of the same features but you can cut off a couple hundred dollars from the price tag. Also note that Dell recently announced a new Dimension XPS 600 that will have support for dual graphics cards using Nvidias SLI techonlolgy. So if you have to get the best then you may want to wait for that to come out.

Features

• 5GB of storage
• Up to 10 hours of battery life
• Plays MP3, WMA, WAV
• 1.62″ LCD

Setup

Unpacking the box and setting up your new toy is always one of the best aspects of getting new stuff. Unpacking the Pocket DJ is no different. Inside the box you will get several different items. The Pocket DJ, USB sync cable, power cable, earbud earphones, software cd, getting started guide and a product information guide.

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According to the getting started guide, you should let the Pocket DJ charge for about 2.5 hours. This is also a really good time to install the software that comes on the CD. The Musicmatch software is for general ripping of cds and uploading them to your Pocket DJ. It does a really good job of creating quality MP3s and it can go online to get the song information like artist and title so you don’t have to manually type it in. Once the songs are ripped and saved, you can also use the Musicmatch software to upload the songs to the Pocket DJ. The other software that is included on the CD is the Dell DJ explorer. This software is like Windows explorer in that it allows you to transfer files to and from your Pocket DJ. There are no limitations on what kind of files you can store, so even if you do not listen to a lot of music you can use the Pocket DJ as a portable hard drive.

Once the software is installed and the Pocket DJ is charged you really get to have some fun. You should probably wait to turn it on until it is fully charged because it cannot charge and be on at the same time, this is a limitation of charging through a USB plug. Once it is on you can configure the settings and input your user information. There are not that many settings on the Pocket DJ. It consists of setting the time and date, your name, equalizer settings, backlight time, contrast, idle shutdown and language. There is also a calendar in the Pocket DJ, but as far as I could tell it doesn’t do anything except tell you the days of the month.

Design

Every MP3 player is slightly different in design and every user has something they do and don’t like about the design. The Pocket DJ has a very capable design, one that I found to be very pleasing. The device itself is only 3.5″ x 2.1″ x 0.5″. This is only slightly shorter and slightly wider than the iPod minis 3.6″ x 2.0″ x 0.5″. The size differences are so minute that you will not notice them unless you use a ruler. The Pocket DJs 1.62″ diagonal screen is also slightly smaller than the iPod minis 1.67″ diagonal screen. Again, you will not notice the difference unless you measure it. The Pocket DJ does weigh a bit more than the iPod mini. The Pocket DJ weighs 4.4 oz and the iPod mini weighs 3.6 oz. The extra weight on the Pocket DJ could be explained by their use of metal for the case, instead of plastic like the iPod. Personally, I like the look of the metal case. It is much more elegant.

Probably the biggest design flaw that I found was the lack of an easily replaceable battery. This is one of those things that every battery operated device needs. Fortunately for the Pocket DJ, if you have a small phillips screw driver you can open up the Pocket DJ and replace the battery from the inside. Because the battery just snaps out and in you don’t have to worry about soldering in a new battery or breaking the hardware inside.

One of the greatest design choices is the use of raised buttons. I find it a complete pain to have to take an MP3 player out of my pocket every time I want to change songs, pause or any number of other things. With raised buttons all I have to do is quickly feel for the middle button and press and that will pause or play the current song. I can press the right button to fast forward or skip a song and the left button to rewind or go back a song. The home, back and scroll buttons are also useful but because they operate the menus you must take the Pocket DJ out in order to see what menu item you are on. One button that is sorely missed is the stop button. But having the dedicated volume and other buttons makes up for it by making it easier to use.

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Another nice design feature is the lock. On the back of the Pocket DJ is a small sliding switch which locks the Pocket DJ so you don’t accidentally press a button. It is a very small switch and kind of stiff so unless you have a good fingernail you may have a hard time using it. The stiffness is nice because it won’t accidentally unlock.

On the bottom of the Pocket DJ is a small reset button. I have never had to use this, but just in case it freezes up you can press this to reset the Operating System and keep going.

On the top of the Pocket DJ are the volume buttons. These are also easy to tell apart without having to look at it because the up volume is raised and the down volume is indented. The power button is also located on top. It is indented, but it is smaller than the volume buttons so you can feel the difference. The power button also lights up when the device is on. In addition to the buttons on the top there is also a standard headphone jack and also a USB mini-B port. The USB mini-B port is used not only for syncing the device to your computer and transferring files, but also for charging the Pocket DJ. There is not a separate AC plug instead the AC adapter plugs right into the USB mini-B port. This eliminates the need for an additional plug.

