Inpiron 1764 - Review (bought at BestBuy)

After spending months, I finally talked the woman into buying a laptop. I am a decent power user, use Macs, Windows and Linux. First computer (Atari 800) had a cassette tape as storage. I've used DOS, Windows 3.1, Win 95, Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7. I build my own desktops, and have since they ran at 266MHz. My first Mac was a 7100/66. Yes, that's 66MHz, lol.

As you can well imagine, it was my azz on the line for anything that did not pan out. I really had to make sure we got her what SHE wanted and not what I wanted.

First, I have to review the online shopping experience. Pretty awful. The HP website is a pure train wreck. I hated the website enough that I could not bring myself to even consider an HP. One major manufacturer down.

Next up Sony. I had a new F for two weeks before I decided I could not live with the vertical viewing angles on the US 1080p screen. It had the i7, which was a really nice chip, but it's hot and it will blow some fan. If you need the power, it's the word, but for most users, i3 and i5 are the chips to get. There is an F with a 1600x900 screen, but I decided that she would not be happy with the i7. It's too hot, too much fan, not going to be a computer to sit on the couch with and watch Will and Grace while Facebooking, short battery life. Anyhow, Sony has some really nice designs, but, what is with the 1366x768 screen resolutions? What load. Sony is out. I have to admit, if the F series with the 1600x900 screen had an i5 option, I probably would have gone that route. She does not like the 1920x1080 screens since the text is too small. I love high res screens, but this is not my laptop.

Went to the Dell website. Dell's website is not bad. They have some new models, Adamo, Alienware, Studio, Studio XPS, etc, but the Dell website works pretty well, and I've owned a few Dells, so I knew what to expect. I just could not find a model I liked. She's not wild about glossy screens, but the Latitudes are Core 2 Duo based. Otherwise, ran into the same issues with the screen resolutions, 1366x768 or 1920x1080. You have got to be kidding me. We are back to 768 vertical pixels? Like it's 1998 or something. Go to Best Buy, Microcenter or Fry's and 90% of the laptops are 1366x768. UNACCEPTABLE. I'm glad the industry found a place to shave $50, but, what a TOTAL bummer to see so many laptops with such a weak screen resolution. Seems like only yesterday you could get 1440x900 or 1680x1050 screens.

Next, I have to review the retail shopping experience. Pretty awful. The marketing materials GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to hide actual specs from you and instead hit you over the head with worthless marketing speak. What res is the screen? HD is not a res, especially when you mean 1366x768. Is it an LED backlight? What speed is the CPU? Oh, they list the higher turbo boost speed? Surprising. It's borderline straight lying to your face. You can only imagine some of the conversations you hear between sales associates and potential customers. The environment is terrible for looking at laptops. Everything is shiny with a month's worth of fingerprints and clearly it's all about price point. The glossy screens and the overhead store lighting is just a real poo idea. I don't even like glossy screens, but they are the reality now, and I had to be convincing - the glare and gloss won't be THIS bad at home.

Microcenter can be a little dumpy, and Fry's had the same disappointing selection as Microcenter and Best Buy. No one here is really stepping up and becoming the go to place. The retail experience is pretty sad. Poor product selection, terrible information, dismal presentation.

Anyhow, options now look pretty weak. I went into this project a little amped. Spending someone else money? How fun is that. New i3/i5 and i7 chips must mean tons of exciting new product. Nope. What a mess.

One laptop was standing out from the noise though. Inspiron 1764 at Best Buy for $779. Had an i5 and the screen is 1600x900. Did not look like it was designed to look like crap on purpose. This is probably what you thought I was going to write about. lol

I will, in my next post in this thread.

 

The hard part was getting her to commit to the purchase, and now that it was money time, she was willing to let me make a couple of decisions.

I've never bought a laptop that was not reformatted and Windows was clean installed within the hour. Call me old school, but, nothing with this laptop has changed my mind about this.

We open the laptop and boot it up. Nervousness all around. First boot takes forever, register this, trial software this, on and on. Finally get into windows and no one is happy. She's frowning. I'm frowning, but I can't let on that I'm frowning. But no one is happy. "I'll take it back!" she says as the boat is starting to take on water. "Let's not freak just yet, ok?" I say as I try to calm.

The images looks scaled. The text looks like crap. The vertical viewing angles are pretty poor. I half lie with my speculation. It's a 17" with a kind of low res 1600x900 screen. Maybe it's just going to look a little pixelated.

Check the screen res, 1600x900. Check the scaling. 100%. I don't get it. It really looks like crap. Images look like crap, text looks like crap. Greyed out text in the menubar of IE8 is really just not readable. Icons in the taskbar look like poo. I am a little worried. The contrast is whack, I mess with that to salvage the menu bars, but, something is wrong here.

Undaunted, in true geek fashion, I lay a t-shirt out on the table and have the laptop upside down and the jewelers screwdrivers out. I talked her into spending $100 on a 500GB 7200rpm hard drive and $20 on a USB external case. This is a no brainer to me. You put the 7200rpm hard drive in the laptop and get a small or perceived speed boost, you put the 5400rpm hard drive in the external case, and you have a backup solution.

+++ MAJOR POINTS FOR DELL +++ This $780 laptop comes with a Reinstallation DVD with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on it. I can't tell you how happy I was to see that instead of recovery partitions and spanned DVD creation tools or whatever nonsense. Dell stepped up and provided a DVD. Awesome. My Sony F had recovery partitions. How suck is that? Dell, thank you for that.

The drive is swapped out, the laptop is flipped back over and we are formatting and clean installing.

