Rating: 
Over the years I have grown to dislike a lot of things from Dell for subpar equipment, horrible service, and run-of-the-mill design just to name a few. To me Dell is like Honda. It works, doesn’t suck, but isn’t the greatest at anything.
However, this recent entry from Dell caught my eyes with some shock value.
Some time ago last year, they came out with Adamo which was beautiful to look at and it rivaled MacBook Air in terms of how thin it was. Well the problem with that was that it was prohibitively expensive. The Vostro V13 I review here is basically a poor man’s Adamo. It is absolutely thin, has all the elegance of more expensive Adamo, and is pleasant to use.
Its aluminum chassis feels solid when held. It is obviously light and my shoulders thank me whenever we go out together. The screen isn’t glossy or matte, but for what it’s worth, bright enough to do the job. Keyboard is ever-so-mushy but not a deal breaker. Its Geekbench number of 1590 isn’t going to light anything on fire but is no issue working day-to-day.
Battery life does leave a little room for improvement where it clocks just hair under 3 hours when everything is lit. There is no way to really elegantly open it up to replace the hard drive or RAM. Anyone know otherwise? Let me know! However, I do feel a bit more comfortable with its eSATA port, SD card slot, and ExpressCard slot. While it’s understandable to lose some bells and whistles for the sake of portability, the sacrifice doesn’t seem overly bad.
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Nice review on the dell v13. With regards to opening it up, here`s a link to one. Don’t think there’s any other way to do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EqPIxxgNew
and the website:
http://blogdisco.com/dell-vostro-v13-ram-upgrade-and-ssd
I was wondering if you could post some pictures or a video of the screen in action, maybe compared to some of your other laptops?
I was wondering whether it would cause eye strain after prolonged use or if it could be viewed throughout the day without any problem.
Hi there. I have been using this laptop more than 10 hours per day and the screen definitely doesn’t show any issues for prolonged use. I have sensitive eyes along with astigmatism, yet don’t really see any issues. Everyone is different but at least I have no issues with this screen any more or less compared to other LCDs I have here. (In my lab, I use more than 12 LCDs consisting of LCD monitors and LCDs off laptops)
I hope that helps.
> There is no way to really elegantly open it up to replace the hard drive or RAM
This is wrong, man. Only a few screws to change the hard drive => you can do this under 3 minutes.
As for the RAM, yes, it’s a little bit more time expensive as you need to remove the keyboard. But still doable.