Brandstar UK Limited

In this blog I’m going to give the Dell Vostro 1510 the once over.  The difference to this machine review is that I am by no means a techie.  So this review is very much from a typical users point of view.  So we’re all on the same page, here is the rough spec of my machine:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5670 (1.8 GHz, 800Mhz, 2MB)
• 15.4″ Widescreen WXGA+
• 3GB RAM
• 250GB Hard Drive
• 8X DVD+/-RW Drive
• 256MB Graphics Card
• Dell Bluetooth 360 Card
• Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N MiniPCI Card
• Windows Vista Home Premium

As you can see I upgraded the RAM and Hard Drive.  I did this because I very much saw buying my laptop as a long term investment, I wanted it to last well and give me great performance every time I switch it on.  I’ve had the laptop for about a month now and I use it pretty much all the time.  Its performance has been brilliant and really shows up our desktop at home which is a few years old now.  Everything seems to run very smoothly and I’m very happy on that front.

With the performance being so good you would expect the style of the laptop to be compromised but it isn’t!  the machine isn’t the sleekest of things but I would describe the style of the laptop as stylish and shiny (Look at the picture to the right and you’ll see what I mean!).  If the laptop was sleeker then it would be a very good looking laptop.  Relative to its size the laptop isn’t heavy but compared to a smaller laptop you may consider it to be heavy.

One thing I do wish I did was upgrade me screen to tru-life but it is quite an expensive upgrade.  So my advice would be, if you have the money go for the tru-life screen because it is brilliant.  However the standard screen is still good but I would recommend going for the 1440 x 900 not the 1280 x 800 because it is a worthwhile upgrade and fairly reasonable.

I requested Vista Home Premium on my machine instead of Vista Business purely because I am using my machine for home use and it’s features are far better suited to me.  It also saved me some money too!  Not sure which Vista to buy?  In that case read the Brandstar Blog called ‘Which Version of Windows Vista is best for me?‘

The battery life is pretty decent too, I usually get about 3-4 hours depending on what I am doing.

Do you have any questions about the machine?