Inspiron 4150 : Solid computer and solidly showing Dell's lack of inspiration...
Written: Aug 19 '02 (Updated Aug 20 '02)
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Pros: Still options galore, up to 2.0 P4-M power, good screen, portable
Cons: Sound/Speakers, 1 USB port, hey wait isn't this the case for the 4100?!
The Bottom Line: Overall solid notebook, but design is showing its age. The problem isn't what the 4150 has... it is what the 4150 lacks that causes trouble.
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| yusakugo's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 4150 Series Notebook Computers |
Another minor update of a Dell notebook... is it worth it? Well, to be honest with you, there is no reason to update to this notebook if you already own a decent PIII-M notebook. The 4150 adds very little overall to the table. However, if you're looking for a decent sized portable notebook that won't eat a hole through your wallet then the 4150 is worth several glances.
Again, I don't own this notebook... just had a friend purchase one on my recommendations of Dell computers. I got to compare this to my Inspiron 4100 notebook (which has become my standard comparison model instead of my Toshiba Satellite 5105-S607 or my father's Inspiron 8200 notebook). Comparing to the Insprion 4100 draws a few interesting conclusions.
The Short Take
The Inspiron 4150 is an overall good notebook... not outstanding but a natural evolution of the original 4100 Inspiron notebook. There are a few technical upgrades to the original 4100 design that make the notebook speedier but not significantly to the point that the Pentium III-M computers seem useless. The 4150 Inspiron is quite a bit faster than my particular configuration of the Inspiron 4100 but not by a huge margin.
The advantages coming from the original 4100 design stay with the 4150. These include a multi-bay that accepts a variety of optical drives or a secondary battery (I wasn't able to add a secondary battery in my 4100 when I bought mine initially then Dell made a battery that fit into the compartment), a solid keyboard, two pointing devices, excellent screen, fairly light weight and size, and a good video card are just some of the pluses with the 4150.
The weaknesses of the 4150 glare from Dell's keeping with the original design of the 4100 Inspiron. A lack of ports and some current technology hurt this notebook and for some users, it can be quite a significant hurt. Keeping the Inspiron 4150 with just one USB port that is still only USB 1.1 compliant was a serious oversight by Dell.
Overall, a solid notebook that should be considered but it not the elite of notebooks in this class like the Inspiron 4100 was for its class.
Pros:
1) Size
2) Weight
3) Can add Secondary Battery
4) ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chip standard
5) 14.1 inch screens standard (you pick the resolution quality)
6) Good keyboard
7) Good battery life (3+ hours)
8) Lots of options at time of purchase
9) Some room for upgradability
Cons:
1) Lack of ports (i.e. 1 USB port)
2) Diminishing Customer Service
3) Still weak speakers
4) No Firewire
5) No USB 2.0
6) Expensive Accessories
7) A Design Refresh is called for in the 4150
My Comparison Models (Kinda Technical... skip to next section if you want less technical info!)
Any contrasts I'm making is against a Inspiron 4100 machine with the following base specs...
Pentium III-M 866 Mhz (166 MHz bus)
256 RAM PC133 SODIMM boards(special double memory promotion)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64MB (this option appeared last year for 3 days then has not shown up since... this card competes with the new GeForce4 Go graphic chipsets!)
DVD/CD-RW combo drive DVD 8x and CD-RW 8x/4x/32x
14.1 inch UXGA screen (1600x1200 resolution)
20 GB Hard Drive (4500 rpm)
Windows XP Home
My friend had the following Inspiron 4150 machine:
Pentium 4-M 1.6GHz (400MHz bus)
256 MB DDR PC2100 (266MHz) RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 32MB
DVD/CD-RW combo drive (DVD 8x, CD-RW 24x/10x/24x)
14.1 inch UXGA screen
40 GB Hard Drive (5400 rpm)
Windows XP Home
The Inspiron 4150 outperforms my 4100 machine but not by a huge margin as the specification may suggest. If you didn't know any better, the Pentium 4-M specs suggest that it should perform twice as fast as my "wimpy" Inspiron 4100. Don't always take stock from raw numbers.
