The Dell Vostro 1500 is a 15.4" notebook geared towards the small business market buyer. Since Dell offers such a generous 30-day satisfaction back guarantee and fast shipping of the Vostro 1500, it seems to be just as popular with consumers. Its no frills looks and solid build is definitely on target for someone that just wants a functional and affordable laptop, spared of any fancy glossy finish or ‘look at me’ color design.

Overview

The Vostro 1500 is considered a mainstream size laptop, the 15.4" screen is the most popular among buyers. This is because the screen is big enough for comfortable viewing, but the laptop is not so huge that you can’t carry it around a bit. The Vostro 1400 is a 14.1" screen smaller version of the Vostro 1500, while the Vostro 1700 is a 17′ screen larger version. Dell decided to remain obvious with the naming convention for the Vostro line, which is kind of refreshing.

The Vostro 1500 is in fact very much similar to the consumer line Inspiron 1520 notebook. The main difference is that the Inspiron 1520 has a brushed paint finish available in 8-different colors. Which is kind of cool until you find out it can really delay your laptop delivery time, and Dell has been having issues with quality control on the paint finish. For that reason, you’re seeing a lot of buyers avoiding such issues and just buying an equivalent Vostro 1500. The added benefit with the Vostro 1500 is you’ll get 30-days satisfaction guarantee for returning the laptop, no questions asked and no restocking fee. With the Inspiron line it’s a 15% of the initial cost of the laptop restocking fee.

System as Reviewed:

• Processor: 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo T5470 processor, Santa Rosa chipset (up to 2.2GHz available)
• Graphics: 128MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS
• Screen: 15.4-inch WXGA screen with TrueLife
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Drive: 120GB 5400 RPM SATA HDD
• Optical Drive: 8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+R write capability
• Connectivity: Ethernet, Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g (Verizon EVDO optional), Consumer IR
• Ports: USB 2.0 (4), Integrated 10/100 LAN (RJ45) & 56K Modem (RJ11), IEEE 1394 FireWire, VGA video output & S-Video, Stereo in, headphone/speaker out & dual digital mics
• Slots: 8-in-1 Card Reader, ExpressCard 54
• OS: Windows XP Home SP2 (Vista available)
• Battery: 6-cell 56WHr
• Dimensions: 1.65" x 14.12" x 10.59"
• Weight: 6.75lbs

I paid around $700 for this configuration before taxes, not bad!

Places to buy

You can buy the Dell Vostro 1500 via Dell.com, over the phone or from a Dell kiosk. The best place to configure a Vostro 1500 is Dell.com. I had to wait 3-weeks for my Vostro to ship after placing the order. That’s slower than I’d like, but not horrible.

What you get

• Dell Vostro 1500 notebook
• AC Adapter
• 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery (varies based on battery you order)
• User guides and other documents
• Restore and driver discs

Weigh in

One thing I like to always do with any new gadget I get is take it to the scales and see if the weight matches what the manufacturer quotes. According to Dell, the weight of the Vostro 1500 is 6.33lbs with the 6-cell 56WHr standard battery. Putting it on the scales actually shows the weight to be closer to 6.75lbs:

Here’s a comparison of the Vostro 1500 weight to some similar sized notebooks:

It’s always good to consider how much a notebook weighs when you add in the power adapter for travel weight, here you can see that with the 6-cell battery and power adapter the total weight of the system comes to about 7.81lbs.

That’s a lot of weight to be dragging a long way in a backpack, this is really quite a heavy mainstream notebook.

Size-Up

Another interesting metric I like to look at is the dimensions of the notebook compared to similar notebooks.

The Vostro 1500 is definitely a thick notebook. You can see by looking at the comparison chart it’s one of the thickest 15.4" screen notebooks out there for the major brands. It’s the same thickness as the Inspiron 1520 because they’re built on the same chassis.

Looks

The Vostro 1500 really can’t be called pretty. It’s as standard issue as they come. Think of it as the anti-Mac or anti-Sony, it’s all about functionality and design is really an afterthought. Quite frankly, I’d call the Vostro 1500 quite ugly with its bulky and boxy look coupled with the all black finish. You do get some color accents in the form of a silver latch and silver media buttons, but the look still remains Spartan. But hey, if you like black and plain, this is your huckleberry.

The LED status lights are interestingly arranged on the side of the notebook:

Construction

The build quality is what makes up for the lack of design. The Vostro 1500 is a beast in terms of having a solid feel. If you wrap your knuckles on this bad boy you’re likely to end up with bruises. The casing is very thick and rigid, it’s mostly magnesium-alloy in construction. This equates to a very solid system, but also a very heavy one. It’s one of the heaviest 15.4′ laptops I’ve ever handled, and not really something I’d want to lug around in a backpack for long distances.

