Inspiron e1520 User Review

I originally created this review about five and a half months ago - and quite a bit has changed since then! A few times since then I updated it, and my opinion on my laptop kept changing, and in the end the revision became rather sloppy. So I started over. Here's the new review. The original is a bit further down on the page (post #10).

Configuration

As I was looking for a notebook that will deliver good performance for some time in the future, I went with the following configuration:

Intel Core2Duo T7500 Processor at 2.20 GHz
2 GB DDR2 RAM at 667 MHz
7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive
nVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card with 256 MB dedicated DDR2 memory
Anti-glare, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
High Definition Audio 2.0
CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Windows Vista Home Premium
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
9-cell battery
Jet Black Colour

Packaging

The packaging the e1520 came in was well-prepared. Dell included a cardboard layer inside the actual box above the laptop layer, providing additonal protection for the AC adaptor, power cord, CDs, etc. The laptop itself was surrounded in styrofoam and inside a cover of some type of fiber cloth. For the laptop to be damaged in transit, something extremely heavy would have had to fall on top of it.

The shipping company, DHL, delivered the laptop in three days time with the 3-5 day shipping plan. The ship date itself was three days ahead of Dell's estimate, so I got the laptop when Dell estimated it would first go to the shipping company. DHL isn't Dell's only shipping company - FedEx for example also does Dell deliveries.

Build

Overall I've been pleased with the build over five and a half months. The left palmrest occasionally creaks a little when weight is put on it, but not very often, and no problems have resulted. The DVD drive isn't entirely flush with the right side of the notebook, which occasionally creates very loud spinning unless it is held up flush with the side, but this does not occur often, and has not affected performance.

I've done my best to keep the notebook from being subjected to stressful situations (physically at least), but it survived a collission with my doorframe (while closed) without a scratch. Hurried handling in airport security hasn't hurt it a bit, either, and carrying it around while it's open and running has yielded no negative effects.

Heat

The notebook stays fairly cool to the touch, heating up a bit under heavy load but staying quite reasonable. At the highest temperatures considerable amounts of hot air are pushed out of the fan, but it's not hot enough to burn you - somewhat close, though. It can be used as a laptop, but after a couple hours on CPU or GPU intensive tasks (let alone both) it does become uncomfortably hot on the bottom. For office tasks, though, it should stay cool enough to use as a true laptop.

The maximum temperatures I've recorded are 82 Celsius on the hottest CPU core (the other was 80 at the same time), and 68 on the GPU, though I'm not sure as to the accuracy of the later reading. The GPU temperature is low enough to allow at least slight overclocking, however.

Keyboard

I really like the keyboard on this laptop - I now prefer it to desktop keyboards. My prior experience with laptop keyboards wasn't extensive - mostly a ThinkPad from before when they had good keyboards - but for the vast majority of people I think this keyboard will prove to be very comfortable to use. Key spacing is excellent, response is instantaneous, the keys don't stick (even when they've been exposed to small amounts of food remains), and, at least so far, performance is still just as good as it was when it arrived. Noise seems to be moderate as far as laptop keyboards go - it's not particularly noisy, but neither is it near-silent. Of course, that could have something to do with my typing style, too !

Layout is very good. The left Ctrl key is in the corner, left of the Fn key, a choice I personally prefer. About the only change I would have made is not requiring the Fn key to be pressed to use the "Pause" key, likely requiring the "Insert" key to use Fn instead, but overall it's a very good design. All the keys are either in their expected places, or, in the case of Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down, and End (on the far right side) in positions that are very easy to adjust to. Arrow keys also are normal sized and work in games requiring good arrow keys, such as racing games.

Touchpad

Although it took a few days to get used to, the touchpad works well. I still prefer a mouse, and use the mouse a very high percentage of the time, but for when it's needed it does its job well. Response is both quick and accurate, and the speed can be adjusted if desired. Once you get the hang of it it is quite good at distinguishing clicks, but it will still occasionally accidently register a click when you brush it while typing, sending the cursor who knows where in your document. This can be solved by disabling the touchpad (or disabling it only when a mouse is attached), but beware that it's very difficult to re-enable it without a mouse (I gave up trying to with the keyboard and went and plugged in my mouse)! It also sometimes registers non-mice Bluetooth devices as mice, thus disabling the touchpad, so be careful hooking up a cell phone or other bluetooth peripheral when the touchpad is set to auto-disable lest you lose your pointer until you disconnect the device!

The right and left click buttons by the touchpad also have worked flawlessly. They do make a bit of a clicking sound, but still more muffled than on an actual mouse.

The size is adequate, but it appears as though it could have been larger. Still, it's good enough, not anything to get a different laptop over.

Screen

There have been many reports of "grainy" screens on recent Dell models, but the screen on my particular laptop is extremely clear, less a few smudges from inadequate "do not touch the screen" training resulting from years of using easy-to-clean CRT's. Not to say this screen isn't easy to clean, just that I haven't tried .

