A tiny little thing
Written: May 05 '01 (Updated May 05 '01)
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Pros: Light, small and adorable; blazingly fast; beautiful screen; nice keyboard and touchpad
Cons: Smallish screen, case gets very hot sometimes, battery life could be longer, weird external devices
The Bottom Line: A small yet powerful machine that won't impress the world but really grows on you. You might fall in love with it...
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| anata's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 2100 Series |
Configured 700mhz PIII, 12.1inch screen, 256mb RAM, 20gig HD, modem/ethernet, external cdrw, 3yr warranty, $2200
One quick note before I begin: Dell's tech support is generally great, especially if you have damaged/missing items, but it's not as good for support on software since most people doing phone tech support are clueless about some things. Tech supporters are quick to respond to even email inqueries, which pleased me. I was missing an item from my invoice and was very distressed. I emailed tech support about it and was told I would receive it three days later, and indeed I did on the day the person specified. Anyway, I received my Dell Inspiron 2100 and was surprised by several things.
The first and most notable surprise: it is so tiny! The screen is a lot smaller than I thought it would be, as with the rest of the case. It's literally the size of a piece of regular notebook paper, perhaps a little wider. That's both good and bad, I suppose. I was personally hoping for a bigger screen and something that wasn't so damned "cute." But at the same time the small size of the laptop makes it light and easy to carry around, which is good for me, especially since I'm a petite sized girl who likes to take notes in class.
Another surprise was that the color of the magnesium alloy casing isn't very silver like it's pictured on Dell's website. It's more of a disappointing grayish silver finish, and is not nearly as eye-catching as the light, shiny silver of the Apple G4 Titanium. The machine is relatively quiet, and when the harddrive is accessing information, the noise isn't very noticeable. The speakers on this laptop are nowhere to be found on the surface, so I have no idea where the sound is coming from--but they are coming, and quite strongly. The maximum volume is even a little bit too loud, although it's only concentrated on the left side (which I guess is where the speakers are located). The keyboard is surprisingly responsive and easy to type on; its "clickiness" rivals that of my full-sized regular keyboard. The touchpad is awesome compared to a stick. I can use it to scroll any window, horizontally and vertically. I can tap on the pad to simulate clicks (and double-clicks) as well as use the four corners for special functions like right-click and launching menus. I hooked up my Microsoft scroll wheel mouse to the serial port, and I gotta say that a mouse is still better than a touchpad.
I also hooked up a 17-inch monitor (Gateway EV700) to the VGA-out port on the laptop, meaning that I could see both screens simultaneously, but I wasn't very satisfied with the results. The CRT performance just seemed awful in comparison. I preferred looking at a tiny little active matrix LCD screen to a 16inch viewable CRT monitor. The LCD display is so stunningly crisp, sharp, bright and beautiful. This is probably thanks to its 1024x768 optimum resolution at 32bit true color as opposed to my school's blueberry macintosh iBooks that are much larger and heavier, with 12inch LCD screens running at 800x600 max resolution. The colors are better saturated and deeper on the Dell LCD than on my Gateway EV700 monitor and much easier on the eyes. The refresh rate flicker on the CRT are literally noticeable when compared side by side with the LCD, and it gave me a sense of nausea. I know that my reaction to the Dell Inspiron screen isn't the case with all LCD screens, because I've been using those iBooks for over a year, and that sense of awe with looking at an LCD screen never struck me until now.
Okay, enough with the superficial stuff. The Inspiron was a breeze to setup, and performance seems okay. I crash at least once a day due to Windows Millenium errors, but freezing hasn't occured yet because that's a memory problem, and I have ample (still trying to figure out how to push its limits). I don't run any games except solitaire or stuff like that, but I'm guessing that the 4mbs of ATI video RAM aren't sufficient to run Quake or any advanced 3D games. For what I often do on my computer though, applications run smoothly and don't lag at all. I like to use Adobe Photoshop and edit image files, and this is the fastest I've ever seen Photoshop 5 load up and perform tasks. Compared to Photoshop's constant lagging and freezing on my school's desktop G3's and G4's, this tiny little machine is amazing. At first I wanted to return the laptop because it just wasn't what I envisioned it would be like (appearance-wise), and also it has one dead pixel at the bottom where it's hardly noticeable, but I figured that's too much hassle. I wanted decent computing power in a small package, and I guess I shouldn't complain. I do recommend the Inspiron 2100 for those who are always moving and need to be with a computer at all times.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2200
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 601-700
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
anata
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Location: Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
My name is Rose. Anata = A Not Available Teasing Asian
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