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.
Popularity: 29% [?]
