Review: Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 Detachable Tablet

Dell's latest 10.8" Windows tablet gets a newly designed fanless Core M system. The performance of these Core M processors are very competitive against the Y-series Haswells of previous generation, even though their thermals are 4.5W TDP vs. 11.5W TDP of Y-series Haswells. This is indeed a great achievement by Intel. It enables Dell to remove the fan from previous generation Venue 11 Pro.

Dell Venue 11 Pro 7140 (Core M)

On the back of the tablet there appears a removable back panel. But wait, how to get this thing off?

Back side

Docking keyboard and touchpad with 20Wh secondary battery

Dell offers a docking keyboard to convert the tablet into a laptop. This keyboard contains a 20Wh secondary battery that extends running time, while also balancing the laptop so it does not tip over.

Dual-monitor desktop replacement! Hmm...

Dell also offers desktop docking solutions with dual display and ethernet, which enables the tablet to become a desktop replacement solution. The Core M excels here and I think a lot of users especially the office desks could potentially lose the old-time desktop PC! The future of desktop ATX form factor has just become even more bleak.

Docking ports and latch

Micro USB charging, micro HDMI and USB 3.0

Micro SD slot, power button

There is a screw hiding somewhere to defeat our attempt to release the back panel.

Little screw hiding beside SD slot

Finally!

Dell's inner beauty. Do you see the clip ports along the edges? That's where
you need to pryyyyy!

There are about 18 or so clips along the edges of the back panel. One would need a little help from some plastic prying tool to gently release these clips one by one, before the back panel can be set free.

Did we mention this beauty is fanless? The large copper heatsink in the picture tells the story. It would give you zero noise and keep the inside clean as its first day.

From the picture the serviceable components are the battery, SSD (M.2), wireless LAN (wifi), wireless WAN (4G). This type of maintenance is typically not considered for average users, but it does look like Venue 11 Pro 7140 is among the easier tablets, allowing a significant number of users to replace battery or upgrade SSD on their own.

We rather like the user removable battery in the previous model 7130 a lot. That elder brother has a 36Wh battery than the 38Wh battery equipped with 7140, and 7140 is 10.75mm thick vs. 12.2mm with 7130. It's not clear how much importance having a non user-removable battery plays into the space savings, I would think it's more due to design improvements in many different things. But even if that's the only factor in play, we would still rather have a user-removable battery than a slightly thinner design. This is because it extends service life of the product thus reducing cost of ownership, by having a longer useful life or a better resale value. The 7140 most definitely loses some points in the serviceability aspect here.

User-removable battery in older model 7130: Nostalgia from a bygone era?

The top spec'ed model has 8GB soldered RAM and 256GB SSD. 8GB RAM should be sufficient for most users in the next couple years.

Bottom line:

Fanless 10.8" ultraportable convertible tablet/laptop. Dell is back to its finest with a vengeance.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 6/10

Serviceability: 7/10

Connnectivity: 8/10

Portability: 9/10

Earth Spirit: 7/10

Expected service life: 5 years

(Pictures courtesy of NotebookCheck, LMRoss Inc and Trusted Reviews.)

Review: Compulab fit-PC3 Mini Desktop PC

Compulab specializes in very compact size computers, beginning with its tiny fit pc introduced in July 2007. Before the arrival of Intel NUC in 2013, the 'mini' desktop computers market was a bit ahead of its time. Still there were already quite a few choices, among them Apple's Mac mini, and many designs from Taiwan that targeted more toward industrial applications.

Compulab's fit-PC3, a little cuter than other fanless, no?

fit-PC3 is already the 3rd generation of Compulab's fit PC series. It was introduced in 2012, with a fanless model using a cast aluminum 'heatsink' case design. This case design has been shared in other models of the company as well, such as the Intense PC series. It's more or less designed as a 20+ watt power platform for the company.

In the fit-PC3 model, it uses AMD's Brazos processor G-T56N, a dual core APU, which was AMD's first generation low power design competing against Intel's low end platforms. In terms of processing power, it should be comparable to Intel's ULV Celeron processors around the same time, for example, the Celeron 847 used in Compulab's Intense PC Value.

One screw access to service door

One of the attractions of mini desktops are their ease on labors, both installation and maintenance. This is embodied in Compulab's systems, and better than most other mini computer manufactures. Compulab went one step further, as it favors fanless designs so one less maintenance item. Although this would require a higher standard for thermal design and parts. Compulab backs its reputation by an excellent 5-year warranty, a lot better than the now typical 1-year manufacture warranty in the consumer market.

A single screw and a little push, removes the service door on the bottom of fit-PC3.

SATA 2.5" hidden under the service door

Once the service door is open, we can access the RAM slots, SATA 2.5", mSATA slot and a half mini-pcie occupied with wifi card. The service door can hold a SATA 2.5" drive, which would sit into the slot when the door is installed back. Clever, saves the SATA cable. This arrangement demonstrates the amount of thoughts the designer put into ease of user access.

mSATA slot is on the lower right corner, with a black clip to the left

Pretty neat, no? The only cables seen are the two wires connecting the wifi card to antenna ports. Do you see what I mean? The installation of RAM and storage is straightforward. Say goodbye to ATX's intensive labor and part galore. We used to get this treat with laptops. But nowadays it's getting harder and harder to just extract the battery from most consumer laptops, let alone the soldered on-board RAM or storage.