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Performance

Probably the most important aspect of an MP3 player is how well it plays music. A lot of that is dependent on the format of music you are playing and also the quality of the original music. Because the Pocket DJ supports MP3, WMA and WAV file formats you will certainly be able to find the right mix of file size and quality. The Pocket DJ has a very good flat frequency response and low distortion, and can deliver between 95 and 100 dB with quality headphones. It is good enough that if you play a high-bit-rate classical piece you can hear every note with clarity and definition that you would expect from a bigger stereo. If it’s in the music, the Pocket DJ will play it very well.

The Pocket DJ is limited with the types of music it can play. For now it can only play WMA, MP3 and WAV. It is also compatible with secure WMA formats which are used by many online music stores including Napster, MSN Music, and Wal-Mart. So far it does not support OGG (Ogg Vorbis) or ACC. ACC is a format that is only supported by iPods so it will probably never support it. So far the Pocket DJ does not support Microsoft’s latest WMP 10.0 DRM (previously known as Janus), Dell has previously said that they would be releasing an update to the firmware to fix this, but I have not seen one yet.

Battery life on the Pocket DJ is not far off from what Dell claims. The claimed time is 10 hours with 128kbpS MP3 audio format, mid-range volume and the backlight and equalizer off. With all those settings I was able to get 9 hours and 31 minutes.

In my tests I was able to get about 2.7MB/s out of the USB 2.0 connection. Even though it is rated for about 8MB/S, this is still really good for a device like this.

The equalizer performs well and gives you several options. There are 8 preset EQ settings and one custom. The preset EQ settings are Acoustic, Classical, Disco Jazz, New Age, Pop, Rock and Vocal. The custom EQ setting lets you change the 100, 800, 3k and 12k Hz frequency and you can adjust them by 12 dB either up or down.

Conclusion

The Dell Pocket DJ is a no frills MP3 player. They have kept it simple, but also inexpensive. This is one of the least expensive MP3 players on the market and if you are budget minded then this could be for you. If you really have a huge MP3 collection you could opt for one of the bigger DJs like the DJ 30 which has 30GB of storage. At the time this article was published you could pick up a Pocket DJ for only $199. This is a good deal, but an even better deal is the DJ 20 for $224 or even the DJ 30 for $269.

Features

• Microsoft® Windows® Mobile 2003 Second Edition with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile
• Intel® XScale™ Processor at 624MHz
• Integrated CompactFlash® ROM and Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC Memory Card Slots (3.3v)
• Integrated Bluetooth™ Wireless Technology, Integrated 802.11b Wireless Technology
• 3.7″ VGA screen with 480×640 resolution
• Intel® 2700G multimedia accelerator with 16MB video memory

Setup

One of the most confusing parts of setting up the Axim X30 was the initial charge. There was a lot of confusion about how you charge the internal backup battery. The instructions that Dell provided were short and not very descriptive. In the end they didn’t need to be long but they should have explained what was going on. The Axim X50v eliminates this confusion by no longer requiring that you manually turn on the Axim during the first charge. Instead, when you first put in the battery it is suppose to come on by itself. This starts the internal batteries charging and when you place it on the cradle it will continue the charging and also charge the main battery. Dell recommends that you leave the Axim on the cradle for about 8 hours. This is to guarantee that all batteries are fully charged. You will notice that the charging light turns green after about 4 hours but you should leave it on to make sure it gets done properly. It sure would be nice if Dell found a way to send the Axim with fully charged batteries. This would save a lot of frustration from users because they want to use the Axim now and not wait for 8 hours. It would also prevent a lot of ruined batteries and confusion because of bad charges.

The next part of the setup can be done while the batteries are being charged, or you can wait until it is all done. When you turn on the Axim for the first time you are prompted to complete some simple training on usage and to align the screen to your stylus. It is fairly simple, but it would be nice to be able to skip the training since it is the same for all Axims, and unless this is your first Axim you have probably already done it several times. In fact every time you do a hard reboot you will have to do it all over again. By the way, a hard reboot also deletes everything on your Axim except what you have in the built-in storage or on a removable memory card.

Design

Like the X5 before it, the X50 is the more stylish of the available Axims. It has more curves and colors in the case and because it is newer than the X30 it also has a better screen. Rather than the solid silver of the X30, the X50 is mostly black with a silver trim around the front edges. It also has a black rubbery material on the sides for better grip. The back of the X50 is hard plastic. All the different pieces fit together well and it looks good together.

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For the Axim X50 Dell removed the antenna that stuck out of the top of the X30. This makes it slightly shorter than the X30 with antenna. Because it has rounded corners and a soft rubbery material on the sides it is really comfortable to hold. The Lights that were in the antenna of the X30 are now located in the top right corner of the X50. It flashes green for WiFi, blue for Bluetooth and alternating for both.

