I did tons of research before buying a laptop for school. I finally got it down to a Dell or an IBM and I went for the Dell because of the price. But since then, I've been very happy that I chose the Dell. I ordered online and the system came to me in about three weeks. They pushed back the ship date several times which was annoying, but it did arrive relatively soon as far as made to order systems go.

This machine is powerful and more than enough to handle anything I need to do on it. It's a Pentium III 700 MHz with 128 MB of memory and more than enough speed than I need for everyday applications like Office and internet.

The screen, 14 inch TFT active matrix at 1024X768 resolution, is amazing and crystal clear. The case has a neat shape and comes with interchangeable color panels. It's pretty light at around six pounds. Not the lightest if you need an ultralight for business travel, but it's lighter than most desktop replacement machines. You have to swap the CD drive, floppy, or extra battery, but the hotswapping software makes it very easy. The 8-cell battery is great, as it charges in about an hour and can last for more than four hours with the Intel Speed Step technology battery saver on. That's more than FOUR hours! Two batteries will give you over eight hours of operation if you have them both installed.

The keyboard tends to press down in the middle too much...the middle of the keyboard gives a few millimeters in the center if pressed. But I've gotten used to it and typing on it has become like second nature. I've seen the same thing on some other laptops so this is more of a notebook computer thing, not a Dell thing.

The two pointing devices are very useful because it pleases everyone, those who like touchpads and those who like touch sticks. I prefer the latter, and both work pretty well. I'm not too crazy about the drivers as they can stall for a second or two when the machine is processing a lot of information, but they are feature packed. For example, you can scroll on the right side and bottom of the touchpad and you can click with the touch stick.

I have a DVD drive and it works great. Movies look amazing on the screen and the software is easy to use. The speakers aren't that great but then again, what laptop speakers are? So if you do play a movie, use headphones for better sound. I also had a 3Com combination modem/NIC card installed, which saves space and is very convenient. The machine also has a USB port, serial port, parallel port, video port, two PC card ports, and an infared port.

Overall, I am VERY happy with this machine and have had no problems whatsoever with it. My complaints about it are few and far between and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a desktop replacement or a second computer.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 2700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 601-700
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20