| Laptops and Notebooks Reviews : Dell |
 | Dell Inspiron 11 11.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop (Windows 7 Premium)
Great so far -- 2010-03-10
After years of owning various Apple laptops (and swearing by them), I finally ventured back into the PC world, and so far I am very happy with the result.
What I like:
- Light weight: This laptop is so light that it fits into my work purse and I barely notice the weight. I can carry it everywhere with me.
- Long battery life: The 6-cell battery life is very long, about 6 hours or so on powersave mode, which means I feel comfortable not always carrying the charger around.
- Window 7: they copied a lot of features from the Mac OS, with no complaints from me. So far I find it very intuitive, elegant, and easy to use.
- Trackpad, scrolling: another feature they stole from Apple, but I love scrolling without having to hit any buttons. Bravo.
- Keyboard: might be too small for some, but perfect for my relatively small hands.
- The cost: really can't complain here, and one of the main reasons why I switched back. This computer costs less than half of what a Macbook with similar specs would have cost.
- Fast processing speed: I don't do anything that complicated on my computer, just Internet, word processing, reading pdf files,and downloading photos. It is lightning fast for all these purposes.
What I dislike:
- Trackpad, zooming and the cursor: The trackpad was not so responsive until I set it manually. The pinch-zoom feature drove me crazy until I figured out how to turn it off.
- No DVD drive: I thought that this wouldn't bother me, but it turns out that I miss being able to play DVDs and rip my CDs, etc. So I got an external drive pronto. I think on balance, I prefer having the drive inside the computer, but I do appreciate the light weight, so maybe this one is a draw.
- Screen: a bit small, but it's fine.
- The battery protrudes: the computer doesn't lie flat, which takes a while to get used to.
Overall, I am very, very happy with this computer, as evidenced by the fact that I take it with me everywhere even when I don't need to. Bravo, Dell, for converting this Apple convert back to Windows.
Excellent price/performance -- 2010-03-09
I received this laptop (can't really call it a netbook with a dual-core and 4GB of RAM) last week after about a week of deliberation over the other options out there. In this 11.6" range, there's a pretty limited number of models to compare. If you're willing to pay another hundred dollars and up, you could get a faster processor. Likewise, you can find a cheaper laptop with a celeron or atom processor. At this price point, however, this laptop really does stand out.
The trackpad does take some getting used to, but most of the complaints about it (like the zooming gestures) can be disabled in a few seconds. The battery does stick out pretty ridiculously, but I would gladly trade that for the 6+ hours of battery life. The video card is very basic, but once again this is a sub-$500 laptop in a very slim form factor. Overall, the pros outweigh the cons, and I'm quite happy with my purchase.
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 | Dell Inspiron 1470 14-Inch Cherry Red Laptop Up to 5 Hours 29 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)
hardware issues -- 2010-03-05
I was excited to get this machine on sale; it's lightweight, slick (other than the fingerprints on the case issue), slim. Everyone talks about Dell products and how they're reliable and trouble-free. Twice in the short time I've had this computer I've encountered blue screens, loss of work, and been given the reason for shutdown as an uncorrectable hardware failure while the machine makes a sound like a jackhammer. I'm really unhappy about my purchase now because I have to pay a restocking fee to give back the item that didn't work right in the first place.
Worth every penny! -- 2010-03-02
I have been looking at getting a laptop (or maybe netbook) for a while, keeping an eye on specs and prices. For this price point, this was the best deal I was able to find. I've only had it like 4 days but it feels like weeks. I keep finding neat new features I would have never expected. Very happy with this laptop, well worth every penny.
My favorite specs are:
- much longer battery life than most any other laptop i was able to find under $600
- great amount of storage/memory
- can put my camera chip directly into computer on the side, w/o having to dig out the usb cable
- happy/confident with the brand, that it will last a long time
...have yet to use the dvd burner, but soon, very glad it does have dvd burner as my last computer didn't
- watched a handful of tv shows and movies, very good screen quality
- the video conferencing you can do with the cam/mic has lots of fun features, also good quality
and best of all.. i had it in my hands in less than 24 hours after i ordered it using the amazon prime next day delivery, $3.99 for shipping and no tax was what put it over the top for me. I guess the only thing i didn't like was that it doesn't come with Microsoft Office, but i deleted the program it came with and put it on there anyway, so didn't effect me.(Don't think I've seen one that comes preloaded with it w/o having to pay extra anyway.) Customer reviews were very helpful to me in my search so just wanted to return the favor, thanks, and good luck in your search!