The front of the X50, except for the colors, is laid out just like the X30. The power button is at the top and there is a microphone on the left side. The screen is below that and there are 4 buttons and a directional pad below that. The buttons below the screen are slightly smaller then the X30, people with fat fingers and gamers may have trouble with this, but You will eventually get used to it. The screen on the X50v is slightly larger than the other X50 models, the screen is also VGA with 640 x 480 resolution.

The left side is slightly different than the X30. The X30 has a jog dial and headphone jack. The X50 has neither of these. Instead, it has two buttons. By default the top one is for wireless and the bottom one is for sound recording. There is also a lock switch above those buttons which will lock all buttons and screen taps. The lock is great for when you are watching a movie or listening to music and you don’t want to accidentally push buttons. Above all these buttons is a lanyard loop. Since the X50 does not ship with a lanyard I cannot imagine that many people will actually buy one. Hanging this around a neck or wrist would not be comfortable because of its size.

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The right side, just like the X30, is completely bare because this is where the stylus slides into.

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The back is fairly plain; However, the X50 does have a redesigned battery compartment. On the X30 you use the Stylus to slide a lock that releases the battery. There was no need for a battery cover because the battery locked right into the Axim andbecause the batteries were a portion of the X30. This was especially nice for the extended batteries because you didn’t have to fight with multiple battery covers for different sized batteries. The X50 changed this by adding a battery cover. There is a small switch that locks the cover in place and it is big enough that you can use your finger to open it. Also the switch must be completely locked before the Axim X50 will turn on. I accidently only switched it half way and the cover locked but the Axim would not turn on. It took me a while but I finally figured it out. This is more conventional like a remote control and cordless phone. But what is one of the first things to break on those devices? The battery cover. I will watch this over time and see if this also fails like so many before it. On the bright side the batteries are smaller and they actually have more capacity. The smallest one is 1100mAh and the largest is 2200mAh. If you purchase a 2200 mAh battery it will come with a seperate battery cover so that it can fit. This is much more of a pain then it may seem. Now you not only have to find a case that will fit the larger battery but you also have to find one that will have a spot for the extra battery cover.

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The top also has some changes that should be noted. The top contains the headphone jack on the left side, a CompactFlash, SDIO slot and IR port in the middle and the stylus on the right.

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The only change in the bottom is that the connector has changed. Dell says that was necessary because they added an option to display the X50 screen on a regular monitor. You do need a special cable for this function which is part of Dell’s presentation bundle. This can be purchased separately for $79. I didn’t receive one, so I have don’t know how it works.

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The Stylus suffered some changes. The X30 has a skinny fish like stylus which in my opinion fit nicely in your hand and was comfortable. The new stylus is more conventional in that it is round and metal with a plastic tip and plastic end. Because it is round and slick metal it is also much harder to grip. I often found that if I did a lot of writing or my hands were a little slippery that it would slip out of my hand. It is also much harder it get this stylus out of its holding place. You may want to leave your finger nails a little longer for the purpose of getting the stylus out. If you are an old Axim user then the fish will be missed, but if you are used to using other PDA’s then this will be like what you are used to.

Last, but certainly not least, the docking cradle has changed considerably. No longer to you get a bright, shiny and in my opinion, gaudy looking cradle. The new cradle is much smaller and cleaner looking. The design is fairly flat and black. In fact it is completely black except for the dell logo, which does not light up, the single led light for the spare battery charge status and the bottom which is silver like the logo. The place for charging the X50 is no longer a slot that you slide it into. Instead it is a small connector, which sticks out a little, that you slide the X50 onto. Because of the change in battery style, a change in the spare battery charger is also required. Now it is a depression that the spare battery rests in. I personally think it looks better than the old cradle and it fits in well with any environment.

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Performance

Performance is important in any computing device and the Axim X50v is no stranger to performance. The X50v has the same processor that the Axim X30 high has. Like the X30 the X50 has the ability to scale the speed of the processor so you can save battery life. The X50v is also graced with a separate graphics processor to power the 640 x 480 VGA screen. None of the other X50 models have the graphics processor or the VGA screen.

Adjusting the processor speed can help save battery power or make sure you have all the necessary processor power you need for your programs. Under the power settings you have several options that allow you to change the processor speeds. You can choose from Maximum Performance, Normal, Power-Saving and Auto. The Axim X30 does not have the Normal setting. For power users you will want to set you processor to Maximum Performance. This will use up the most battery power, but you will not notice any performance delays and your programs will be given all the speed they need to run. If you set the processor to auto then the processor will slow down when it is not being used and will have to speed up when you start a program or access the device. You will notice that the Axim X50s lowest speed is lower then the X30, the X30 could only go down to 208 MHz and the X50 can go down to 104 MHz. Because of the lower speed and the speed changes you will notice some delays in accessing menus and starting programs when you have it set to auto. It would be really nice if you could specify a minimum speed with the auto setting. This would still save some battery power by letting the processor slow down but allow you to get better performance by letting you choose the minimum speed.

