Vostro 1500, am I doomed?

[The Juan]

{EDIT} Long rant/post, skip to bottom for the general question!

So last night I was just surfin around pricing a new laptop. I came across this Dell and jumped all over it.

$520 with shipping and taxes

Vostro 1500
15.4" Standard res.
Intel T9300 2.5G, 800FSB, 6MB L2
Nvidia 8400M GS 128 MB
160GB 7200 RPM HDD
4GB Ram DDR2 667

I've been pricing new systems for the past few months wanting to pick up a machine for Ableton, Reason, and other programs, and have seen systems with compariable specs for 2-4x the price (The T9300 is a $300 upgrade on most sites)

Anyways, after I purchased, I decided to figure out a way to consolidate my desktop, monitors, midi devices, and soon to be laptop.

One way I thought of, was to rid myself of my EMU 0404 PCI Interface, and use a firewire interface to easily connect whichever PC I was using to my monitors.

I also wanted to be able to use the firewire interface whenever I travel. That would require bus powering. I noticed that the Dell only has a 4 pin FW port, like 98% of laptops have.

So I started thinking of 6 pin firewire express cards.

The searching began, and I came across a few threads here, and on other sites. One site, I think jcschild posted, scared the hell out of me.

Firewire issue affecting all the Dell Core Duo notebooks - Page 53 - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

Granted that thread started in 2006, it looks like this is still an issue?


{Question}

I read a good chunk of that topic, roughly 30 of the 53 pages, and still have no idea if I'm doomed to use the onboard 4 pin FW with very select interfaces and not be able to bus power, or return the computer, and find one with a TI chipset (and severely lower specs)

Is this even a problem any more?

[KingDiamond]

I have a Vostro 1500 that I got for a really low price when they were on sale last year. I think I got it for around $350 with a bunch of coupons. Anyway, I have no problems with firewire. The only problems have been with the NVidia graphics chipset. NVidia kind of screwed up the graphics chip cooling on Dell laptops and they are having some cooling problems. Also I had to send it in for a screen flickering problem, and they also had to send me a new power supply adapter because the Revision 0 adapter had problems and it caused the touchpad to work erratically. Come to think about it, this is the first laptop to ever give me so many problems. I have a Dell M1330 that I used daily and it has had no problems though but it was three times the price.

[The Juan]

Thanks for the reply King.

What kind of interface are you using? Also has your Nvidia been overheating? Were you playing games or just working on music?

Lucky it comes with a full year warranty, so I'll have to use her pretty hard the first year and hope for the best.

[The Juan]

Hmm, So I did more searching, and it is looking like im boned. Guess Ill have to wait for the computer to be delivered and then either re-sell it to some one not using it for audio, or return it.

bummer! wish I would have found this out before ordering. I was just thinking, "screw it, ill just get a TI Express card"

boyyyyy was i wrong.