The 4150 does have alot going for it. The memory is twice as fast, the motherboard speed (bus speed) is 2.5-3 times faster, and there is a faster hard drive to boot over my Inspiron 4100. Unfortunately, the 1.6 GHz Pentium 4-M processor is slower in most applications than a 1.2 GHz Pentium III-M processor. Yes, you read that right. The only time the Pentium 4-M outshines the Pentium III-M is if the software was compiled towards the special command sets on the Pentium 4-M processor (P4-M)... then the P4-M really rocks the house. Such software is only just starting to come out now. In actuality, my opening and closing windows and other programs on my Inspiron 4100 lagged by a second or two from my friend's 4150 setup. The faster hard drive on the 4150 also helped its performance significantly as well... especially when windows was forced to use hard drive swap space. My lag times could approach a 1/2 minute at times. The faster 266MHz memory (over my 133MHz)probably translates into at most 15+% more speed to the computer. It would not half the time to perform tasks on the computer. My Inspiron 4100 had a better video card (I had 64MB of dedicated video memory) versus the 32MB of video memory on the 4150 setup. This allowed my computer to keep up with the Inspiron 4150 especially in games with large textures (like First Person Shooters - Unreal, Quake, Serious Sam).
I don't like running benchmark programs since they rarely tell the whole story as far as my experience goes... I just run the programs I use most often (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WarCraft III, Neverwinter Nights, MUGEN, 10-15 windows in Internet Explorer, Juno, Nero, and a few other games and minor programs... sometimes DIVX files and MP3s at the same time.) and see how long that takes me on one computer versus another. I do my everyday things and see how much time it takes me. Hardly scientific or accurate... but I get an idea of the computer's performance for me.
Going back the 4150
Okay... the 4150 shares the same dimensions as the 4100 Inspiron. 1.47 x 12.5 x 10.0 inches (HxWxD) with a minimal weight of 5.6 lbs. If you add a full battery and an optical drive, the weight jumps up to approximately 6 lbs.
The standard graphics chip choice of an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 produces exquisite graphics especially for DVD playback. None of the color problems that plagued the GeForce2Go chips came up with the Radeon. I just wished the 64MB Radeon chip was offered... it made a big difference in games. Otherwise, DVD playback was crisp and clear with excellent color reproduction. Add this to the UXGA screen, the combination is hard to beat! For those of you who don't need such detailed graphics, the XGA (lowest resolution of 1024x768) and SXGA (1400x1050) screens will save you $100-$200 dollars. The XGA is fine if you plan only run of the productivity programs like Word and Excel. SXGA is a better compromise however.
Battery life... not bad overall. Usually about 3 hours on straight DVD playback. Maybe 3 hours and a little change. Installing the second battery allowed a little less than 6 hours of uptime on DVD playback (as per my friend... I didn't stay up after playback of Lord of the Rings).
Again, you have a number of options to choose from when you first buy a 4150 and afterwards as well. Not as many options as some IBM Thinkpads and Sony VAIO notebooks but a good amount. You don't get some of the unique assortment of accessories like numeric keypad, fingerprint detector for security and the such... then again, you probably don't need most of those special accessories.
Like prior notebooks, the keyboard still has a good tactile feel to it.
You have two pointing devices... a touchpad below the keyboard and the eraser point (i.e. Trackpoint) in the middle of the keyboard. Both work equally well... although the touchpad isn't as spiffy as the cPad in the high end Toshiba notebooks.
The styling of the Inspiron 4150 is a bit blah now... since the design has been out for several years now. It could use an overhaul.
The Bad and The Ugly
The lack of ports really hurts the 4150. Like the Inspiron 4100 it replaces, you only have a 9-pin serial port, parallel port, infrared port, headphones jack, mic-in jack, monitor out port, 6-pin keyboard/mouse/keypad port, ONE USB 1.1 compliant port, S-Video out port, a RJ11 and a RJ45 ports (modem and network ports). Don't forget the Type III PC Card slot (i.e. 2 Type I/II slots). Other notebook makers have included at least 2 if not 3 USB ports (although still at USB 1.1 standard). Some have added Firewire ports as well. Toshiba added SmartMedia or Secure Digital card slots into the notebook as well. Dell's lagging in this department here.
The sound is still tinny from the Inspiron 4150... I know that notebook sound will never be as good as a good set of desktop speakers but... well... I can always wish. Right? At least get it to the level of Toshiba integrated notebook subwoofer systems. Those notebooks really rock and roll!
The worse is the rapidly declining quality of Dell's own customer service. Now it is difficult to hail anyone over the phone and it is getting just as hard over email! It's probably the same story for all the major notebook manufacturers. Dell happens to have a decently lenient return policy/repair policy overall.
Final Thoughts
The 4150 is a solid notebook but it's not going to make me toss out my 4100 in the foreseeable future. It seems to be a dependable machine especially judging from my experience with the 4100. However, the design shortcomings for the 4150 are still present from the Inspiron 4100 days... and that's a little disturbing. The short sightedness of Dell in these design choices may come back to haunt the 4150. The competition has caught up to Dell and in some ways surpassed Dell's 4150 model... however, Dell's reputation of making rock solid computers still keeps the advantage on Dell's side.
Take a look at my numberous other laptop reviews on my profile page!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1500
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
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