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You will notice the scores on some of the graphic speed tests are a little off. It seems that the software I used, SPB benchmarks, is having a little trouble with the graphics processor. Hopefully they will come out with a patch so I can retest and give you some good results. There are some other processor and memory scores on the Axim X50 that are slower than the X30. I cannot explain this but if there is a new version of the testing software and the results change I will update them.

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All models of the Axim X50 come with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. This is the latest and greatest version of the operating system. The Axim X30 also has the same operating system so there is nothing new, except the X50 also has Windows Media Player 10 and other fixes that were released. This version of Windows does support the VGA screen which offers up to 4 times the resolution of previous screens. Unfortunately the operating system does not support the 640 x 480 resolution that the screen does, so every thing looks clearer, but it is all the same size as before. You will notice several quirky things about the operating system, for example if you choose to take Activesync off of the start menu, then when you go to Home on the start menu, Activesync is a broken link. Also you can only have 3 alarms. These kinds of things are not mission critical, but they can be annoying.

The displays on the lower two models of the X50 are just like the X30. The X50v on the other hand offers a VGA screen with resolution of up to 640 x 480. You can definitely see an increase in the resolution because the colors and text are clearer. You cannot take advantage of the 640 x 480 resolution because the operating system does not support it, so you are still stuck at 320 x 240. If you are able to take an uncompressed screen shot, like what I have, you will be able to see the great difference in the resolution.

In order to power this new fancy screen and all the programs that may take advantage of the higher resolution, the X50v uses Intel’s 2700G ‘Marathon’ mobile graphics chip. The 2700G is like a laptop graphics process because all the features are shrunk down to a single chip. The features that are in the chip are 16 MB of video memory, 2D and 3D acceleration, video decoding, and automatic power-saving features.

The Axim X50 ships with all the same programs as the X30 except that the X50v comes with two games that are suppose to show off the graphic abilities of the X50v and graphic processor. Enigmo is a 3D puzzle game, but you only have 2D controls so you can slide around on the screen, but you cannot rotate. Stuntcar Extreme does a much better job displaying the 3D capabilities of the X50v. As its name suggests, it is a racing game where you do jumps and other stunts. It is fun, and offers two modes of viewing while racing. You can race with an outside the car perspective or an inside the car perspective.

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All of the X50s have 64MB of SDRAM for loading your own programs and also for programs to run. The higher two models also have 128MB of ROM where the operating system is stored, and you also get about 100MB of that in built-in storage. The extra memory is very nice and helpful for loading programs and stuff. I personally would leave the RAM just for running programs and use the built-in storage for loading your programs. You will notice that graphic intensive programs like Stuntcar Extreme need a lot of memory to run and you may frequently need to close out of other programs to free up enough memory for them to run. Another 32 or 64 MB of RAM would really have helped to alleviate this problem.

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Wireless on the X50 is great, just like the X30 before it. Wireless is easy to setup and has great range and speed. I was hoping that X50s would be equipped with 802.11g, but they opted for 802.11b just like the Axim X30. For my network I had to use the Odyssey client to connect, but once I set it up I have not had any problems.

Audio on the X50 is handled by an internal speaker. There is no specific speaker hole for the sound to escape from, instead it seems to emanate from the all the cracks and crevasses. For simple game sounds this is more than adequate. For music and voice recording though, you will probably want to use headphones to get more clarity and block out other sounds that may make it hard to hear. The headphone jack can serve another purpose. It also can take a headset/microphone plug. This could be used by voice command programs and even VOIP (Voice Over IP) communications. The X50s built-in microphone is also great for picking up all sorts of sounds and voices.

Battery life on the X50v is slightly less than the X30, but that could easily be explained by the extra graphics processor and the bigger, brighter and higher resolution screen. I would highly recommend that you buy another battery. The battery tests that I ran were all performed on the 1100 mAh and the 2200 mAh batteries.

Support

Like all Dell products you can purchase whatever support you would like. The default warranty is 1 year limited warranty, 1 year technical support, 1 year Advance Exchange, but can be increased to 3 year limited warranty, 3 year Advance Exchange with lifetime technical support.

Conclusion

Dell has certainly found a great balance of power usage and performance with Axim. The power requirements have increased, but so has the battery capacity. The X50v is a bit expensive; at $450 it is almost as expensive as a cheap desktop. But you will note that the smaller you go the more expensive the equipment gets. You can of course wait a little while until the price drops, or you can look for coupons or discounts for your purchase. If you really sit down and just think of all the great things you get, you will realize that it is well worth the price. Besides these devices are not cheap to make. I recommend this to anyone looking for a high-end PDA, whether you need it for the graphics capabilities or anything else you will not be disappointed. Make sure you look at the other Axims because you may find that you don’t need all of the features on the X50v or even the X50 and you can save a lot of money by buying an X30 instead.

