IT: Review on Dell Vostro V131

A few years back I did a review on the Vostro V13 and there has been many changes since then. There was the V130 and recently the V131. One will ask what are the changes. The major one I can think of is the external battery on the V131 vs the internal battery on the V13.

Granted I am a IT professional so I can replace the internal battery with no issues but that does not stop me from wondering if a external battery will makes it easier for the end user to do such a simple job. The keyboards on the V131 is the same as V130. So think of the V131 as a bigger more muscle brother to the V130.

Below is the specs of the notebook in review
Intel I5-2430M
1x4GB DDR3 memory
1x320gB 7200 rpm hard disk
Still no optical drive
6-cell removable battery
Windows 7 32-bit Pro (with 3GB switch enabled)

The I5 is the second generation of the I5 family launched by Intel in 2011. It boast a higher L2/L3 cache and better instructions feed between the various components. From a layman point of view, it just translate into faster access to application. Topping it up with the RAM and it is a good light weight machine.

The weight of the notebook is around 1.7kg and the battery can last 4-6 hours of normal office usage. No bad consider that the V13 can go only 2-3 hours max on its standard configuration.

The wireless is also good though I have to upgrade to the latest intel version after trying the Dell website version. Could be due to my wireless infrastructure. One thing I just cannot understand is why Dell refuse to have the SSD version for the V131. My account manager say only the latitude version comes with SSD which i think is a bad business move. A SSD will and can improve performance, though i must say it comes with a price tag (a 256GB SSD is around S$500 while a 1TB SATA3 will be around the same price)

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