Dell Vostro 1310

Dell's Vostro collection of small business oriented PCs has become a bit more complete with the addition of the Vostro 1310 laptop. As with earlier Vostro models, this notebook's allure is a business friendly mix of features, dedicated tech support, handy utilities and no preloaded trialware. In the $1,416 configuration we tested, the Vostro 1310 delivers good performance and most of the features a professional could need.

Built around a 13.3 inch screen an increasingly popular size for mobile pros weary of the 12 inch displays typical of ultraportables the Vostro 1310 is smaller than the 14.1 inch and 15.4 inch Vostro models Dell released previously. That said, the Vostro 1310 doesn't feel quite as compact as it could. It weighs 4.8 pounds; by way of comparison, Dell's own 13.3 inch XPS M1330 weighs less than 4 pounds.

The design of the Vostro 1310 is rather subdued, with an angular chassis done in black on black, though the metallic flake paint on the lid adds a bit of flair.

Open the lid, and you'll find a generic looking (though comfortable) keyboard and palm rest. The touch pad gives smooth action but is a bit small, a complaint we've leveled against a lot of notebooks lately. The mouse buttons have a positive action without being too stiff.

We are happy to see the touch sensitive multimedia control and volume buttons rare on a business notebook.

Oddly, however, there's no mute button, or even a marked Function key combo to mute sound. Not that it matters much. The monaural speaker is so tinny and muffled, and produces so little volume that you'll never have the sound on anyway. If you need a notebook to make presentations with and those presentations involve audio, look elsewhere.

The screen, on the other hand, is a winner: bright and crisp. The matte finish (not glossy, as we've grown accustomed to) robs the panel of some of its vibrancy, but that also means no glare when you're working under harsh fluorescent lights. The Vostro 1310 makes a decent portable DVD player when work is done colors in Pirates of the Caribbean. Curse of the Black Pearl were accurate, though we did notice motion blur in action scenes.

Features include a slot loading DVD burner, a fingerprint reader, a Webcam, a memory card reader, 802.11b/g wireless (Bluetooth is a $20 option), and a 160GB hard drive with an accelerometer that parks the drive heads if the machine takes a tumble. Dell has included the ports you would expect in a business notebook (FireWire, LAN, VGA, and four USB ports) and omitted one you might need on the road a modem jack. For road warriors who still happen upon motels with just dial up, you'll need to buy and carry an external USB modem. Also, the included card slot is an ExpressCard slot, so if you have older PC Cards, you're out of luck.