Features

• 15″ Liquid Crystal Display
• Mobile Intel Pentium Processer
• Internal Wireless Ready plus internal NIC & modem
• Internal NIC & modem
• GeForce™ FX Go5200
• Built-in stereo speakers

Design

The design of the Inspiron 5150 is simple, yet nice. The colors are very classy, and they look good on this machine. I like them a lot more then the old black boxes that they used to use. The touchpad and buttons are well placed and make using it easy. The display is a generous 15″ of clear and crisp color.

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There are several things about the design that I do not like. For example, you only get one programmable quick-launch button and there isn’t a rocker between the mouse buttons for scrolling pages. The keyboard is also hard to get used to because of several buttons that are in different places. For example, instead of being above the arrow keys, the insert and delete buttons are to the right. I prefer to hook up a full size keyboard and use that instead. It is also quite heavy and thick. It weighs in at just over 8.25 lbs. and 2 inches thick. It is not too bad if you don’t want to travel with it a lot, and it just sits on your desk. The power supply weighs an extra 2 pounds and together they make it quite a weighty beast. This particular model also does not come with a docking port. Without a docking port, it looses any possibility to be a viable contender for replacing a desktop PC.

To make up for the missing docking port, and expansion bays there are two USB ports, an S-Video-out port for attaching a TV or extra monitor, and a FireWire port for hooking up a digital video camera or external hard drive. Even though this laptop has wireless internet, it also includes a modem and network card. The network card is in the back and the modem is on the right side. On the left is a Type II PC Card slot, two jacks for headphones and a microphone and a combo DVD/CD-RW drive. You will notice that Dell has left off the outdated serial and PS/2 ports. Dell has also left off expansion bays for additional drives. There is no ways to add a zip drive or floppy unless you do it via the USB or firewire ports.

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Performance

Even though there are a few design problems, this laptop excels where it counts. The performance of this laptop is excellent. With a 2.8 GHz Mobile Intel® Pentium® Processer, and a 32 MB GeForce™ FX Go5200 you get enough performance to watch your favorite movie while you work. There is not enough graphics power to play any of the most recent games, but if you wanted a gaming laptop then you would buy the Inspiron XPS or 9100. This machine also came with 512 MB of 333MHz RAM so that you can be doing lots of different things at the same time.

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I ran several tests to see just how this machine compares to other machines that I had around. I tested a desktop pc that I have been building and upgrading for a couple years. I also tested an Inspiron 8000 I had and of course the Inspiron 5150. These test, were all performed with PCMark™04.

Desktop:

Windows XP Professional; AMD Athlon XP 1700+; 768MB DDR SDRAM 266MHz; ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB; Western Digital 100GB 7,200rpm

Inspiron 8000:

Windows XP Professional; 800MHz Intel Pentium 3; 384MB DDR SDRAM 100MHz; ATI Mobility M4 32MB; Hitachi 20GB 5,400rpm

Inspiron 5150:

Windows XP Professional; 3.06GHz Intel Pentium 4; 512MB DDR SDRAM 333MHz; GeForce™ FX Go5200 32MB; Fujitsu 40GB 5,400rpm

As you can see it wasted both the other machines in CPU, Memory and on the overall score. It only fell short on the hard drive because the Inspiron 5150 has a 5400RPM drive and the Desktop has a 7200RPM drive. This is a great little machine and really pumps out the power especially with the Hyper Threading. I didn’t realize it before but Windows considers this a dual processor machine because the processor has Hyper Threading.

While testing the battery, I left the power saving features on just to see how much I could squeeze out of it. Because of the huge 14.8V, 6,450mAh battery and the Mobile Pentium 4, this laptop is set up to run for a long time without external power. Because the processor was specifically made for a laptop, it runs much cooler when you are using battery power and it also uses a lot less power. There are also several other things that help to conserve battery life. For example you will notice that the screen is dimmer when you are on battery power, because the monitor can often be the biggest energy user. It is always good to turnit down a little when on batteries. As far as how long the battery lasted I was able to squeeze 4 hours and 20 minutes with mild use. This is plenty of time to get your work done or watch a couple movies. I was able to get a full 3 hours and 43 minutes while I watched movies before the batteries died, that is very good.

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Service and support

Dell does a good job at offering a wide variety of warranties and service contracts. The basic service and warranty offered is an industry-standard one-year warranty This plan includes free parts and labor repairs through return-to-depot service. Toll-free, 24/7 phone support is included in the plan, as well. You can always choose to pay more and get a better warranty. The price can go as high as $300 for the Premium Service Package and CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service for 4 years. Because they offer so many different support options, you are guaranteed to find one that meets your specific needs.

