Decent Machine for the Money!
Written: Dec 19 '00 (Updated Mar 15 '01)
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Pros: Good price, performance, construction
Cons: Tinny, weak sound
The Bottom Line: I wholeheartedly recommend this laptop and Dell as a company. My experience thus far has been quite pleasurable.
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| Eutek's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 4000 Series |
The time had come for me to invest in a laptop. With all the traveling that I have been doing, and an upcoming relocation to Europe, it was long overdue. My wife had taken over our PC at home, and we both have so many things to do on the computer that sharing was no longer feasible.
I basically wanted a desktop replacement that would be able to handle a Windows 2000/Linux dual-boot, with room for me to take my projects and hobbies with me wherever I go, even some light gaming if possible.
My next step was to research the laptop market. I make a decent income, but I did not want to spend a fortune on a laptop. My first laptop was an Acer Pentium 133, which was woefully obsolete by the time I got my hands on it. Recently I had been using a borrowed Compaq m300 that I did not care too much for. While it is a technological marvel, I feel that it is too small to really be useful, plus Compaq's customer and technical support are dreadful. I have sent that laptop back to Compaq 5 times in the past 3 months! The president of our company uses a Sony Vaio, but he has had quite a few technical issues with the system, and the Vaio is a bit too much for my pocketbook.
I eventually settled upon Dell. At work I utilize over 100 Dell systems in my network, and I have found them to be solidly made systems, with decent pricing and wonderful technical support to boot. It was only natural to gravitate towards Dell's offerings in the laptop arena.
The Inspiron 3800 was my first choice, but I read many reviews that complained about the flimsy chassis and screen problems. This turned me off somewhat, and I began to investigate the 4000. At the time Dell was running a promotion where they take $150 off, plus throw in a free printer, scanner or web cam, a free set of coloured palm-rest inserts and a free year of Dell MSN Internet access. Not bad. With all the options that I wanted, the 4000 was only $75 more than the 3800!
I chose a 4000 with a Pentium III 600 MHz, 64 MB RAM (I ordered another 64 from Crucial.com, which offers RAM at much lower prices than Dell), a 20GB UDMA-66 HDD, onboard v.90 modem, 24x CD-ROM, yellow inserts and an Intel USB camera. The final price came to $1802.77, and was built and shipped in about 1-week’s time.
When I finally got the system, I noticed that Dell threw in a canvas case as well. I did not order this, but as far as I know I was not charged either, and I think that all Dell laptops come with this case. Not a bad case at all. The packing materials were top notch, and within minutes I was up and running.
Contrary to the many horror stories I have read, the LCD screen was free of bad pixels, and the image was bright and clear. The system shipped with Windows Me!, although I intend on replacing it with 2000 as soon as I can. In spite of the bloated OS, the system was quick and responsive. The keyboard is one of the most comfortable that I have ever used, desktops included, although the mouse keys are fairly loud.
It is not as light as the Compaq m300 that I was using, but it is a more robust system.
I have not tried running any graphics intensive applications as of yet, but I am not looking for this to replace my desktop for games.
There is only one thing that I can find fault with - the sound. The sound on the 4000 is pretty bad, unless you use external speakers. The onboard speakers are very small and sound like telephone earpieces being maxed-out. Just awful. The sound level is also very low. Perhaps this is a software related problem and will disappear when I switch over to Windows 2000.
For the money, I feel that Dell offers a wonderful product in the Inspiron 4000. It is well made and performs just as well if not better than the competition.
15-3-01 - Several months later...
Well, it has been several months with my Dell Inspiron 4000 and I can honestly say that I am very happy that I ordered this particular machine. Here are some updates:
Soon after I purchased the 4000, I found the hard drive to be extremely noisy. Little did I know that this particular model (Fujitsu 20GB) is rather noisy by design. Not realizing this, I called Dell to complain about this noisy HDD as well as what I thought was an uneven screen. It seemed that my LCD display was a bit lighter in spots than in others. The technician on the other end was very helpful and explained that this particular model HDD was on the noisy side, and that my uneven LCD was probably due to a tech torquing the screws too much, thus creating uneven pressure on one side of the screen. I even complained about the rather wimpy sound, and the tech agreed that while it is not as loud as some of the other laptops on the market, there is little Dell could do about the 4000's sound problems.
Now get this - although she was not obligated, this tech offered to replace the entire machine, and even offered a $150 "rebate" to ensure my happiness with the laptop. Now that is customer service! My replacement laptop arrived in less than a week and all I had to do was pack up my original one in the pre-paid shipper. I am happy to say that I received a flawless machine - even the sound is better!
I have made several upgrades to my original machine - I added another 128MB of RAM (what a difference), an internal 56k modem/mini PCI NIC and a docking station. All have worked without problems.
Most importantly, I have replaced Windows Me! with Windows 2000 Professional Edition. It is extremely stable, and all of the necessary drivers were on the CD-ROMs that the system shipped with. No complaints here. It runs much faster and better with this O/S. I also have Linux RedHat 7.0 installed as a dual-boot option. Linux was able to find about 90% of my hardware on the first try. With some tweaking I was even able to get my sound card working.
One last discovery - my Inspiron is a more than adequate gaming platform! While I was not originally going to run games on it, the Inspiron 4000 did come with an ATI Mobility 8MB 3D accelerator. I tried running EA Sports NHL 2001 as well as Half-Life (including Opposing Force and Counter-Strike) to see how everything looked. I was pleasantly surprised. Although the video is not as clear as it is on my wife's desktop with her VooDoo video card, it is definitely usable. The system itself has more than enough horsepower to run these games. I ran out and picked up a Microsoft USB joystick and now I am able to kill some time with my favourite games while on the road. I can only imagine how good these games look on the higher-end Dells (like the 8000) that have video adapters with more RAM.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1802.77
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
Eutek
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Location: NY-Dublin-London-Bucharest
Reviews written: 56
Trusted by: 1 member
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