Flying Brick
Written: Oct 08 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fast, great display
Cons: Poor form factor, heavy
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| benha's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 7000 A400LT |
My company just bought me a new Inspiron 7000. Quite an interesting machine.
Let me begin by saying that the single best thing about this machine is the display. I was a little skeptical that I'd be happy using a laptop for any kind of serious software development work, because I generally need to have lots of open windows arranged around the desktop. This machine gives me all the room I need, and the images are crystal clear - I don't mind looking at this thing all day long.
However, I'm a little concerned about the way they went about integrating the larger display with the rest of the machine. For those of you who've never seen one, it basically overhangs the lower chassis by about 1/4" on three sides when the top is closed. This bothers me for a couple of reasons. First, it makes the larger display seem like an afterthought. I'm a big fan of elegant engineering (like the PowerBook G3 line) and this ain't it. It looks like some engineer was given the task of fitting a bigger display to a previously existing machine and he took the easy route.
I'd much rather they made the lower part the same square dimension as the top and used the extra space in the lower part to make it thinner. But whatever...aside from the inelegant engineering aspect, this also bothers be because it seems like something could get caught on the lip of the display part and wrench the top open - which would be bad.
This factor aside, the machine is fast. I've run Python and Perl scripts on this machine and on a Sparc Ultra1 and the finish in about the same time. Pretty cool!
Oh, it's definitely a "portable desktop". I carried it for a rather long walk in a briefcase and it nearly took my arm off. You won't want to travel with it a lot, but if you need some degree of mobility, it's a great choice.
And finally, it's had trouble waking up from "sleep" a couple of times. I was rather annoyed to find that stuff I'd left to run overnight whose only output was to the screen had to be run again because I couldn't wake the computer up and had to restart...(guess I should dump to files)
Recommended:
Yes
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium II
Processor speed: 301-400
Screen Size: 15"
RAM: More than 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 7-9
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Epinions.com ID:
benha
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Member: Ben Mitchell
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 52 members
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