RAM capacity is 16GB. Storage capacity is now in the terabytes even for mSATA, let alone SATA 2.5". So in terms of RAM and storage, the system is quite upgradable. The mSATA clip could be made better though, it sticks out among the general high build quality of the unit as a whole. The plastic clip doesn't hold mSATA card very tightly, and feels fragile. I can understand that the choice of using a clip instead of two tiny screw holes, to ease on installation labor. But there are much better clip designs out there such as those used in Addonics AD25MSD mSATA to SATA 2.5" adapter. Though if this clip mechanism doesn't work out well, one can still work around it with a mSATA to SATA 2.5" adapter. In the next decade it is expected that SSD would basically replace traditional hard drive, it is thus a legitimate service backup plan for mSATA card if it turns out that the clip does not last as long as the rest of the unit.

The fit PC3 has been updated to fit PC4 in 2014 with the latest embedded platform from AMD. The performance has significantly improved over fit PC3, now into Intel's mobile Core i3 territory. Fit PC4 now features quad-core 2GHz APU from AMD, and available on Amazon. Compulab also updated its Intense PC line to IPC2 in 2014, with processor options ranging from Celeron up to Core i7.

Bottom Line:

A solidly-made low maintenance and low power consumption mini computer, with long service life in mind.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 9/10

Serviceability: 9/10

Connectivity: 9/10

Earth Spirit: 9/10

Expected service life: 10+ years

(Pictures courtesy of Todo HTPC)

Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X130e Review

Today we look at another ultraportable laptop from over 2 years ago featuring AMD APU. The ThinkPad X130e actually has both AMD (Zacate) versions and Intel (Sandy Bridge) versions. The particular system we look at has an AMD E-300 APU (Zacate).

Two latches secure X130e's user removable battery

X130e features an user removable battery. This type of batteries usually has better aftermarket availability thus contributing to a longer service life of the laptop.

Three screws to lift bottom cover

The bottom cover is basically a large 'service door'.

Two SODIMM slots and one 7mm 2.5" SATA HDD

Even though Lenovo specifies only 8GB max RAM, there is some chance 16GB RAM might work in X130e although I haven't seen any user confirmation of it working, other than a confirmation for an Intel based X131e model running 12GB RAM. X130e also features 3 USB 2.0 ports and 1 Gigabit Ethernet port.

Bottom line:

Well, what can I say? A low-end 11.6" ultraportable featuring easy-to-access 2.5" hard drive, 2 SODIMM slots, 1 mini PCIe (WWAN), 1 half mini PCIe (WLAN). Really so there is no excuse for ultrabook designers to not include 2 SODIMM slots. Mind you this was two years ago when mSATA wasn't yet very popular so Lenovo didn't support mSATA with the full size mini PCIe WWAN slot, but of course it can be done easily nowadays. So X130e design is one of the most upgradable and user serviceable 11.6" laptops we have ever seen. The design is carried over to ThinkPad X131e (AMD version here) and ThinkPad X140e as well.

Score card:

Upgradability: 7/10
Serviceability: 9/10
Portability: 8/10
Connectivity: 6/10

Expected service life: 7 years

(Images courtesy of Jonathan Mergy)

Review: Asus U38N Laptop

Earlier this year AMD has refreshed its low power platform with mullins and beema. In previous generation very few vendors designed ultraportable laptops with AMD cpu. While hoping more OEM designing ultraportables with the new generation of AMD APU and SoC, today we look at Asus Vivobook U38N, a rare modern design around AMD's trinity platform.

Released in 2012, Asus U38N remains one of the very few recent AMD ultraportables. U38N is designed with ultrabook in mind, despite the term being defined by Intel so using AMD platform technically disqualifies it. Clearly it shares quite a bit design cues with Asus ultrabook lines.

Unscrew the bottom cover: single 2.5" SATA, no mSATA

After removing bottom cover, one can clearly see the 2.5" 7mm SATA hard drive. U38N is equipped with 24GB SSD cache, so the hard drive should feel more snappy than a typical laptop hard drive.

Zoom in the single SODIMM slot

Even though there is a single SODIMM slot, on ASUS's spec sheet it only supports up to 4GB RAM max. 2GB is soldered on board, so the SODIMM only takes 2GB RAM. It appears that ASUS really means it. An user's attempt in installing 8GB module had reportedly run into problems with Linux, which is likely due to the lack of BIOS support of such memory configurations.

On the connectivity side, it provides 3 USB 3.0 connections but dropped ethernet port. User would need a USB 3.0 to Gigabit ethernet adapter for ethernet connectivity.

Bottom line:

A flashy design that compromises upgradability and serviceability, which gives a rather short serviceable life. It should have been very easy for Asus to include 2 SODIMM slots in the design without any impact to its thinness and weight, which could then support a max of 16GB RAM and extend U38N's usable life a lot longer. Soldering RAM and limiting total RAM to 4GB is typical bad sport of modern ultrabook designs.