The hinges on the lid are very rigid, it’ll take two hands to open the screen ‘ one to hold the base of the laptop the other to push open the lid. The good news is that the firm hinges mean you won’t get any wobble once the screen is open. The lid of the Vostro provides more than adequate protection for the screen.

One thing I don’t like about the Vostro 1500 build quality is that the PC card slot uses a plastic insert filler instead of a more convenient flap to protect from dust when nothing is inserted. Those plastic dummy pieces always get lost.

I’d be very confident in this notebook holding up over years of usage, it simply feels like it was built to last.

Ports

The port selection for the Vostro 1500 is on par with other 15.4" notebooks. Again I’ll compare it to what similar notebooks have so you get an idea of where it stands relative to competition:

Notice that the Vostro 1500 and Inspiron 1520 port selection is exactly the same. Personally I prefer to have both a PC card slot and ExpressCard if I can, especially in a business notebook where you want as many legacy ports as possible.

Let’s take a tour around the ports and buttons of the Vostro 1500:

Front side

On the front are located the media buttons and a latch

Left side

On the left side is a Kensington lock slot, Wi-Fi catcher (for detecting wireless networks or turning off wi-fi), heat vent, headphone out and microphone in, ExpressCard 54 slot

Right side

On the right side is the optical drive, 8-in-1 media card reader, monitor-out port and Ethernet port then two USB ports.

Back side

On the back is an S-video port, two more USB ports, battery and modem port.

The only complaint I have is that I feel all the USB ports are too close to each other, and I prefer to have at least one over on the left side. I really don’t like having USB ports on the back of a laptop like the two we see here. It’s so inconvenient for getting at on a notebook and more often than not presents issues if you’re in tight quarters.

Keyboard

The Vostro 1500 keyboard is sturdy and doesn’t have any mushiness or flex to it. The keys have a short travel distance, so they’re good for those that are light touch typists. The feel isn’t as good as some other business notebooks, such as a ThinkPad.

The touchpad is somewhat on the short side, but it’s still quite usable and has scroll areas for easier scrolling through web pages. The scroll areas seem to be a bit finicky at times. The mouse buttons are so-so, but they’re at least quiet and responsive even if they don’t feel that great. Most people will be using a mouse with this notebook I imagine.

Screen

The screen is a 15.4′ widescreen display. You can configure the Vostro 1500 with a glossy or matte finish, which is rather unique for a business notebook. Personally I prefer the glossy finish due to the extra color pop and brightness such a screen provides. Yes the glossy finish means you get reflection issues, but personally such a thing doesn’t bother me.

It seems there’s much debate from existing buyers over the quality of this screen based on which part manufacturer actually ends up providing the screen you get. Dell outsources the making of the LCD to three screen makers: AUO, LG Philips and Samsung. The word on the web is that the LG screen is far superior. I checked and found my screen was the ‘inferior’ AUO made part, but personally I don’t take any issue with the screen. There’s little noticeable light bleed, the brightness is adequate and the grainy effect you get with some Dell laptop screens is there ‘ but nowhere near as bad as I’ve seen before. Ignorance is bliss to be honest, if some Vostro machines do have a better screen than this then I don’t want to see it because to my eyes this screen is just fine. The vertical viewing angles aren’t very good, but no laptop screen has what you’d call "great" vertical viewing angles, the horizontal viewing angle is pretty good.

Sound

The speakers for the Vostro 1500 are located on the front towards the bottom of the laptop. The speakers are tinny, as is usual with laptops, but they’re not horrible. They at least get loud, but then again if you really crank the sound the quality gets worse. I’d recommend headphones or external speakers.

Performance

The Vostro 1500 is configurable with up to a 2.20 GHz Intel Santa Rosa processor at the current time. You can also configure it with up to Nvidia 8600m dedicated graphics card or go with integrated Intel X3100 graphics. Dedicated graphics will offer better 3D performance, but only if you’re doing some gaming or using applications that demand such things as 3D polygon rendering or shading. If you use a notebook to do work and don’t care about games, just go with the Intel X3100. If you’d like to do a bit of gaming while on the go, definitely go with the Nvidia 8600 option, it’s quite a powerful card that will let you play just about any popular high-end game on the market right now, including Bioshock.

I went with the 1.6GHz T5470 Core 2 Duo processor option in the Vostro 1500 since it was the cheapest decent processor available and will provide more than adequate performance for business related tasks. Since I chose Windows XP I figured a super fast processor wasn’t as necessary either. You might want to get at least the T7100 if you go with Vista.

