A reasonably solid notebook, with flaky power management
Written: Nov 18 '99
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Pros: Bright, clear screen; thin profile; reasonable support
Cons: Flaky power management, unreliable network card, Windows 98
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| dmr001's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 3500 A400GT |
If there is a typical user of these machines, I am likely not it: I bought this machine as a replacement for my beloved UNIX workstation, as well as to carry it around with me on hospital rounds. (I'm a former software engineer finishing up medical school.) If there's a way to make a machine flake out, I can usually find it, as I tend to exercise my devices.
The Inspiron 3500 has managed to hold up fairly well to my onslaught. The plastic case is a bit on the flimsy side compared to, say, the relatively overpriced IBM ThinkPads I've seen, and I would have to drop it on the floor, but none of the plastic doors or caulings have come off so far. The display is bright and clear, though with a rather narrow range of brightness control. The disk drive bay has rather untrustworthy seeming latches, which I treat delicately as they seem to be asking to snap off, and the drives are only semi hot-swappable: an included SoftBay manager does not work reliably, and seems to work no better than just swapping devices around without it. The documentation is not exceptionally clear.
Support was friendly enough, with about a 20 minute average wait for me, though we never did really figure out just what the deal was with my 3Com 10/100Base-T network card. It seems to need replacing every 3 months or so after working fine off the hub connected to my old Nextstation. The Dell support engineers had sometimes conflicting opinions about what was wrong with it (it needs to go only in the top PCMCIA slot; it needs to go only in the bottom PCMCIA slot, etc.).
"Advanced" power management is a mess, and untrustworthy. My control panel settings never seem to "stick," the machine wakes up for unknown reasons in the middle of the night from Suspend mode, but only if the cover is closed. "Critical" shut-down warnings only sometimes appear for low battery states. Re-starting from Suspend mode is a dicey proposition, sometimes working, sometimes sending the screen into "squished all the way to the left" mode, and sometimes crashing the system. This was particularly embarrassing for me in hospital work, and though I was able to make beautiful, legible admission and discharge notes that everyone could read quite well, the reliability factor and power management problems (as well as my fear of theft of the fairly attractive machine, and pure convenience) have led me to return to pen and paper on the wards.
How much of this is the fault of Windows 98 Second Edition I will never know, and I know it likely doesn't have much to do with the hardware itself, but this is by far the worst operating system I have ever used -- flaky, unreliable, apparently friendly but really quite byzantine. I will be upgrading at the earliest opportunity, should a realistic alternative ever arise (I suppose my next machine might well be a Macintosh).
The Inspiron with a 400 Mhz Pentium II is reasonably speedy, but seems a bit slower moving around windows and using Windows Explorer than supposedly slower desktop PC's. It is certainly the fastest laptop I've used, however.
In summary, if you're set on (or stuck with) needing a Windows platform notebook, this is a fine, if somewhat pricey choice ($2800 with 64 Mb memory, 400 MHz Pentium II, 6 Gb disk, and a 24x CD-ROM).
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2800
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium II
Processor speed: 301-400
Screen Size: 14"
RAM: 64
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 4-6
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Epinions.com ID:
dmr001
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Location: Portland, OR
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 3 members
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