Great laptop with some room for improvements
Written: Oct 25 '02 (Updated Mar 08 '03)
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Pros: Sleek business look/feel (none of that toy look). Good compatible components.
Cons: Some construction weaknesses. Some parts failed. No ethernet built in.
The Bottom Line: With the Dell Inspiron 5000e, Dell introduces a carefully crafted well-oiled machine besting those in it's class: beautiful screen, compatible components, and quality construction.
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| hankshay's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 5000e Series |
The Dell Inspiron 5000e was my second laptop computer purchase. My first purchase was a Compaq Presario configured similarly (minus $200). The compaq looks fairly good, and I could use the CD player without turning on the computer. The excitement ended when I pressed the power button. The computer had a mind of it's own; it would not turn on once in ten or twenty times when I hit the power button. When it was on, using the CDrom would sometimes shut the laptop down. I called the tech and she said I could return the computer to them to fix, and maybe give me a refurbished one (oh boy!). I immediately asked if I could get my money back, and to my surprise, without saying anything else, she said "ok". Either refunds happen often at Comcrap, or customer service was really nice! After that experience, having heard that dell has good support, I dished out the cash to purchase my Dell Inspiron 5000e. The Dell Inspiron 5000e rocks that much more than the Compaq Presario I had: nice professional look and feel, quality build, and best of all, it turns on when I hit the power button.
I won't review much in the way the laptop looks because one can make that decision by looking at the picture. What I will go more indepth is the "feel" of the laptop. The keyboard is top notch quality; it is quiet to touch, feels tightly integrated, and takes very little effort to get a response. I have tried many newer Dell laptop models (inspiron 8200, 8100, latitude Cpxi, etc.) which have a plastic feel, loud tap, and takes much effort to hit the keys. The laptop screen closes and locks via 2 metal hooks which securely lock the screen onto the chaisis. Some laptops (newer and older) no utilize a central lock which is made from plastic. My only complaint is the 15" LCD version's lcd piece actually overhangs the main chaisis by a few millimeters when closed. I have seen the internal LCD, and Dell could have easily evened this out.
The Dell chosen components worked like an orchestra. For nearly the three years I have had the laptop, every upgrade, both hardware and software were flawless. I never had any IRQ, Memory, or Bus problems of any kind. Even the dreaded upgrade from win98 to win2k was exemplary.
The 15" UXGA screen in my opinion is beautiful, if you're into things like that. I can see how some people would find the fonts too small, I mean, most people use 1600x1024 resolution on 19" monitors! Cramming all that gram into a 15" monitor really does one on your eyes. However, since the sharpness on the monitor is near paper quality, it really isn't that bad. I watched the monsters DVD on this screen, and it put the movie theaters to shame. The only negative I could find is that the screen does not have a contrast adjustment.
The performance is above par compared with similarly configured laptops (and especially my returned compaq). I found the battery life to be near 2.5 hours. The DVD drive will drain the power in 2 hours or less. The floppy drive (yes it still has one), is silent.
I have had 2 services done to this laptop: stress crack on back of LCD cover and a loud hard drive. The stres crack slowly crept up after about a year of operation. I didn't get this fixed until 1 1/2 years later because it was only cosmetic; although, some join loosening did begin to appear. The loud hard drive was more IBM's fault than Dell's; nevertheless, I decided I've had enough "whinning" from the drive. Dell was happy to send a new harddrive with double the capacity of my old one: I'd say that way a fair swap! And it was much quieter. It's worth mentioning that I have had no bad pixels for nearly 3 years!
Dell phone technical support people could be improved. For the stress crack, three days worth of technicans came out. The first two times were plagued with wrong parts ordered, and the third time a repeat tech came out and seemed very unpleasant. Probably because he was stuck in some of the blame for wasting time coming to fix my computer 3 times. I purchased 3 year performance next-day business warranty.
One minor issue that I feel I must mention is the faint buzzing noise that occurs when moving the cursor. I've seen other computers with this problem, especially when using Internet explorer. The problem is caused by the cdrom drive and removing the cdrom stops the buzzing. Of course, I've only noticed the buzz after dell replaced the original noisy 5gb harddrive with a silent 10gb model.
I had a pleasant experience with my Dell Inspiron 5000e purchase and would definitely do it again.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2500
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
hankshay
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Location: San Francisco, CA
Reviews written: 50
Trusted by: 2 members
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