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 | Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6-Inch Jet Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours 34 Minutes of Battery Life, MS Home and Student Software Included (Windows 7 Home Premium)
Buy this over a netbook it is worth the extra $150. Great General Use laptop. Long Lasting if taken care of! -- 2010-03-08
I was looking for a laptop for my wife and I to use to replace our last laptop which was a Dell Inspiron 8100 (yes I know it would seem that this would be a later model but the odometer must have clicked over on their model numbering system). That laptop was 9 years old. Still original screen and keyboard. I did replace the hard drive with a larger one and had to replace the batteries once along with the screen hinge. Other than that my first Inspiron lasted well past its predicted life. The cost of that laptop - $2500.
The year is now 2010 and I was able to pick this laptop up from Dell for $549 with a bonus of 4GB ram. It has a dual core intel chip. It is easily as powerful as my current desktop. I reinstalled the Windows 7 operating system right out of the box wiping out all of the Dell factory added software. Usually those programs are just clutter. In 30 minutes I was firing Windows 7 up on the new Inspiron.
We have had it for about a week and we are very pleased with the purchase. I'll just quickly go over a few of the positives, some of the items that could have been made better and some features that I didn't think about when ordering the laptop that I would have liked to add but didn't.
This laptop is the base model of base models in the laptop world. Make sure whatever laptop you get it has a great cpu and plenty of memory. The hard drive you can change later, the rest you can not. For this price point the CPU and memory is fantastic. No issues running multiple applications. It will work great for Photo editing software, internet browsing and watching online movies or playing music.
The network card included is a 54mb/s speed (G) however there was a choice to get the faster N network card which I opted not to get. Two days after I got the laptop my router broke and I bought a new N network router. Now my laptop is stuck at the slower speed. *BUT SLOWER IS PLENTY FAST FOR ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO HERE* If you don't need the cutting edge speed then stick with the G option. A note about N - there is no standard yet for this speed. This means that devices could be incompatible with newer Routers if the standar is finalized differently than it exists now.
I chose the 9-cell battery over the standard 6 cell. I am big on getting alot of time out of a charge in a laptop. It is nice to not have to plug it in for 6 hours. Which is about what I am getting at the moment. This will decrease over time so the higher starting point will make the mid life range of the battery probably be in 4 hour range. Note though that the 9 cell battery uses a modified battery cover and extends from the back of the laptop with 3 extra batteries.
The screen is bright and clear. It is not full high def but close to half high def. (The resolution is not the official 720p half high def but in fact just slightly higher.) Being a base laptop with an economy price the need for anything more expensive will really outdo the other components and I find it is unnecessary for my purposes.
The look is simple which is my preference. The insides of the laptop around the keboard and screen are Jet Black (and attract fingerprints) the outside of mine is flat black with a silver Dell logo. This also attracts greasy fingerprints. You will have to just not let this bother you and clean it with a soft cotton cloth every once in a while. Its a a budget laptop with great looks and clean lines.
So the good - inexpensive, good option for a longer life batter, clear bright screen.
The annoying (I wouldn't call it bad - because it is a budget laptop). Probably to make these next few items better the cost of the laptop would increase.
The pointer - a pad in this model. We loose the fingertip pointer on the keyboard which I used almost exclusively in my old laptop. They cleaned up the touch pad and made it look integral to the remainder of the case of the laptop. There are no edges for crumbs to get caught in. There are two buttons below it for right and left clicking. This is adequate for the laptop of this price range. However the annoying part comes in that it is touch. Typing and a brief graze with a thumb will relocate your pointer. Annoying but you get used to it. The last annoying thing about it is that it is very difficult to select a larger portion of text. This can probably be fixed by adjusting the pointer setting in Windows. I just haven't gotten to that yet.