Dell also has an extensive support Web site which includes many features such as a hints-and-tips section, a list of the top 10 FAQs, and a customer community where you can get help from other people.

Conclusion

When it comes right down to it, this is a great machine. There are tons of different options so you can get one to fit your specific needs. You can upgrade just about every feature and Dell will be more than happy to hook you up as long as you are willing to pay the price. The price is actually decent compared to other laptop’s. Where you really start to see a price gouge is when you get all the frills. According to the Dell website, if you bought this laptop with all the upgrades it would set you back roughly $4000. For me that is a bit steep, especially since you can get the top of the line Inspiron XPS fully loaded for about $4,400. But you are not buying a laptop because you are on a budget. You buy a desktop if you want to save money. Again, overall this laptop is a great option for a student or employee who likes to take there work home. If you are looking for a gaming machine or a replacement for your desktop look somewhere else.

Features

• Equipped with Microsoft^® Windows^® Mobile 2003 Second Edition operating system and familiar applications like Word and Excel
• Powered by the NEW Intel^® XScale^™ Processors at 624MHz with WMMX
• Brilliant 3.5″ color TFT display for indoor and outdoor viewing
• Navigation button and scroll dial for easy access to information
• Packed with 64MB SDRAM and 64MB Intel StrataFlash^® ROM
• Integrated 802.11b WiFi and Bluetooth wireless technologies
• Integrated Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC card slot provides flexible expansion
• Removable Primary Battery with optional High Capacity Battery
• Built-in microphone and speaker for easy recording on the go
• Light and thin, sleek and stylish design

In The Box

If you order the Axim X30 without any other options you will get basically the same items with whatever package you choose. There are only two differences in the packages. The first difference is the Axim itself. Depending on what you order you will get either a 312 MHz or 624 MHz. You can also choose to have wireless capabilities. The second difference is if you choose one of the 312MHz configurations, you will receive a sync cable instead of a cradle. In the box you will get the Dell Axim X30, a 950 mAh Battery, an AC Adapter, Charger Adapter, Axim X30 PocketPC 2003 Companion CD including Microsoft^® Outlook ^® and Microsoft^® ActiveSync^® 3.7.1, Axim X30 User’s Guide, Axim X30 Quick Start Poster, Slip case, Stylus and USB Cradle or USB Travel Sync Cable (depending on your order).

Setup

Before you begin you will want to make sure you get this device setup properly. The main thing is to get the batteries charged correctly. You will notice a little yellow sticker on the pouch that the Axim X30 comes in that says you need to turn on the device while charging the first time. This is done to charge the internal battery, which acts like a backup battery in case the main battery dies or is removed. At first I was confused as to what this means. If I turn it on while it is charging, do I leave it on or turn it back off? Do I wait until the main battery is charged first, or do I turn it on as soon as I plug it in? I really didn’t want to ruin the battery so I had to do some research on the subject. Trust me there is a lot of confusion; however, it’s not that bad and you don’t really have to worry. You can turn it on anytime during the first charge and you can leave it on or turn it off. I choose to turn mine off so that the main battery would charge faster. I also put a second battery that Dell sent me in the spare battery slot on the cradle. While charging the batteries, the battery in the Axim will have its charge status displayed as a green or orange light in the power button of the Axim. The spare battery has a separate light that is also green for charged and orange for charging, but this light is in the cradle. Dell suggests that you charge for a full 8 hours before you use the Axim, but I noticed that the 950 mAh battery took about 3 hours to charge before the light turned green and the 1800 mAh battery took about 4 1/2 hours to charge. I still left the Axim in for the full 8 hours just in case the internal battery took longer. I also noticed that the spare battery charger only gets about 97%-98% before it goes green. The slot is also very loose, if you wiggle the battery while it is charging, then you can get it to change colors.

Once it is charged and you have installed the Active Sync software, you are ready to go. You can install more programs and games or just use the ones Dell preloaded. It is highly recommended that you keep the Axim on the cradle or plugged in when you are not using it. This makes sure you do not completely drain the battery. Draining the Lithium-Ion battery to empty will damage them and shorten their life. You will also notice that the 1800 mAh battery is about a quarter of an inch thicker than the 900 mAh battery that comes with the Axim. This could be a problem for people because it will make the Axim thicker, and it will not fit in your case anymore. Make sure your case supports the thicker battery before you by one. The case that Dell sends with the device has elastic sides so it can stretch to fit the extra thickness.