Score card:

Upgradability: 2/10

Serviceability: 4/10

Portability: 8/10

Connectivity: 7/10

Expected serviceable life: 3 years

(Images courtesy of MyFixGuide)

Review: Acer Aspire E 11 Laptop

After taking a look at the inner beauty that is the Dell Latitude E7240, now we turn to a latest Bay Trail laptop from Acer, the Aspire E 11. There is also a similar but better equipped V 11 model. The particular model we look at is Acer E3-111.

Bay Trail is the latest iteration of Intel Atom platform. However, its performance is dramatically better than previous generation Atoms. So generally speaking one shouldn't carry the image of slow netbooks of the past. Acer manages to make a fanless design with this notebook.

Bottom of Aspire E3-111, 13 screws to release bottom cover

Reveals SATA hard drive, battery and system board

SATA hard drive should be replaceable with SATA SSD. However note the hard drive is of 7mm thin 2.5" form factor. Also the SATA slot is attached to system board so it may require lifting system board (sigh). There is no mSATA slot in this laptop.

The battery is secured by two screws and plugs into the system board. It's not swappable but can be replaced by user with some care.

Two screws and unplug battery from system board

No SODIMM slot seen yet. The laptop does have one SODIMM slot, but unfortunately it is buried on the other side of the system board.

A couple more screws and disconnect cables on system board

One SODIMM on the other side of system board

It's clear that Acer does not intend users to upgrade RAM in the laptop. Acer doesn't even indicate whether it supports 8GB RAM or not in their spec sheet (update: Acer now indicates a max of 8GB RAM on both the dual-core and quad-core bay trail models). Given the uncertainty and troubles of accessing the SODIMM slot, the laptop wouldn't receive RAM upgrades from most users if any.

Gigabit Ethernet and 1 USB 3.0 are present. Rest USB ports are of USB 2.0.

Bottom Line:

Aser Aspire E 11 and V 11 are major upgrades from netbooks of the past. Fanless designs are appealing as well. Intel now supports up to 8GB RAM for Bay Trail processors, but Acer does not appear to want users take advantage of it.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 2/10

Serviceability: 3/10

Portability: 8/10

Connectivity: 7/10

Expected Service Life: 3 years

(Images courtesy of MyFixGuide)

Review: Dell Latitude E7240 Laptop

In recent years the portable computing world has gone through some major changes. We have observed the rise of smart phones and relatively inexpensive tablets, lead by Apple's wildly successful iPhone and iPad. Both desktop and laptop seem to drop into decline. Microsoft also moves into touch interface big time with its Windows 8, essentially incorporating the touch interface into every personal computer.

Among the sea of changes, a trend of 'disposable computing' is also observed. More and more manufactures are dropping upgradability and serviceability in their designs, encouraging users to buy a new one rather than upgrading or repairing existing ones. This is causing a lot of waste, both in terms of users' wallet, and in terms of society in general and its environmental impact. It appears at least some of these design decisions are profit-driven.

So it is refreshing to see that Dell manages to preserve the traditional values in upgradability and serviceability with the Latitude E7240 design.

Single latch to release the removable battery

E7240 features a single-latch user-removable battery. After releasing two screws, a gentle push also releases the bottom cover.

Two screws secure the bottom cover

With the bottom cover removed, two SODIMM sockets and two mSATA slots reveal themselves.

Dell chooses to exclusively use mSATA instead of 2.5" SATA drives, and it puts two mSATA slots so power users can expand the capacity of SSD. This is a sensible choice for ultraportables as mSATA SSD's has been catching up in capacity with the recent Samsung 840 Evo mSATA SSD up to 1TB, which means one can already fit E7240 with 2TB of fast SSD storage.

The two SODIMM sockets would support up to 16GB RAM. This should allow the laptop a generous life of many years. In my opinion, RAM capacity now plays a more important role in PC obsolescence than CPU processing power.

The laptop features the latest Intel Haswell 15-watt processors, so one can expect pretty crisp performance. 3 USB 3.0 ports and 1 Gigabit Ethernet port are present, so the connectivity of E7240 is excellent, considering many ultrabooks need extra ethernet adapter cable. 

There are some early user complaints of loud noise of the cooling fan. Apparently one of the parts suppliers provided less than ideal quality fans. One way to reduce this problem is to change the power options setting of 'minimum processor state' from 100% to 5%. Fan noise on ultraportable systems with higher-end cpus has long been hit and miss, I would love to see Dell make a similar fanless design with the Haswell ULX series processors. The last fanless Dell laptop I remember is the Latitude X1 released in 2005.

Bottom Line:

Dell Latitude E7240 is one of the most upgradable and user serviceable ultraportable laptops on the market.

Score Card:

Upgradability: 9/10

Serviceability: 10/10

Portability: 8/10

Connectivity: 10/10

Expected Service Life: 10 years

(Image courtesy of MyFixGuide)