Since we didn't get a high def screen there is no high def output. I wanted to connect this to my tv to view some Hulu.com shows but there was nothing to accomplish this. There is a single VGA out to connect to a External Monitor or a Project but no dongle as in the Inspiron 8100 that just gave us an S VIDEO out. A sign of the times I guess.
Ok so I guess not too many annoying things. More better than worse with the best feature being the price making this laptop reachable by most budgets. Spend the extra $150 bucks and get this laptop over a Mini (netbook).
I would buy this from dell directly. Shipping may take longer however you can often find deals like I did for money off the price along with an upgrade to 4GB memory. It ships with Windows 7 64bit and this OS is plenty worth it, a large improvement over Vista. Brings me back to the Windows XP times.
I give this 4 starts not 5 because of the lack of the fingertip pointer, no external video connection to connect to the TV's of today. I would get 4 and a half probably. I hope this one will last me another at least 5 years.
One other note before I go - Dell laptops are fragile. If you take care of them, don't carry them by the screen, close them with not in use and just be overall gentle with their use and placing them down. Keep it in a padded bag and it should serve you well. To get the best life out of the battery, use the battery! Plug it in to charge it to 100% and then unplug it. Use it until it has as close as you feel comfortable to 0% - I usually use it to around 15% and then plug it back in overnight.
Hope you enjoy. (see my other reviews and support future reviews by visiting [...])
Sean
Sean's Review
sean@seansreview.com
lemon of a laptop! -- 2010-02-21
The Dell laptop has been a hassle. The cursor jumps around on the page while typing making regular use very frustrating and time consuming! I contacted Dell during the warranty period and they sent a new key pad however, this has not fixed the problem. In addition the wireless system is weak. We have 5 other wireless laptops in the house but my Dell is the only one that is constantly not finding the signal or going offline. I would not recommend this product.
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 | Dell D600 Laptop 1.6ghz 40gb DVD/CDRW B Grade Includes Genuine XP Professional restore cd!
Very Nice -- 2010-03-06
I got this for my fiance's Bday and he loved it. We had a couple of issues with it but the sellers were very polite and helped us out very quickly fixing the problems. Customer service was great and he loves using the computer. There has been no issues with it since and it works great.
Laptop Nice -- 2010-03-02
I thought this was wireless ready. I guess its my own fault and i could be more computer savy. It is a great product, I just wish I knew i had to hard line it to use the internet.
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| Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6-Inch Jet Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours 34 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)
cool!!!!!!!!! -- 2010-03-02
i have alwaays loved Dell products. was using Inspiron 6400. was really longing for this until i finally found a means of buying this. its really lovely, strong and very dependable. i just love it!!!!!!
never, never again -- 2010-02-19
I have purchased three from this company in the past year -- we have twins in college and each needed one -- then one for personal/home use.
Within a month after each warranty expired, the hard drive died. Nothing could be done but order a replacement - which first requires a $49 diagnostic fee....before they can even tell you what the part is that is needed and how much that will cost.
They cannot replace items lost on the drive --- so be sure to have your own external hard drive or system for back up. They are no help.
This happened three times!! Three different laptops!! All with simple use at home and university. Each just AFTER the warranty expired -- and they are in India -- and make no adjustments to "policy" -- and have the most effective system of blocking customers from access to attaining help.
Never, ever again. Burned THREE times -- with THREE different laptops. Never, never again.
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 | Dell Inspiron i1545-4583JBK 1545 15.6-Inch Laptop (Jet Black)
Gets the job done -- 2010-03-01
I've installed close to 8 of these laptops for my clients over the past year. Each system has been dependable, and I've received very few complaints on them. Some minor issues with the system is a heavy weight with a limited battery life, but overall I'm happy with them.
Never again -- 2010-02-19
I have purchased three from this company in the past year -- we have twins in college and each needed one -- then one for personal/home use.
Within a month after each warranty expired, the hard drive died. Nothing could be done but order a replacement - which first requires a $49 diagnostic fee....before they can even tell you what the part is that is needed and how much that will cost.
They cannot replace items lost on the drive --- so be sure to have your own external hard drive or system for back up. They are no help.
This happened three times!! Three different laptops!! All with simple use at home and university. Each just AFTER the warranty expired -- and they are in India -- and make no adjustments to "policy" -- and have the most effective system of blocking customers from access to attaining help.
