This is a follow up to my previous post about Dell XPS M1330. I ordered my lappie on 18th and was scheduled to deliver on 25th September. But, Dell customers service person called me on the 20th and said my order has been revised, the new estimate delivery date will be on 2nd October.

Dell came a knocking on my door at 10am today! (Surprisingly my estimated ship date has been brought forward to 27th) XPS M1330 is probably the most beautiful laptop I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Here’s some photos of my unpacking process:

Your XPS will also come with this branded laptop sleeve below which you don’t need to order seperately. I like the sleeve as it looks pro.

I opted for Crimson Red. The finish of the lid is matt and is nice to touch. According to DirectToDell.com, the finish on the lid of XPS M1330 is similar to a custom paint job on a car. It takes about 7 coats of paint to get the appearance. I have also read in some forums that it pick up fingerprints easily.

Along with the XPS itself, Dell provide a few goodies as well. This include product information, basic “Getting Started” pamphlet, and reinstall discs of:

• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Dell MediaDirect
• Dell Webcam Manager
• Dell Drivers and Utilities
• Microsoft Works 8.5
• Roxio

What should I say about the LCD screen… Awesome! It’s much much more brighter and colors are more vivid. I’m happy with it because I’m a fan of LCD screen.

XPS travel remote control is cool to play with… The remote buttons are nice to press… The charger is smaller than other Dell laptops which is great for mobile users.

The palmrest looks nice with it’s hairline metal design, but it get rather warm after a while. Keyboard is absolutely solid… the delete key is located at the right top corner which I’m used to! The con is the keys are slightly loud when typing quickly. No compaints for the touch pad. Some owners complaints about the touchpad a little cramped, but I think it’s just nice. The pad have some texture on it so your finger moves smoothly over the surface. Overall, it’s responsive. The touchpad buttons feel very nice with no loud click sound, unlike my old Asus laptop.

The volumn touchpanel is cool too… but for the slot drive, I found myself inserting and ejecting CD quite noisy. The webcam quality, not bad.

XPS Elevations:

On the right side, there’s slot for travel remote, slot-load DVD burner, a single USB port and a security cable slot.

The left side is much more busier, AC adapter connector, video & network connector, single USB port, HDMI connector and a hard drive output.

The front of XPS has a mic imput & 2 headphone outputs, and a 8 in-1 card reader.

Popularity: unranked [?]

A message is posted at WordPress Dashboard that an upgraded Version of 2.3 “Dexter” (named for the great tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon) is ready for the world! The new release includes native tagging support, plugin update notification, URL handling improvements, advanced WYSIWYG and much more.

1. Native tagging support allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. We’ve included importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome’s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny’s Technorati Tag plugins so if you’ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system. The tagging system is also wicked-fast, so your host won’t mind.
2. Our new update notification lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to our new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.
3. We’ve cleaned up URLs a bunch in a feature we call canonical URLs which does things like enforce your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location. More info here.
4. Our new pending review feature will be great for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality (we call it the kitchen sink button) that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.

Popularity: 48% [?]

DealDotCom.com went live on September 18th and sell all products related to internet marketing, blogging, increasing your traffic, website and web design for a rock bottom price. They sell all internet marketing products that you need for your online business.

DealDotCom only sell one item per day, which means you better get it before it sells out. If you don’t like the item of the day, you can always come back to check it out the next day that might appeal to your tastes. These extremely discounted products with limited copies will be selling out untill 12:00 midnight (Central Time). But if you missed getting what you want, then too bad…

For your convenient, Most of the marketing products are downloadable. But on rare occasion that they sell physical products, you will receive either UPS or Fed-Ex tracking number with your order.

Do DealDotCom benefits you?

Yes. DealDotCom offers 2-tier affiliate program. Anything that your associates buy will earn you 35% commissions – forever. It doesn’t matter if your associates buy today, next year, or 20 years later, you still get paid. If they refer their affiliates, these people will go to your 2-tier which earns you 15% commissions, forever!

If you have a marketing product, you can submit them with one easy click. DealDotCom will pays you at the end of the month through PayPal, or you can request a check. If you haven done so, sign up for a free account here! This program is highly recommended!

Popularity: 33% [?]

Since the launched of the attractive Dell XPS M1330 in June 26th, I decided to give Dell a try and ordered mine today! I get very excited because my M1330 estimated delivery date is on September 25th. I have read many bad reviews about the delivery delay so I was a bit worried because I will be traveling around for the next 2 months and have no fix address. Some have get out that ridiculous queue and I guess people need to be patient, especially when a brand new, cutting edge product launched, you have to allow them time to ramp up production and such!

Before purchasing this laptop, I was looking for something that’s portable – small, light weight and well build to replace my 6 years old laptop – Asus M2400 series . Being portable means I’m able to take this on the road with me and hookup to the free wifi spots and do my work on the fly.

My system was purchased with the following configuration:

• Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo Processor T7100
• 1.8 GHz, 2MB cache, 800 MHz FSB
• 13.3″ UltraSharp Widescreen WXGA display with TrueLife 2.0MP Webcam
• 2GB (2x 1024MB) 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
• 160GB HDD
• 6-cell battery
• Dell Travel remote control
• Window Vista Home Premium with AERO experience
• Duo core & Intel Wireless
• Wireless 355 Bluetooth Module
• 36 months McAfee

Total price: $1,193USD before tax

I was debating upon XPS, MacBook or Compaq Presario B1217… because I really need a portable laptop with a slot drive. I’m a huge fan of these drives, and I choose the XPS over MacBook because of the weight & huge memory, & Compaq because of the slot-load DVD burner.

I don’t use my XPS for gaming purpose so I don’t think I need NVIDIA® graphic card and prefer the default Intel® memory card. I don’t have a fingerprint reader palmrest because I can’t wait for 6-8 weeks of delivery! If I din travel within the next 2 months, I will definitely wait for it!

If you’re like me, want top performance and portable for a fair price, Dell XPS M1330 should be on your short list!

Popularity: 27% [?]

Everyone loves free traffic. You may have a great content, a great layout design… but without traffic, you can’t make money with your blog. The beauty of blogging is each time you make a post in your blog, your blog is automatically pinged across arund 50 ping websites! Even if you do nothing other than make regular posting, you blog will still picked up by the search enigne big boys like Google, Yahoo… etc.

I’m sure everyone wants more traffic and have always looking for more ways to get it, especially FREE traffic. Internet Marketing legend John Reese has come up a great way to help you get free traffic!

BlogRush is a free service that helps bloggers to get more readers for their blog. It is a "Cooperative Syndication Network" that rewards its users for their contributions to the network. You will earn "syndication credits" based on your own traffic as well as other traffics of the users you refer to BlogRush.

You can easily refer others to BlogRush via a special links on the widget like the one on the image above. Paste some simple code provided on your blog and have your post shown on related blogs who are doing the same thing. Refer others to join for free and you earn traffic credits up to 9 generations. Let’s say you run the widget and get 2000 page views, means your blog will be viewed 2000 times on other blogs that run the widget as well. If your referer also get 2000 page views, your headline will be shown for another 2000 times.

Join BlogRush now and get tones of exposure across the web! Step by step video tutorial for installing the code are provided.

Popularity: 32% [?]