I've now owned a Dell Inspiron 4000 for nearly a year. In that time, I have come to suspect that Dell has slipped in it's attention to reliability and dependability. This is likely the last Dell machine I'll by.

For starters, the hard drive bay has been a problem from almost day one. It rarely 'catches', which means the CD/DVD-ROM drive tends to slide out--I've had to replace it once already because of this abuse.

Then, about a month before warranty, the hard drive died. Luckily, I was able to get a free replacement, and rhe repair people were able to recover most of my data, but the near-heart-attack I suffered was quite unpleasant.

Then there was the internal modem--a few weeks before warranty, *it* started acting up. It somehow magically recovered, but for a while there, the computer acted as if the modem weren't even there.

Oh, and then, a couple weeks after warranty, the power adapter began failing. The wire leading from the box to the computer proved flaky, cutting out when bent a certain way, and killing power to the machine.

On top of this, neither WindowsME (which came installed) nor Windows2000 (which I installed after the hard drive failure) has ever ever ever shut down properly on this machine. From what I can tell, this is a common problem with Dell laptops. I have to manually kill the power in order to shut down the machine.

In all, I must say I'm very disappointed with this Dell. It seems that they are now resting on their number one laurels, relying on their brand so much that they no longer producing the best product for the money.



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 2000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20