Flamingo Pink

Finally got my laptop today. I'm extremely exhausted from getting up early today to do a photo shoot, so I haven't played around with it much, but here are some pictures and a brief review. I will add more information as I go about it.

First of all, this is my very first laptop. I've owned about 5 desktops before, with my current desktop still in pretty good condition. Only thing is, it crashes randomly, has a heating problem (I have to keep a fan on next to it at all times) and I hate feeling like I have to stay in the room it is in all the time to use it.


Anyways, my first reaction was that it is a very beautiful notebook, and g'damn, that is a big freakin battery! I loved the shade of pink that is on the cover. Not too bright or too pastel, but just a nice vibrant, but soft shade of pink. The cover is sleek with a slight rubbery feel to it. When I picked it up, it did seem a little hefty, but having no previous notebooks to compare it to, I didn't really mind the weight.





Inspiron 1520 next to my 19 inch monitor and Shuttle desktop.

As far as the screen goes, it's not one of the best I've seen and I can sorta see this "graininess" people are talking about, but it doesn't bother me that much. It could be cleaner looking though. Haven't tried the headphone jack yet, mainly because I don't have any headphones. I do have a set of speakers that I will later unhook from my desktop and see how bad the noise is on the laptop. I hear a slight noise from the left side of the notebook that sounds kinda like a clicking sound... but unless you're in a completely silent room, you won't notice it. The keyboard has a very nice feel to it... the buttons are large and slightly rounded, but seems pleasant to use.

Hm... I suppose I should remove bloatware and download drivers. Anyone wanna tell me what I should uninstall or install? I'm just scared I'll find something wrong with it. I really like it so far though! Any questions, just ask.

 

Why pink, if I may ask?

 

You should change your sig, lol!

 

Because I like pink. And I can get away with it because I'm a chick?

 

Congrats on getting it. How do the cats like it though? They seem unimpressed.

 

That is hot

Rep +

 

It looks really nice. I wavered between the pink, the white, and the green. Why do they have to look so pretty on the outside and have such yucky screens????

 

Yea really, those cats are cute! I wanna get myself one of those instead of the laptop.

As for bloatware - you might consider simply doing a clean install of Windows (if you have the install DVD). That would solve all your bloatware problems.

 

Are you? Well, good color choice.

 

In Europe, they are marketing the pink Inspiron as "Bubblegum Pink" rather than the North American "Flamingo Pink"

Which is is closer to? Bubblegum or Flamingos?

 

That depends on how well-chewed the bubblegum is.

BTW, what makes you think a guy can't get away with having a flamingo pink laptop?

 

How about bubblegum made from the ground up bodies of flamingos?

 

For some weird reason, i like the pink and the green color.
Unfortunately the colors weren't offered for my choice of notebook and we are living in a world where a guy is not "allowed" to have a pink notebook.

I envy you a little bit.

 

Congrats on finally getting you're lappy! Oh, and I can totally relate how exhausting those photoshoots can be!! Ugggghhh... such are the pitfalls of being beautiful- lol. (btw... many would like to know if your shoot was of the kind related to your ID??)

Now the $64K question- DID u get yer remote???

 

Pink is very modern man

I myself own a pink work shirt

Regards

 

Real Men wear Pink.

 

when did you order your 1520, pwnstar?

 

Glad you got your notebook, if I remember right you were on the fence about waiting any longer for it. Was it worth it?

 

Congrats! I too ordered my 1720 in Flamingo Pink and honestly, if it was not for the pretty pink color, I may have cancelled my order last week when they decided to push my order back until this week. I LOVE pink, and yes I am a girly-girl...pink rocks in my HO and will be different from the norm that is for sure! Come on July 27th...I want my Lappy!

 

First of all, I'm not a porn star. Just an amateur model and I do some random promo stuff. But I won a contest to go on the semi final casting call for America's Next Top Model reality show! So... wish me luck.

The story about my laptop and to answer everyone's questions:

Order date: 6/28
Est. ship: 7/16
Est. delivery: 7/17

I paid about $1470 (shipped) with the stats listed in my sig, as well as the 3 year full warranty plan. This included the $200 student discount, $279 (somewhere close to that) Inspiron discount, 7% discount for Dellcare Plus, and 12% off total for the EPP savings for orders over $1600. Overall, I felt like I purchased it at a good price, although people have gotten it for cheaper. My main regret was not getting the remote, Bluetooth, and the headphones. All things I can live without though, I don't even have a BT device.

During this wait, I called Dell pretty much every other day to harass them about the remote. After being transferred a million times and being hung up on, I eventually gave up and decided to wait till I got my notebook. Their response was usually cancel your order and redo it if you want the remote. Of course, after all the time I had waited, there's no way I'd cancel for a remote. I considered it but... nah.

I still don't have it, and if I decide to keep this laptop, which I will unless I find something that horribly disturbs me, I am gonna start harassing Dell again to give me that remote.

The pink is not like... Hello Kitty or baby girl pink.There might be a slight shade of coral/orange in it, which gives it the flamingo color I guess. No regrets on color choice, although I would have liked the red too. A metallic fuschia color would have been nice too.

Anyone know how to change the brightness from the keyboard? I see the brightness icon on the up and down arrow keys, but I don't know what else I'm supposed to hold to make it work?

Oh.. and yea I love this notebook so far. I think it is worth the price. Definitely could be better, but I am not disappointed. For those of you thinking about canceling your order, just wait! You may actually like it as much as you originally thought you would before all the forum nerds freaked you out.