I went with the 8400M Nvidia card just because I felt I could use it to do some light gaming, and the $100 upgrade wasn’t too bad. I also opted for 1GB of RAM because that’s quite adequate for Windows XP. For Windows Vista you almost have to get 2GB of RAM for decent performance.

I got a 120GB hard drive that spins at 5400RPM, which is a modest speed and probably somewhat of a bottleneck for this system. There are no SSD options for the Vostro line yet, but rumor is they’ll eventually offer an SSD next year when prices fall.

I ran PCMark05 on the Vostro 1500 to get an overall system performance score, you can see that the Vostro 1500 with a 1.60GHz processor performs quite well with a 3,594 score. Of course the performance would be much improved if it had a 2.0GHz card like the Inspiron 1420 in the chart below:

I also ran Cinebench, a benchmark that tests the graphic and dual processor capabilities of a notebook, the Vostro 1500 scored 494 with its 1.6GHz processor.

Noise

The Vostro 1500 is fairly quiet, at no time did it get really loud with fans. Basically you won’t hear this notebook at all in an environment with ambient noise, and if you’re in a library it won’t get loud enough to annoy anyone.

Heat

WIth the 1.6GHz processor and Nvidia 8400 graphics card there’s only a mild amount of heat buildup with the Vostro 1500. In particular it gets warm in the fan area at the bottom and towards the front on the bottom. If you had a faster processor and the Nvidia 8600 graphics card this heat would be of greater significance and it could become uncomfortable to use in the lap. As it is with my configuration, the heat isn’t so bad that it becomes unbearable to use in your lap, but you certainly can feel it and it makes you sweat a bit. Happily the palm rest areas stay cool to the touch and won’t make your palms sweat. In my opinion this laptop is more for desk work given the heaviness, so put it on a flat smooth surface and heat is simply not an issue.

Battery

There are 2 options for types of battery with the Vostro 1500: 6-cell or 9-cell. I have the 6-cell and it’s more than adequate in terms of battery life, it gave me 4.5 hours of life when idling with screen brightness set to 4/7 and with all wireless features on. In real world usage you’ll get about 3 - 3.5 hours while doing work. If you’re watching a movie with screen brightness on high you’ll probably see more in the realm of 3 hours of battery life.

In the above picture you can see the battery at the back of the notebook. Also notice that there’s a built-in battery check on the actual battery. The way this works is that there are five indicator lights, you can push in on the indicator and it lights up with each light representing 20% charge, the notebook can be turned off and this feature still works.

Software and OS

Worth a special mention is the fact you can configure the Vostro 1500 with either Windows XP or Windows Vista. This is very important for business users because many organizations have not switched to Vista yet, and will not for some time.

For everyday users that simply don’t like Vista and the higher power demands it has, XP is a nice to have option. I went with XP because it does everything I need, and also I suppose because I’m a curmudgeon and want to stick with what I know how to use properly for now.

The other really nice thing is that with the Vostro line you can opt out of all the crap Dell likes to install on regular consumer systems. I opted out of everything, and thankfully the system arrived extremely clean of 3rd party utilities that I don’t need. The system runs fast with few start up processes because of this. No need to reformat the system or spend hours removing "free" games, Internet ISP sign-up software programs or Anti-virus programs you don’t want. Hallelujah!

Support and Warranty

The Vostro 1500 comes with a 1-year support warranty, very standard. What’s really nice is that they give you a 30-day return window, within which if you’re unsatisfied with your notebook for any reason you can return it. No restocking fee. If you buy an Inspiron it costs you 15% of the notebook to return it, a scary proposition. This feature alone makes the Vostro line very enticing when you’re buying something you can’t try in a real store.

Conclusion

The Dell Vostro 1500 is a no frills look laptop that’s functional and highly configurable in terms of specs and software. Is it cool looking? Far from it. Is it a highly portable notebook? Nope, it’s heavy for its size. Does it provide value for the dollar and peace of mind with the 30-day return window? Absolutely, and that’s the reason I can recommend it.

Pros

• Great value for the dollar
• Highly configurable in terms of hardware and OS, up to Nvidia 8600m graphics and 2.20GHz Core 2 Duo, can get Windows XP
• Well built with a sturdy chassis and thick casing
• Excellent 30-day return policy with no restocking fee
• Includes restore disks with laptop, good documentation

Cons

• Heavy for its size, 7.8lbs travel weight including power leads, making it not very portable
• Not very inspiring in terms of looks, very plain
• So-so screen
• Positioning of USB ports isn’t very good, having two on the back is a bad move