Inspiron 500m So Much for so little
Written: Jul 15 '03 (Updated Jul 27 '03)
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Pros: battery life, weight, lots of options, fast
Cons: (all are minor) keyboards squishy, no internal floppy, Dell Support
The Bottom Line: All and all I am very impressed with this laptop. Has a long battery Life. The speed is quick and seamless. Light and portable.
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| digipimp's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 500M (500msap) PC Notebook |
A month ago an opportunity to get my hands on a Dell through my company presented itself. I started looking into the different models of dells on there website. My criteria were simple. Long battery life, Light Weight, speedy, must play dvds and hardrive space. I looked at each system that appealed to me and narrowed it down to the Inspiron 500m. Then I compared the 500m to other similar models from Sony, HP and IBM and came to the conclusion that the only significant difference between them was $1000. So I bought the Dell insprion 500m last week, and it showed up yesterday.
The Specs
Dell Inspiron 500m
1.3 gig Intel Pentium M processor
Windows XP Home
40 Gig drive
8x dvd
256 meg ram
14 inch xga
2 USB 2.0
64 meg shared intel video
I finally received the laptop and booted it up. The Welcome to Windows XP home edition windows came up and booted me into the desktop. The first thing I noticed was the screen was fuzzy. Not terribly fuzzy, but there was a faint kind of fuzzy quality to the images. This was rectified after I upgraded to XP professional. I immediately started installing all my apps and the install was quiet fast. Pretty comparable to my 2 gig desktop at home. I think this has to do with the 1meg cache on the processor. Most processors have a 512kb cache on the processor.
After the battery was fully charged I wanted to see what she was made of. So I unplugged the laptop and started going to work. First thing I did was run a full system Virus scan using Nortons and if any of you know much this is very intensive. It took under 30 minutes and there was still 87% of the battery charge left. I then watched a dvd that was 90 minutes long and did some run of the mill web design and got a good 2.5 to 3 hours out of the battery. The great thing with the Inspiron is you can change the battery usage between battery maximum performance to minimal performance and when I had it at minimal performance the battery life stated 4 hours. Mind you at minimal performance it drops the CPU down to 200 megahertz and only increases the speed when it’s needed.
Another big plus is the size and weight. The system weighs in at a little more then 5 pounds. It has a nice sleek design, and is thin and slim.
The system has a ton of upgrades. Memory can be upgraded to 1gig. The hardrive can be upgraded to 80 gigs. CDRom can be upgraded anything from a cdr/dvd combo to a dvd recorder. Also upgrade to wireless network adaptors.
Must note, this is by no means a gaming monster. With 64 megs of video, one must remember its shared with the system memory. I have not had a chance to test the limits on it yet.
The Bad
The only thing I can gripe about with this laptop is the support from dell. Navigating their website for solutions or even just useful info is horrible. An example, I wanted to investigate the performance of the battery that can be swapped with the cdrom for extended battery life. It’s listed in the manual but trying to find info or even buy it online I would have had more progress running through a brick wall. I recently just sent them an email for support on how to use the infra red feature and will update this on my satisfaction good or bad on that. This is nothing devastating, but while typing the keyboard felt squishy. It’s the only way I can explain it. I read that some place else on another review and first thought was WTF. When I got the laptop and started typing it finally dawned on me what he was saying. It’s something you have to take my word on. I must add though that the keyboard is still a solid keyboard.
All and all I am very impressed with this laptop. Has a long battery Life. The speed is quick and seamless. Compared to other laptops with the mobile Pentium you cannot beat this price. I definitely recommend this laptop
*Update*
so it’s been a week since I received the laptop and wanted to add some stuff. The sound on laptop is fairly decent for laptop speakers, I was impressed. In regards to game play, its no radeon or gforce but it is not bad for shared memory. I have loaded Command and Conquer generals and the game plays well. Dvd playback is good. I have not seen the Sxga screen but I have to assume that that’s its screen must be sharper then the XGA. If I was to change anything it would probably the screen type. I would recommend no less then 256 megs ram on this system. Well that’s it for now. Love the laptop and recommend it.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1086
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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digipimp
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