 

THAT IS SO COOL!!! Does this mean you will be on TV? Or do you have to get to the finals?

 

Amazing. The pink is nice - very cute. Hope you don't find anything wrong with it and are happy with keeping it as opposed to canceling your order. I know you were pretty iffy on it a week ago or so.

Uh oh, maybe you shouldn't have mentioned the photo shoot. I can already hear several people go into stalker mode. Good luck at your semi final competition.

 

Trust me, I'm not a stalker. I just think thats really cool.

 

And for the brightness question, press the Fn key + the up / down arrow keys to adjust the brightness. The Fn key is located to the right of the left ctrl key.

 

The semi final is before the final audition where you meet Tyra Banks. I barely meet the height requirement (barely 5'7) and they require runway models to be 5'7 or taller... so I dunno how thats gonna work.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but can anyone tell me how to go about a clean Vista install? Do I just install the vista disc and thats it? Or do I need to reinstall the drivers disc too? Using the OS disc removes everything else?? I don't wanna mess it up.

 

I dunno, looks pretty similar to me...

Fn Up / Down to change brightness

 

You got any pics of yourself??

 

So, what page are the pics on?

 

Just my kitties

 

Wow, those eyes.

 

I think you can be a dell model to market flamingo pink inspiron series of notebooks.

Pink is not pretty for guys lol. You should have taken some pics w/o flash with the notebook powered on.

 

ha! cute pic, looks like the one cats hugging the other one. So, just to let you know, me and my gf watch next top model alot (I get to scope some ladies out and she likes the drama) anyways the last girl made it to the final 3 on the most recent finally IIRC. And I believe she was only 5' 6". Tyra said something like your poses really need to stand out and make people look at you. The short girl wouldnt extend her arms or something in one of the shoots, so the other 'fill ins' stole her spot light. So damn it, push everyone and everything out of the spot light and make sure you have all the attention of the camera! GL

 

did that cat come with an alienware purchase?

haha im kidding. Although those eyes look menacing ';,;'

 

beautiful notebook, enjoy!

 

evil... those eyes... evil.....

 

Pwnstar ----> Thank you for your review! Im waiting form my Espresso Brown Inspiron!

I guess my color its the absolute opposite to a pink one on the girl-boy scale =)

 

Did you get to try the head phone jack yet? Did you get vista or xp? How's your overall impressions of the build quality? I'm glad the graininess and all that isn't as bad as they made it out to be tho. I was saying before I suspected it was just one of those things with all the anal computer nerds on here that normal people wouldn't notice. Like the droopy stickers and crap that they whine about. I ended up putting a thinkpad on order but still haven't canceled the dell yet.

 

nice colour. i guess dell needs to work on the colours on their website. the pink looks quite nice. its more like a personal issue than a girl -boy thing. neways i've ordered a green.

 

Those eyes are neat. I bet it's a blast waking up in the middle of the night and the first thing you see is a pair of glowing green eyes staring back at you.

As for reinstalling Vista - unless things have changed with Dell, they are one of the few companies that actually give you a full OEM hard copy of Windows (as opposed to just a recovery disk or recovery partition with their factory-installed settings).

Boot up your system with the Vista DVD in the drive, or even just pop it in while you're in Windows and run the install file and it'll prompt you through the process. You won't need to reformat or anything if you choose to do a clean install (which you should). If all works out well, you'll end up with nothing but Vista on your laptop (everything else will be gone - so backup just in case).

As far as drivers go - yes you'll need to reinstall drivers if Vista doesn't pick them up automatically. Dell probably included a driver's CD with your laptop, but they're probably out of date. Check Dell's website and laptopvideo2go.com. Someone else can probably fill you in better on this.

 

Why is Hitler putting Hulk Hogan into a sleeper hold?

 

Great pictures! I think the pink looks good. My gf wants a pink one as well.
The glass desk looks cool where did you find it? Thanks.

 

I agree, I have a pink dress shirt with matching tie.

 

The build quality actually seems quite sturdy. I don't intend to frisbee it across the room to see how well it holds up, but it looks like it could take a decent beating. The cover seems to pick up oiliness very well, but its not as bad as the glossy covers.

Speakers are alright, no complaints. I hooked up my speakers to it and it sounds fine. I don't know if this is different while using headphones though, but normally I don't use headphones.

My spotted cats eyes are actually yellow, but I think there was a glare when I took the picture, which gave it that glowy green effect.

So far, I must say I am enjoying this laptop very much. I still didn't get my remote though. I think it's because I ordered through EPP/Student? They're still playing dumb when I ask them about it.

Anyone know how I would go about connecting my laptop to the TV without the TV tuner? Do I just buy some kind of cord? I'm kind of a newb at this sort of stuff.

 

I ordered through EPP as well, but I requested the remote through chat.

 

Your laptop should have a S-Video Out cord on the back, you can use that to hook it up to a TV with S-Video.

 

I've never done this personally. Below some links that might help.

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10154_102-0.html?forumID=99&threadID=234673&messageID=2409463
http://forum.circuitcity.com/thread.jspa?messageID=45580
http://www.asklaptopfreak.com/laptop-notebook-help/2006/07/29/connect-laptop-to-tv-via-s-video-port/


Update: I was writing this when Methodis posted his reply. Which sounds less complicated then the links i posted.

 

congrats. very nice photos

 

Well, I don't have my PINK 1420 yet, but, I love your cat, and wish you would share the Crunch bar.....

 

Nice cat. Nice Crunch bar. Nice Flamingo Pink.

 

Did you get the anti-glare screen or the glossy one if I may ask?