I bought this laptop about 6 months ago and it has been chugging along great. I use it about 6-8 hrs. a day regularly with no problems. The only problem I have is the laptop starts getting really hot after about 2.5hrs. of continuous use. The culprit is the heat fan located on the bottom. I have the laptop inclined by placing a small book underneath but it still gets hot. It can't play newer games, but I enjoy playing Company of Heroes, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, World of Warcraft and many other games on a semiregular basis. I installed windows 7 RC1 about a month ago, and the laptop works even better now, everything is snappier. The onboard speakers are horrible, especially since this laptop is XPS branded, commanding a premium price. I paid $1500 CDN plus tax, and my Laptop config is as follows: 2.4Ghz C2D, 4GB DDR2RAM, Nvidia 8600M 256MB Video card, 1920X1200 Glossy screen, 6 Cell Battery.

The battery lasts me 1.5-2hrs on High Performance mode, and 2.5-3hrs on Power saver mode w/ Wi-fi off and screen at 2nd lowest brightness. You are able to get a 9cell battery which should increase battery life significantly.

The design of the laptop is really good, but I really wish I had waited and got the Studio XPS 16 which looks much better in my opinion. The design problems that I immediately noticed but found out that they were all to prevalent with all the XPS M1530's were that the metal is not flush up to the plastic touch buttons on the right side and there is a small extra opening on the right side where the monitor hinge connects to the keyboard/bottom part of laptop. I really like the hinge design on the Dell and Vaio laptops and I hope they continue this design trend. The touch buttons with blue LEDs are really good as well and always work at first touch. The slot-load DVD or Blu-Ray if you choose to get yours with one is really cool and was one of the major reasons I bought this laptop. The keyboard is really good and takes no time getting used to. The keys are all evenly spaced they all feel just right. The only thing I wish I had the option to add in would be a back-lit keyboard but sadly this laptop does not have that option.

The in-built webcam and mic are sufficient and work well using Skype.

I have installed the following OS's on this laptop: Ubuntu 9.04 (everything works no extra drivers needed to be downloaded except for Video for all Linux distros), Fedora 11, Linux Mint 6, Hackintosh Mac OS 10.3 (only used to test formatted HD right after), XP, Vista and windows 7.

In Summary, it is a good laptop but if looking to buy this laptop now; I would suggest getting the Studio XPS 13 or Studio XPS 16 for a little bit more money but a much better build quality and components (and the option for a back-lit keyboard).