M70 benchmarks

Hi, I hope you'll enjoy the M70. (And I hope I'll enjoy mine.)

I ordered one of these last week and am looking forward to getting it. I have a hot project waiting for it. My main concern has been for build quality. You said that it feels more solid, and that cooling appears to be improved. That's very good to hear. I don't believe you said anything about the keyboard feel. I'm concerned about that. I'm a very fast typist. I tried a Lat. D800 last week after reading a complaint (elsewhere) about keyboards on Dell notebooks in general. They keyboard on that D800 was pretty horrible, maybe even worse than the cruddy one on my old Inspiron 7500.

I don't really care if a keyboard has a detent or just a sponge-like action, as long as it is CONSISTENT. But the Inspiron 7500 used to actually throw keys off while I was typing because a key I was pressing would wobble, the edge of my fingertip would slide under the edge of an adjacent key, and that adjacent key would be launched into the air -- much to the glee of my wife, usually! Mind you, this didn't happen because I was typing forcefully. You could barely hear me typing on that thing. The problem was that the keyboard quality was dismal. The caps were very shallow, the keystroke long (relative to cap depth), and the keys were not firmly fixed upon their mechanisms.

What say you? Does the keyboard flex? Are the keys rattly and loose, or are they solid and smooth in feel and action?

Groggy people want to know...

;)

uhm :) but you are right, keyboards are maybe an underestimated factor for a notebook - so let's test it:

keyboard quality has improved (I only haven't noticed until now since I'm writing most of the time via a normal desktop keyboard - and while on trips I'm not typing much). Its very solid and every key and keystroke feels the same; well balanced, keys can't block or get stuck; medium pressure (for laptop keyboards) is required to strike a key down, you could say it gives somewhat pleassure to write on it. The whole keyboard does not flex either, it's well fixed - nearly as solid as a desktop keyboard.

But no idea if all M70 keyboards are like the one I got; with keyboards it's much like not having any dead pixels .. so: good luck!

Thank you very much for your observations. I guess there may be some variability in keyboard quality from one machine to another within a given model line, but the variation should be relatively small. The Inspiron 7500s were all terrible. A lot of notebook keyboards are. IBM and Toshiba (at least on their higher end models) seem to do a very good job of providing good, solid keyboard ergonomics and quality.

The length of the keystroke, the key spacing, the key face texture, and even the key arrangement are not terribly important to me. What is important to me is that it doesn't feel as though I'm typing on a bunch of chiclets someone spilled on a desk. Keys should not wobble, and the pressure required to depress them and depth of the keystroke should be the same for all keys. If my new notebook's keyboard just meets those criteria I'll be happy.

Againg, I thank you very much for replying. I didn't wish to highjack your thread, but I wanted the opinion of someone who had actually had one of these notebooks in hand.

Grogg

Message Edited by mac_fly37 on 02-26-2005 08:59 AM

The base, lid & LCD cover are all magnesium; the palmrest area is plastic.

The frame around the screen is also in plastik, as well the top part of the LCD cover (in order to let the radio waves pass through).

3DMark03: 7691 (OC core/mem: 335/750 - Pentium M 1,86GHz)

I forgot the driver version: 67.71

still a perfect LCD display, maybe a little bit better, because it looks now great on every brightnes-level

I am somewhat interested in that aspect. I have an M60, and the LCD is mediocre, at the very best. Actually, at least the one I have is atrocious at the default settings: If you open Windows Explorer to view one of the folders with the watermark in the background (say, My Music), the watermark is invisible because the screen does not provide enough contrast at default settings. I had to fiddle with the color correction of the graphics card, reducing brightness and contrast to around 94% each to obtain an at least borderline acceptable result. But of course, that reduces the screen brightness. To add insult to injury, I then made the grave mistake of putting a new Sony VAIO right next to the M60, and wept. Makes you want to toss your new M60 right out the window...

Anyway, has this improved with the M70? In default settings, can the folder watermarks be seen in Windows XP?

P.S.: Sorry, I forgot to say, I have the WUXGA screen. And I'm really disappointed; I wonder, did I maybe just get a bad screen?

P.P.S.: By the way, Lapinos, did you get your screen replaced? Got a better one?

Message Edited by Dietmar on 03-22-2005 03:03 PM

Hi, Dietmar.

I'm sorry to hear about the quality of that display on the M60. It's hard to believe that what you describe is the norm for a system like yours.

My M70 has a very nice screen. WinXP Explorer watermarks are very clearly defined at default screen settings. In fact I have found that some drawings in which some details were difficult to resolve at 1600 x 1200 on my 21" Sony CRT are seen clearly on the M70's display. On the first weekend I had the machine -- before I had to get down to business with it -- I installed a couple of games which were very dark on other LCDs. They were fine on this display.

This is the tough thing about an online purchase. How do you compare your system with others like it? How do you know, in a case like yours, whether or not the system is performing up to par?

What you are describing seems a clear case of a basic failure in performance to me. That unit can't be up to spec. I'd be talking with Dell about this, if I were you.

Good luck!

BTW, I don't think I've seen any recent notebook display that wouldn't define those watermarks clearly. The failure you describe wouldn't even be acceptable, IMO, on a $1,000 notebook -- and certainly isn't acceptable on your system.

Message Edited by Grogg on 03-22-2005 05:17 PM

Allright, that was a very clear and helpful response. I am going to call Dell and have them replace the screen.

Thanks very much for your help! 

Please let us know how it goes, Dietmar, by posting back to this thread. I'm interested in hearing how Dell handles issues like this. You've done the simplest but most important thing in providing an example of your dissatisfaction to which any tech support can relate immediately. I hope you get this resolved without any headaches.

Good luck!