Great... until the next best thing.
Written: Dec 03 '02
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Pros: Thinner and lighter than most, nice display and great keyboard
Cons: Only 1 USB port (and USB 1.1), LCD cover is uneven
The Bottom Line: It has all the features I was looking for at the right price and is backed by a company I can trust.
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| erick's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 4150 Series Notebook Computers |
I bought this notebook in July so please bear with me as it is a little dated...
Technology:
The CPU is a 1.6ghz P4-M. I know that there are non-mobile P4 CPU notebooks out there but my preference is the mobile chip because I can't trust having those hot desktop CPUs in such a small form factor without proper cooling/ventilation. It has all the legacy ports (parallel, serial, vga, PS/2, audio i/o) but only 1 USB port (1.1 for that matter, newer notebooks should have the newer USB 2.0 ports). It does not have FireWire but it does have an S-Video out port. The video card is the ATi Radeon 7500 32MB DDR. I believe the newer ATi chip is the Radeon 9000 with 64MB.
Screen and Keyboard:
The 14" screen was pretty nice. There are some spots that aren't lighted evenly but you can only notice that with black backgrounds (like a full screen DOS prompt window). My biggest complaint is that the LCD cover doesn't close evenly, it's kind of higher in the corners (Dell has not got back to me on this). I got UXGA resolution (1600 x 1200) because I figure I needed more screen real estate. The icons and fonts were very small at first but I've gotten used to it. In fact, I use the same resolution on my 19" monitor when I hook my notebook up to it at home. It's great because you can open 4 800x600 browser windows at the same time. You can always use lower resolutions or use 'Large Fonts' if you have problems with the high resolution. The keyboard is one of the biggest reasons I like Dell. But only the keyboards on the Inspiron 8xxxx/4xxx and Latitude 8xx/6xx series. It's similar to IBM notebooks in that you have full-size Enter/Shift keys and the navigation keys (PgUp/PgDn/Home/End) have their own cluster at the top of the keyboard instead of down the right hand side. This allows for a wider keyboard that is closer to a desktop keyboard feel and layout.
Drives:
This is a 2-spindle system, the hard drive and optical or floppy drive. You can attach the floppy drive externally via a parallel cable to have 3 drives at the same time. The hard drive is a 30GB drive running at a slower than desktop 4800rpm (one of the main bottlenecks for notebook vs. desktop speed). My optical drive is a combo DVD/CD-RW drive with 4/4/24 speed. The modular drive bay can be used for an optical drive, a floppy drive, Zip drive, 2nd batter or 2nd hard drive.
Performance and Battery Life:
This is a pretty fast system. Speed Step slows the CPU down when used in battery mode to save battery life and keep the CPU cool but it's not really noticeable to me. Instead of going for a faster CPU, I went for more memory, 512MB. It would have probably cost less to buy memory from Crucial.com but at the time I had a double memory free special. Using an old battery test I have, the system ran for just over 3 hours... a lot better than older notebooks that I used to test.
Conclusion:
Many people ask what is the best notebook to buy. In my opinion, given the specs, I believe I made great choice. If you want a desktop replacement, take a look at the Inspiron 8200. But for a thin and light notebook, the 4150 had what I needed. I wish it were thinner and lighter... but then I'll always think that. One of the most important things you should consider when buying a notebook... is the company behind it. I trust Dell, I bought the 3-year onsite extended warranty with accidental damage protection. Can lesser known companies provide that kind of warranty? Sure I've read complaints about them, but I've read complaints about all of the notebook companies... and just remember... most people don't write ANYTHING when they have a good experience because that's what they expect.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2300
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
erick
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Member: Erick Reyes
Location: Orange County, CA
Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 1 member
About Me:
Software programmer and recreational basketball player.
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