Completed, I visit Dell.com and start collecting drivers. Ok, Now I have to say, . If the Title of the driver is "Dell QuickSet" then I really need to know why the description is also "Consumer QuickSet release for Windows x86/x64 on Inspiron/Studio/StudioXPS." Can Dell not find an intern somewhere to actually take 10 minutes to type in a description of "Dell Quickset" actually does? I think it's the specialty buttons? But really now. A useful paragraph would have been nice here.

Anyhow, I get the drivers, install them all, and the device manager is clear.

What do we have now?

There were some fresh video drivers dated late January, so, I was happy to see those, and for whatever reason, the screen was now looking good. Text was sharp. Icons were sharp. Contrast was under control. We were back in business. The vertical viewing angle is still pretty weak, but I hear that's the price we pay for glossy screens. Funny, she really wanted matte screen too. It's not a about the consumer anymore, it's about marketing and fluff and shine. For a lot of people laptops are still tools to get work done and advance careers; you know, real stuff like that. Current laptops seemed geared to Cinematic experience and cheap low res screens. Toshiba had some really nasty looking laptops with chrome speaker enlosures sporting massive quarter inch speakers and HP was not far behind with their shiny offerings with cutting edge graphics on the palmrest. Stupid.

Personally, I'm going to use my 2 year MBP until it dies and since it has an 8600GT video card, it could die any day now. But at least the matte LED screen kicks total butt and the laptop is looking good with a 7 year old design and it's still solid feeling since it's made of aluminum, but I digress.

The laptop industry right now feels a lot like the American auto industry about 5 years ago, and that is not good. Build crap and people will have to buy more crap from you sooner than later.

Anyhow, phew, we are happier now that the text and images are sharp. If poor vertical viewing angles is the only complaint, then, we can live with that.

About the laptop, aka the executive summary:

Design/Style: This really is not a bad looking computer. It's reasonably thin, not "wierd" looking. A little glossy all over the place, but that's rage these days. This fad shall pass. The Dell 15z was awesome looking, but was $1000 and came with a 1366x768 screen. Most everything else in the retail space really looked like cheap crap. I'd give the Dell 1764 a 7/10 normally, but I have to give it a 8/10 when you factor in the competition. Honestly, Sony has some of the best designed top to bottom, but, their offerings have some holes right now with CPU selection and screen res.

Construction/Build: No one will mistake this for a business class laptop. It's plastic and it's a little flimsy. There is an upside though. It's really rather lightweight for a 17". It's big, but not beasty. The keyboard is a plus. Nice looking keys with a crisp light action. A full sized number pad. She really wanted a 15" laptop but the screen res on the 15s was argh, and the idea of a roomy keyboard with full numpad did have some appeal. Trackpad works well, but the trackpad buttons deserve special praise. They are easy to click. There were a lot of really poor trackpad buttons out there. Way too hard to click. Too space age future designed for their own good, etc. Dell did a nice job of putting nicely size, easy to click trackpad buttons on this laptop.

Performace: You'd have a hard time convincing me that a clean Windows install is no longer needed in this day and age. I still view this as an essential step to get a good, clean, fast running computer and this Dell was no exception. The i5 is impressive. This laptop feels much faster than a 2.26GHz laptop. This is a pretty impressive CPU at this price point. Truth is, the i7 is not for everyone. It's too hot, runs at a lower clock speed, and while powerful if you can utilize all 4 cores, most users don't need it. The i3 and i5 is the correct CPU for most everyone not rendering and compressing and compiling all day. For the money, I think the performance is bangin'. She will NEVER game on this, so, anyone who is mad since it "CAN'T PLAY CRYSIS!!!!!!" is just missing the point. The Intel graphics are prefectly fine for all video and the laptop has an HDMI out port, so, it's not a gaming laptop. Don't buy it expecting a gaming laptop and you're fine. Another plus here is... it runs pretty cool. I mean, it was seriously cool. One 2-3 inch warm spot underneath, otherwise, cool everywhere. Battery life looks to be in the just under 3 hour mark with acual use, but the battery is small, probably helping to contribute its fairly low weight. I know current 5400rpm hard drive are not that slow, but, whatever, the hitchi 7200rpm is in there, and the Samsung 5400rpm is now pulling duty as the backup solution. No real need to swap out the hard drive though, that's just me.

Value: I think this laptop is a pretty good value, but I am worried about people who just buy the laptop, take it home and start using it. Bloatware is still for real. There was some issue with the display out of the box that made the whole laptop seem jacked up. I could see unhappy people. Not sure why manufacturers put themselves in this position. They should take their business more seriously and provide a better out of box experience for people who are not going to clean install windows as a first step. I could see this going either way, but after the clean windows install I'd say this is a nice laptop for the money.

So far, I'd give it a would buy again, and unfortunately, in this market, that's pretty high praise. Overall though, I'm a little depressed at how much borderline junk and gimmickry was out there from all manufacturers and this everything shiny fad must pass.

 

haha, nice read. i totally agree a clean install is the way to go and the i5 is the perfect cpu for most users. most apps arnt even going to to use 4 cores so whats the point, and the heating issue is a real problem.

 

Very nice review. I picked this up also for my wife. Originally wanted the Studio 17 but only the i7 has dedicated graphics( the UK studio 17 has the i5 with the new ATI card). Like mentioned the i7 was too much for her and needed a replacement for my Inspiron 9300 which lasted me a solid 5+ years without a problem.
Still haven't done a clean install yet but as is, it's lightyears faster than the Pentium M I've been using. I'm happy with it and would recommend this for people as a basic everyday computer.
I'm looking for a laptop for myself and was leaning towards the Vaio F like you had, been following that thread for over a month and decided to wait til all the issues have been sorted out.
Again thanks for the review