Not for the Frequent Traveler
Written: Jul 28 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Big Screen , High Powered CPU
Cons: Big and Heavy
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| jcare's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 7500 (G650YT) PC Notebook |
I travel about 100,000 miles a year – so does my laptop. We were recently upgraded from a great Toshiba machine up to the Dell Inspiron 7500. This was partly driven by the need for more power, partly by the sadistic impulse of our IT department who feel that we get enough pleasure jetting around the world and should be made to pay for it. Make no mistake that this laptop, although it boasts many great features, is heavy and cumbersome.
NOTE: This review focuses mainly on the utility and practical functionality of the machine, and not on technical specs.
Mine is not a standard out-of-the box configuration. I am running Windows NT 4.0 on this flying brick which is loaded up with 512MB RAM and close to 30GB of storage. It also features a swappable floppy drive and a 6x maximum DVD-ROM.
Weight and Dimensions
The weight is a nominal 9.5 pounds, but feels much bulkier, probably due to the heavyweight applications our corporate technical group have loaded on it. Base dimensions are 2 ½ inches high, 13 inches wide and 10 ½ inches deep. These vary slightly from the spec – but that’s what my machine is. The truly impressive feature, which jumps right out at you, is the 15 inch SXGA+ screen which accounts for the width of this beast. Unless you are in first or business class on a plane it is going to be very difficult to use this laptop. Fully reclining my seat and shoving the back of the machine into the seat in front it was still nestled into my gut. Several of my colleagues would say I could stand to lose a few pounds, but even a 105 pound super-model waif would have a tough time sitting in economy on a Boeing 757 and being productive.
The Battery
Dell obviously put some thought into the power subsystem. The input connection from the wall socket to the Dell power adapter is three pronged, and takes a good twenty pounds of force to unhook it. The AC connector into the side of the machine has a mini-thumbgrip on it – no more ripping out connections by jerking on the cord and screwing up the wiring. At 15 feet from wall to PC there more than enough cord to allow you to set up almost anywhere in a hotel room, even if the maid has covered almost every single power outlet with furniture.
The battery is a 12 cell “Intelligent” Lithium battery. Frankly is has about as much intelligence as this keyboard I’m using, but that is marketing for you. It does however, have a battery life in excess of 3 hours, which is more than I’ve ever managed to get out of any other laptop. I managed 3 hours and 17 minutes of email/excel and word before it committed suicide and shut itself down.
Connectors, Ports and Slots
The machine offers support for 2 Type I or II cards or a single Type III card. They are warm-swap capable and still work even if you accidentally pull one out whilst really trying to extract the other one. In addition there are the standard 9-pin serial, 25-pin parallel, audio jacks, 15-pin monitor, S-Video for TV-out and USB ports.
A personal pet peeve is that the 56k modem is external hooked to a card instead of being internal. This is apparently because in the past we have had a lot of problems with rear-mounted internals, but it does mean that you have a dongle and phone card running from the side of the machine.
In additional to standard keypad and mouse support, there is a built-in PS/2 compatible Touchpad pointer. This takes a little bit of getting used to, and is a true pain in the @ss if, like me, you are a lazy typist and slide your wrists sideways on the chassis as you type. For the first few days I was continually hitting the Touchpad and having the machine do things it wasn’t supposed to.
General Impressions
My one other complaint is that the snaps between the screen and the front of the keyboard to hold the screen in place when you close the laptop seem very fragile. I’m prepared to bet that we’ll be seeing numerous breakages of these little plastic tabs in the next few months.
Overall, at 700MHz, this Pentium III machine really does have some power and I’ve noticed a significant performance boost just using Microsoft Office. Data-intensive operations within SQL*Server are also running faster than before. On the more practical side, if you do travel a lot, you will find this machine to be a considerable burden both in terms of weight and physical dimensions. Climbing this far up the power curve has its downfall, and you price you pay is either wrecking you shoulder with a Targa carrying case or being forced into using a wheelie when you travel.
I'm awarding it three stars simply because its not well-suited to my job function. However, if I was an office guy who travelled occasionally or I needed leading-edge power it would get four stars.
Maybe our technical services group just figures that with all the calories I’ll burn lugging this thing around I’ll become a leaner and fitter person and will have enough space on a plane to use it. Bless you Alex.
PS: If anyone knows of a certified DVD video player for Windows NT 4 let me know.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jcare
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Location: Southeast Pennsylvania
Reviews written: 270
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About Me:
Bullets can hurt people. Both in guns and PowerPoint.
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