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Software

What good is a PDA that doesn’t have any software? Well have no fear, the Axim comes with enough software to keep you busy for quite a while. To start with you get Microsoft ^® Windows^® Mobile 2003 Second Edition as the operating system. This gives you access to tons of programs and unmatched compatibility with other windows programs and data. Since Windows is by far the most popular operating system for computers, it only makes sense to get a PDA that uses the same operating system. Included in the operating system are several basic Windows applications including: Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Voice Recorder, Notes, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Pocket Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player 9, Calculator, Pictures, Jawbreaker, Solitaire, Inbox, File Explorer, MSN Messenger, terminal Services Client, VPN Client, Infrared Beaming, Clock, Align Screen, memory, Volume control, Landscape mode and WPA.

I would like to point out a couple of little features that I liked the most. Windows Mobile operating system allows for two view modes, portrait and landscape. These two modes when you use them correctly, can help to make up for the obviously small screen on all PDAs. The portrait mode is great for all around use and gives you a standard PDA look and feel. For programs like Excel, and some games, when you need to see more width you can switch to Landscape and it will flip the screen 90 degrees. This makes the screen wider and gives you more room to work. In addition to the two view modes, Windows Mobile supports a basic theme system. You are able to change the today screen to have a picture of your choosing as the background for the today and the start menu. This gives you just one more way to customize your Axim and make it your own.

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Another nice feature of Windows Mobile is the multiple ways of entering in data. Windows Supports four ways to write text that will go in your application. The first way is the Block Recognizer: this is your standard Graffiti style of writing and you get a box at the bottom of the screen for writing letter and numbers. The second way is the onscreen keyboard, this is for those that don’t want to deal with Graffiti or if you have a symbol that is not recognized. The third way is the Letter Recognizer: this is like Graffiti, except it looks for english letters. The fourth and best way is the Transcriber: this is your handwriting recognizer. You can write anywere on the screen and in full sentences and the operating system will translate it to text. It is not 100% perfect, but it sure saves time when you are writing a lot of text.

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In addition to the operating system you get a plethora of business applications and software, including several games. Dell loads several programs in the ROM, these include: File Store (nonvolatile file storage in flash ROM), Backup (utility for Backup/Restore to Memory Card), Switcher (access and launch programs easily), Power Status, Brightness, Microphone Gain Control, Version Display, Dell WLAN utility (with optional wireless model) and Funk Odyssey Client (LEAP support).

There is also a CD that comes with the Axim X30 that has a lot of extra software. Some of the software is full version including: Microsoft Active Sync 3.7.1, Outlook 2002, Resco Picture Viewer and Dell Diagnostic Utility. There are also several trial versions of software including: Agenda Fusion, CityTime, eWallet, Full Hand Casino, Griffin Technology Total Remote, Handmark Monopoly, Handmark Scrabble, Handy Zip, ListPro, McAfee VirusScan PDA, Resco File Explorer, Tennis Addict, Trip Tracker, Links Pocket PC, Pocket SlideShow, Cash Organizer 2003 Deluxe, Battery Pack 2004 and Calligrapher.

Design

The design of this Axim X30 is fairly plain. I actually really like the look of the Axim X30. I am not one for fancy designs, strange shapes and lots of colors. As long as it fits in my hand and it is comfortable, then I am happy. I suppose that if Dell were interested in attracting the younger new age crowd, then they could adopt snap-on color covers or change the shape of the Axim X30. I suppose though, that Dell is looking for the more conservative business user with this design.

One of the things that I, and others, noticed as soon as we picked up the Axim, was that is was light. Compared to other PDAs of the same style, it is quite a bit lighter. For example the HP iPAQ h4355 with WiFi weighs 5.8 oz. and the Axim X30 with WiFi weighs 4.9 oz. This Axim X30 is very comfortable and easy to hold.

The only design piece that I don’t like about the Axim X30 is the Wireless/Bluetooth antenna that sticks out of the top. If there were some way to get rid of it, or squish it inside of the Axim X30, then it would make the Axim look better.

Hardware

To start with, all the Axim X30 models feature the Intel^® XScale^™ Processor with WMMX. The Axim X30 I was sent, has the 624 MHz XScale PXA270. All the hardware that I list and talk about is related to the Axim X30 that I have, which is the 624 MHz version.

In addition to an extremely fast PDA processor, you get 64MB SDRAM and 64MB of Intel StrataFlash^® ROM memory. The ROM memory is off limits to the user, but the SDRAM is where you store and run your programs. You are able to select how the memory is divided. I recommend that if you like to run big programs, or you like to run many programs at the same time, then you give more memory to programs and less to storage. If you only run one program at a time and you need more storage, then you can give more to storage. If you have a large memory card, then you don’t have to worry because you can install all your programs to the card and then give all the memory to running the programs. Dell also gives you an additional 30 MB of built-in storage. I never saw this mentioned in the specs on the Dell website and it is not a card, so I don’t know where it comes from, but it is helpful for installing larger programs. I asked Dell about the 30 MB of built-in storage and they said it is extra ROM that is not used by the programs.

