Decent Entry Level Laptop
Written: Apr 16 '04
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Pros: Fast Processor, Good Keyboard Layout, Excellent Screen. Excellent Battery.
Cons: Major Heat Issues, Bad Graphics for anything more than word processing.
The Bottom Line: A great laptop for entry level users, but it has some major flaws.
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| madprogrammer's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 1100 (1100SAP) PC Notebook |
I bought this laptop to upgrade from a aging Compaq 730US. What attracted me was the price, how could you resist a 800$ laptop with a Pentium4 2 Ghz CPU and an DVD drive. However I was unaware at the time of purchase that this notebook would not be good for taking to school (Im a Computer Science student so a laptop is important). But even worse is the graphics, since my CS degree requires a few Game Development classes, I learned what this laptop can and cannot do, and it cannot do games. The project for my last class would run unbearably slow and would cause the laptop to overheat in a few minutes. Which brings up my second point, unless you are doing basic tasks, this laptop will most likely burn up your lap. I downloaded a utility that reported the CPU temp and it registered a 45C doing nothing. Only recommend for basic tasks.
That is the bad. Now for the good.
This laptop came with a Pentium 4 CPU and a DVD player for about 800$. This was an exceptional value at the time of purchase (April '03). It was able to preform basic operations with ease and I have never had any issues with this laptop while doing office tasks.
The laptop was very well constructed, the keyboard fells nice even after a year of hard use. The screen has never had any bad pixels and is very sharp and bright. The touchpad is basic and lacking many features like a scroll wheel (to be expected on a sub-1000$ laptop) The case is very sturdy and has stood up to alot of hiking around school.
The battery ran for 3.5 hours out of the box, which I must say is impressive given that the computer is running a desktop CPU with no speed throttling what-so-ever.
Conclusion:
This is an excellent laptop for students who need an all-in-one PC for school. I would not recommend it for more computationally intensive tasks such as games.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 850
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
madprogrammer
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Reviews written: 2
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