Unleash the Beast
Written: Apr 09 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The screen, The Power, Quality, Warranty and The Screen
Cons: Some minor design quibbles
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| limeygit's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 5000 R500LO |
After too long dealing with an old refurbished pentium 166 Thinkpad, that had a dingy small screen, and couldn't display more than 256 colors at full screen size I decided to treat myself.
After scouring the market, reading reviews I discounted my original idea of a Thinkpad i1480, a decent machine but at about $2,200 it had a 14.1 screen, a Celron 466, 64 Megs of Ram, a 6 Gig hard drive and only a one year warranty, inferior in every dept to the machine I would end up with.
What swayed me to Dell was a combination of the fact the had a reputation for reliability, and because the corporation I work for buys Dell, I got a machine at approx 10% of the normal price with reduced shipping. Also it came with a 3 year, next day on site warranty for no extra money, I am unsure if I got this because I was buying via their corporate hotline or if it is standard, but man that is a good deal.
Anyway to the computer, this Inspiron 5000 came with a Pentium III 500, 128 Megs of Ram, a glorious 15 inch screen, a 12 Gig Hard Drive, built in 56k Modem and a 6x DVD player. Along with Win98 came Office Small Business, Encarta and Quicken Power Bundle. It also features an ATI graphic card with 8 Megs of Video Ram.
In other words it blows away the Thinkpad I was looking at in every department for a price tag of about $300 more. Of course impressive components are only half the story, do the work together?
Well this system is blazingly fast, handling basic and complex multiple tasks with ease. The screen will rock your world, DVDs look amazing, you can comfortable have several different windows up on the screen at the same time (as long as you have decent eyesite) and work on multiple projects, or surf, while you write an essay while you play music while you, well you get the idea.
Dell had the system built and delivered 16 days before they projected it would even ship, and I have had no problems thus far, and as the system ways about 7 pounds with a floppy and dvd installed (no need to swap) so it is still within reasonable weight range, yet easily outperforms just about any desktop I have ever seen, and the screen......
I am not a huge gamer, but everything I have tried on it flies, including Quake three which is smooth as you could want, of course hardcore gamers might question, but for the other 95% of the computing population the Inspiron 5000 can do EVERYTHING you will ever need it to do.
The minuses are minor, the huge screen creates an overdrop, where the top is larger than the bottom which could potentialy cause problems if you are not overly carefull. Also the touchpad is so-so and more importantly the keyboard seems further back from the front than it should be, I am starting to get used to it but is slows typing somewhat, and means I have to remove my watch to type anything of any length (which I do a lot of).
A combination of getting used to it and a $15 mouse will overcome this though I am sure, and it is a minor quibble compared to the fact I own the BEST notebook for the money, period.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
limeygit
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Location: North Carolina
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 14 members
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