Dell XPS 15

Pros: I take my reviews seriously, 250 characters is not enough. See my bottom-line summary

Cons: As I said above

Summary: System:
- Dell XPS 15
- i7-740QM Processor
- 1080p R+GB LED
- 8GB RAM
- 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 435M
- Blu-Ray
- 640GB HDD
- Backlit Keyboard
- Bluetooth 3.0
- 9 Cell Battery

Pros:
- The screen and speakers are amazing! I highly recommend getting the 1080p R+GB LED screen!
- Powerful enough to smoothly run the newest games
- Fast boot and shutdown for an HDD
- Backlit keyboard is really nice!
- Build quality is better than other Dells I've owned
- Convienent button to turn on and off the large trackpad, as I sometimes hit it with my palm when typing or gaming. I also like the pinch to zoom, as with the 1080p screen sometimes the text on webpages is a little too small to read.
- USB 3.0 ports (although I don't have anything that takes advantage of them yet?)
- Battery life is pretty good although I've never really run it down all the way. Windows claims 4-5 hours, I've been off the charger for 2 hours surfing the net and I had about 40% battery left, so I would bet I could get 3 hours but probably not much more.
- I've read some people complain that the laptop is loud and gets hot, but that generally has not been my experience. It is certainly not silent, but it does not get any louder than other laptops I've used. The left hand palm rest above the HDD does get quite warm, but not to the point of being uncomfortable to the touch.
- Windows Experience Index: Processor = 7.1, RAM = 7.4, Graphics = 6.6, Gaming Graphics = 6.6, HDD = 5.9

Cons:
- The function buttons (F1-F12) are now the secondary functions of those keys as you have to hold, of all things, the Fn key to get them. This is just plain annoying to me! I'm constantly hitting F5 to refresh my page and instead end up turning up the brightness of my screen, when I hit F2 to edit a cell in Excel or rename a file I'm turning on an off my wireless, when I have a lot of windows open I want to close I used hit ALT-F4, now I have to remember to hit Fn-ALT-F4, etc? If this laptop was the Inspiron I could understand, but the XPS line IMHO is designed more for techies who are more likely to use those keys, just really gets under my skin. To top it off, my work laptop is a Dell E6510 and its keyboard has dedicated F1-F12 keys. So going back and forth between the two different keyboards is making it harder for me to adjust to this design.
- I plan on eventually replacing the 640GB HDD with an SSD, and Dell sure doesn't make it easy to swap out the hard drive. You have to remove the palm rest along with the touchpad to gain access to the hard drive, and there are a bunch of plastic clips, connectors, and screws that have to be removed to do it. Every other laptop computer I have owned had 2-4 screws to remove and the hard drive would slide out the side.
- The Dell facial recognition program that automatically signs you into Windows, while it works, is slow and it displays a live image of yourself on the screen. Much quicker to just log in normally.
- The HDD and Battery indicator lights are behind the monitor and I cannot see them while sitting in front of the laptop. If I want to see them I have to move the laptop or close the lid. Not a huge deal as I don't really ever use them, but why hidden behind the monitor?
- Headphone jacks are near the back of the right side of the laptop. When I have my headphones on I don't have enough cord to lean back in my chair anymore, which is something I did often with my old Dell XPS 1530.

Recommendation:
- Despite the annoyances I've described above, this is a great laptop and I highly recommend it! The 1080p R+GB LED screen is amazing, the JBL speakers provide the best sound I've heard from a laptop, and it is very competitively priced.

Updated on Dec 12, 2010

I figured out how to change my function keys back to being function keys! Go into the BIOS (F2 during the Dell screen) and change the function keys from Multimedia First to Function First! I feel so much better now!!!