Never, ever again. Burned THREE times -- with THREE different laptops. Never, never again.
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 | Dell Studio XPS 1640 15.6-Inch Obsidian Black Laptop - Up to 3 Hours 8 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)
PC gets 4 stars, Amazon gets none (but see edit) -- 2010-02-18
Purchased this computer a few weeks ago for my son who is heading to college and we have been very happy with it. Sleek, responsive, and able to handle gaming and media applications with the well-above-average video card, memory, display and processor combination. All for under $1000.00? Impressive. A fingerprint magnet, which bothers some, but is not a big deal to me. Battery life is average compared to the other laptops I have owned, but acceptable, and I am confident, but admittedly have not looked, that an aftermarket upgrade at battery is available. I have seen complaints that it runs hot, but have not experienced that, at least not hotter than any other laptop with a dedicated video card running during intensive applications and certainly not uncomfortably so. The fan is partially blocked by the monitor, but does its job, and for long sessions of gaming I would recommend a secondary cooling device for any laptop. I have also seen at least one review indicate that the video card was not good for gaming, but other independent reviews of the specific card and pc configuration, and my own experiences, refute that, this pc was built with demanding gaming in mind, while not sacrificing portability or versatility.
I have only one beef with the purchase. Amazon no longer price guarantees its products. This machine dropped in price $35.00 shortly after I purchased it (within a week). I still had it, unopened, and contacted Amazon about a price credit, and was basically told to pound sand. The most frustrating thing about that was I could have simply returned it for a full refund under the 30 day return policy for unopened computers, and bought another one at the new price, discounting my price savings by the 15 dollars or so in return shipping costs (I do not think the return policy covers that), and when I pointed that out to Amazon, I was invited to go ahead and do that. To me, it appeared Amazon was effectively banking on the fact that I would not go through such hassle for such a "small" savings. And they were correct, but only because I did not want to be empty handed for my son's 18th birthday. So they won my business with a good price on a great machine, but lost my respect as a company for such poor customer service. I make many internet purchases, and absent a serious reason to do so, will not be shopping at Amazon in the future.
EDIT REVIEW - after I wrote this it got me worked up all over again so I contacted Amazon a second time and low and behold I was given a 35 dollar credit! While they deserved the smack on the nose with a rolled up paper they got for how I was treated the first time, they likewise deserve a treat and an attaboy for eventually doing the right thing. Amazon you have won back my business.
don't buy Dell/Vista -- 2010-02-08
Disappointed with amount of frozen windows, non-closeable windows until a logoff, slowness, and lack of customer support.
Touch pad wireless and touch pad CD ejection control is not reliable. Could Vista be blamed for some of these issues?
I recommend talking to more than a few laptop owners before you decide on what to buy.
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 | Dell Inspiron i1764-6075OBK 1764 17.3-Inch Laptop (Obsidian Black)
Very Happy with my 17" Dell Inspiron -- 2010-03-08
Great product! Competitive price. Fast delivery. I am extremely happy. Excellent buy.
@ days ...New Hard Drive being sent... -- 2010-03-05
Just received my new 17.3 Inspiron I ordered from QVC. Although the Windows and Internet worked, the facial recognition security program and webcam didn't. Dell tried, for about three hours this morning to remote access repair the problem, with no success. So they are sending a new hard drive for my install. Just what you like to do when you get a new computer! The above comment about quality control in China seems to be correct. Anyway, I'll see how it goes when I get the HD but I'll probably return the computer within the 30 day policy QVC has on their purchases. Thank god for that!
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 | DELL LATITUDE D600 CENTRINO LAPTOP 512MB 30GB WIFI XP PRO 14" LCD LAPTOP
I expected Office!!! -- 2010-03-10
I just began working on mine today and whattya know..it does not have any freaking programs on it!!!
Will be returning it soon!
I expected from the first review that is it "was packed with useful programs!"
huh? Mine has s###t.
I was very happy -- 2010-03-01
It came within days of ordering and I have been extremely happy with the speed and ease of use, however the R did fall off a few days ago but no biggie, obviously I can still use it!
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