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You also get integrated 802.11b & Bluetooth^™ which adds the ability to connect to other devices such as GPS and storage for the Axim X30s. A 3.5 inch TFT Color 16-bit, Touch Sensitive, Transflective LCD screen which displays at 240 x 320 resolution at 65,536 colors (QVGA) offers clarity that is better than any PDA that I have ever seen.

There are also buttons galore. You get 4 programmable buttons which by default are set to launch the Calendar, Contacts, Inbox and Home. A 5-way Navigation button sits between the 4 programmable buttons and can be used to move around the programs. There is a scroll button on the side which tabs through icons or scroll pages, and can be pressed to select. On both sides of the Axim X30, by the programmable buttons are two buttons. The one on the left is set to activate the voice recorder. The recorder uses a built in microphone which is located at the top of the Axim X30 to the left of the power button. The longer you hold down this button, the more it records. You can adjust the quality of the recorded audio to 8.0, 11.025, 22.05 and 44.1KHz. The button on the right of the programmable buttons turns on and off the WiFi and bluetooth. Both are turned on and off at the same time using this button. The power button at the top of the Axim X30 is obviously used to turn the Axim X30 on and off. The power button is also used to indicate the charge status by displaying an orange color when charging and a green color when charged. It also flashes orange to indicate an event, usually that your battery is low and needs to be changed.

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At the top of the Axim X30 in addition to the wireless antenna there is a Secure Digital / SDIO Now! / MMC Memory Card Slot (3.3v) and a standard v1.2 (115 kbps) Infrared Port.

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All the audio for the Axim X30 is controlled by an Audio Controller AC-97 Codec Chip; WM9705 Sound Chip. The Axim X30 supports 16-bit stereo and sample rates of 8.0, 11.025, 22.05 and 44.1KHz. There is also support for Full Duplex Record and Playback. All sound recording is handled with the Integrated Microphone, and playback can be sent to the built in Speaker or headphones by using the headphone jack on the side of the X30. The built-in speaker is not all that great, it does a decent job of playing back voice that you have recorded, but does not do very well with music. I recommend that if you are listening to MP3′s or watching video then you should use headphones.

Performance

Battery power is probably one of the most important things about a PDA. If the battery does not last from place to place, then it doesn’t do you any good. Dell sent me both a 950 mAh Lithium-Ion and a 1800 mAh Lithium-Ion battery. I ran a few tests on the batteries. In doing the tests I turned up the processor to full and turned off the power saving features. I did this to test the shortest time, so when you use the Axim you will usually get better times. Here are the results:

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Now that I have shown you the shortest times you can expect while using the Axim X30, you should do your best to keep the power saving features turned on. One of the most important things that you can do is keep the processor running low. You can either set it to the minimum or set it to auto. If you keep it on minimum it runs at 208 Mhz and you could suffer from some performance issues. Setting the processor to auto will give you better performance by allowing the Axim to adjust the speed as it needs, but it will reduce the battery life. I keep mine on auto. You can also turn off the Infrared Port so that it is not always looking for a connection. You can turn down the brightness of the screen, and turn on auto dimming and auto off if you don’t use the Axim after a certain time. While using the 802.11 WiFi you can turn off the Bluetooth separately.

During the streaming video testing, I noticed that I got disconnected about every 5 minutes. You do not notice this so much when you surf the web, because it usually reconnects and continues to load the page. The longest that my video stayed connected was about 23 minutes, and that seemed like a fluke because everything else was so much shorter. I cannot completely blame the Axim because I was using a WiFi network at a local college and it may have been that the network was unstable.

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Since this is the first Pocket PC with a 624 Mhz processor, there is not much to compare it to. So, I picked the fastest PDAs and tested those. As you can tell from the charts the Axim X30 is fast. This speed is very noticeable when you are running video, games and other CPU intensive applications.

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I do have to mention that I found one problem with the sensitivity of the screen. It is a very small difference and you can only notice it if you press very softly. If you go to notes and you start to draw, you will notice that as you get close to the left edge the drawing stops. On my Axim it happened about a quarter of an inch away from the edge. If I press harder, then it starts drawing again. If you are heavy-handed, then you will probably not notice this since you will already be pressing hard enough. I am not sure if this can be fixed with a firmware release, but lets hope Dell fixes it soon.

Conclusion

I am very impressed with this PDA. Dell has once again made a very solid computing device, and at the same time they have kept the price down so that it is affordable to everyone. Despite the few minor flaws that I found, including the spare battery charger being loose and not charging completely, and the screen edges not being as sensitive as the middle, this is still a good and highly recommended device. If you don’t need a fast processor, and you only need it if you are playing games or crunching big numbers, then you can save quite a bit and get a lower version. If you don’t need wireless, then you can go even lower. Even at its lowest the Axim X30 is still a great PDA and will serve to meet your needs.