My First Laptop
Written: Sep 27 '02
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Pros: fast, reliable, good service
Cons: pricey w/o rebate, heavy
The Bottom Line: Fast, Stable, Reliable. A little pricey, a little heavy, but perfect for me.
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| forevergomer's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 8100 Series |
In the box
I received my Inspiron 8100 the first week of March 2002 almost a full week before Dell had promised it to me, with ground shipping, so they scored major bonus points right there. My family has owned Dells before, and the buying experience was once again a good experience. Anyway, onto what was in the box...
Obviously the PIII-M 1.13 GHz laptop was the most interesting thing there. I should mention that it was packed very securely - plenty of packing material to buffer my precious new computer from all the abuse the shipping company could throw at it. In addition, came a few nice, thick manuals for the laptop itself, as well as driver CDs and installation CDs for software. I received free of charge a Quicken 2002 suite. In addition, an extra battery and a carrying case were provided free of charge. On a nice, very large, colorful poster was the Quick-Start guide, which would have been useful for somebody who had never seen a laptop before.
5 minutes later...
5 minutes after I dragged the box into my house, I had the laptop unpacked and sitting on my desk. I booted the machine and completed the XP activation process and the usual Windows last-minute set up stuff (entered my product key and all that). When I finally reached the Windows desktop, my machine was able to browse the internet over my network, and I was already installing my personal software.
Potholes on the road to bliss...
Several weeks after using the laptop with no problem, I ran into an odd problem. The harddrive was behaving in an erratic fashion - the problem pointed to software but restoring to the factory setup didn't help. My Tech support rep did some research around the dept and called me back, indicating he had a new diagnostic program, which he e-mailed me. The diag program did not help, and within 48 hours I had a brand new IBM harddrive on my desk, with a pre-paid shipping label. I have run into a similar problem that was able to be quickly traced to software and resolved. Strange, but not a huge hassle for me. To date, many months later, the laptop is working great! I stay relatively on-top of BIOS and driver updates, which probably helps.
Specs
Because I custom-ordered this machine, it has the amount of RAM, the processor speed, the storage space, and the removeable storage options that I wanted. For the record:
Pentium III-M 1.13 GHz Processor
256 MB PC133 SDRAM
30 GB Hard Drive
15" 1400x1050 Active Matrix TFT Display
Mini-PCI 10/100 NIC + 56 K v.90 Modem
2 Type-II/1 Type-III PC-Card slot configuration
8x DVD-ROM drive
2 Batteries
2 USB ports, 1 Firewire, TV-Out
I wish I could have afforded a CD-RW drive at the time, which is the one thing this computer lacks.
Upgradeability
About average for a laptop...The RAM can be upgraded to at least 512 MB. The Hard Drive is modular, so it can be upgraded. The removeable media can also be upgraded/exchanged as they are modular. Wireless connectivity has been added by my own 802.l1b ethernet adapter.
Perceived Speed
Let me tell you I abuse my operating system. I am a programmer, gamer, web surfer, webmaster, student, and more. Most of those at the same time. The machine feels much, much, much faster than my 700 MHz Athlon box that I had, even though the Athlon had a faster (7200 RPM UDMA-66) hard drive, 384 MB RAM, and was a custom-built desktop PC. As I have added more and more applications and service (i.e. IIS is now running), the machine has held up very well. The fact that it was fast out of the box can be credited to Dell and Intel (I'm a pro-AMD man personally, but props to Intel on this one). The fact that it's still near the same speed goes to Microsoft and Windows XP scaling so well.
Traveling
I have seen heftier, slower, less reliable notebooks. I purchased the Dell 8100 over the other models, knowing this would be a higher-performing computer with more bulk. It's not terrible, but I wouldn't want to be running through an airport trying to catch a flight that was a bout to leave without me. (NOTE: running in an airport is a bad idea now anyway, and you should be there approximately 24 hours before your flight takes off anyway, right?) But I frequently pack the notebook up and take it to the library, or outside to an 802.11b-covered area, or anywhere else.
Bottom-Line
I miss my "big black monster" that was my desktop PC. It was a full-tower, and a joy to tinker with. It was also unstable at times, friggin' HUGE, and nowhere near as fast as my laptop. I don't regret purchasing this computer, at all. I hope to soon add a CD-RW drive, which will eliminate my only need with this machine.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1650
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
forevergomer
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 1 member
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