Horizontal view angles are excellent, limited by the text becoming too small rather than any decrease in quality. Brightness does decrease a bit about 30 degrees off in either direction, but it's still more than bright enough to read even at near 90 degrees. Viewing angle from the top is about 60 degrees before significant color distortions appear, while it's about 35 degrees from below. The laptop could certainly be used for movie viewing.

The anti-glare finish is quite effective as well. It doesn't guarantee there won't be any glare, but it does lessen it. Even with the sun coming directly against the laptop, the part of the screen being hit by sunrays is still legible, if not ideally so. In regular useage, the only glare is from extremely bright objects (such as the coils in incadescent lightbulbs), or occasionally background images when on minimum brightness.

Graphics

Graphics performance has been quite satisfactory considering this is the DDR2 version of the 8600M GT card. With the original June 2007 drivers from Dell (101.28) and Windows Vista, the system scored 3261 in 3DMark06. However, it improved significantly to 3566 with Windows XP and the December 2007 (156.83) Dell drivers.



These tests were done using the maximum 1280x800 resolution, meaning that while they are not comparable with the standard 1280x1024 3dmark06 resolution, they are indicative of the performance you'll get on the default monitor.

Windows Vista and the 169.02 beta drivers from laptopvideo2go.com yielded a score of 3546, slightly below the December Dell drivers and Windows XP.

Hard Drive

Overall I'm quite pleased with the hard drive performance. A clean install of Vista plus drivers booted up in 37.1 seconds, from power button to ready-to-roll (except wireless Internet, which takes awhile to authenticate regardless - wired Internet was working in this time, however).

Binary capacity is 149 GB. After clearing all initial partitions, a clean Vista install leaves 140 GB, and a clean XP SP2 install leaves 146 GB.

(to be continued)

 

Cool, thanks for the user review. It's good to get input and potential buyers and future owners get great benefit from this.

 

Sure. I'd like to make one slight change.

Operating System

While I'd still recommend getting Vista on a new computer, I must say it's not perfect. Yesterday I got this error when trying to save a Notepad file.



Of course I thought, What do you mean I don't have permission, this is my computer!! It's part of Vista's User Account Control (UAC) designed to protect the computer. But preventing you from saving files where you want seems a bit extreme - note that I was the administrator - and this wasn't even in the Windows folder. It should have at least given me one of the infamous Cancel or Allow boxes. Since I had to save the file to get my program to display correctly in widescreen, I disabled UAC.

Vista also bluescreened when I was trying out the Dell Integrated Webcam. I couldn't get it to happen again when I restarted, so the webcam probably won't cause that to happen often. But while XPSP1 hasn't given me a bluescreen in 4 years, Vista already gave me one within 4 days.

Other than that I like the OS. I'm still tweaking it to how I like, but that'd be the case with a fresh install of XP as well.

 

UAC doesn't care if you are an administrator, it still prompts you (as it should). That particular error message was due to Vista's locking down the Program Files directory. Not much editing goes on within that folder, so it's protected (and rightfully so) from being edited for security reasons. That behavior is intended.

 

Nice review. You should post this in the review section also.

 

But what if you NEED to edit the files? I'm just wondering because I edit a crap load of stuff when I play Oblivion (I change a lot of stuff in the ini file AND have tons of mods). Is there a way to temporarily override that (like make it so you can only edit when you put in a password)?

 

Hey really informative review! I've quoted this thread in this thread, posted some arrival pics there

 

Apollo13, thank you for one of the best reviews on this site! I liked your detailed describition of Packaging, Processor, Harddrive, and Operating System!

The packaging part just showed us how much u adore ur new laptop! I respect u for that! Rep point for u!

 

What a great real world review! HDTUNE and 3dMark are fine for looking at the numbers, but where performance really counts is in the day to day use the the computer. This is the best evaluation I've seen yet. Thank you!

 

Yesterday I received my Inspiron 1520. I thought I'd do a review on it so that perhaps it may answer some questions. Right now I don't have any pictures or fancy benchmarks, but hopefully a few real-life comparisons compensates for that.

Note: Processor, battery life, operating system, hard drive, wireless Internet, and webcam have since been updated to reflect my longer-term experience or elaborate on the previous writing. See the sections marked by Update for the new information. represents the start of strikethrough formatting - where I wrote something that no longer believe to be the case. NBR apparently doesn't use this code for strikethrough, so please imagine the formatting.

Update: Second update November 1, 2007. Four benchmarks added.

Reason for Buying

I'm heading to college in the fall, and need a new laptop. I wanted something that would give decent performance for 4-5 years, and of course last that long, and wasn't terribly expensive. The Dell Inspiron e1520 gave me everything I wanted for a good price, even after adding an extended warranty and accidental damage coverage.

Configuration

As I was looking for a notebook that will deliver good performance for some time in the future, I went with the following configuration:

Intel Core2Duo T7500 Processor at 2.20 GHz
2 GB DDR2 RAM at 667 MHz
7200 RPM 160 GB Hard Drive
nVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card with 256 MB dedicated DDR2 memory
Anti-glare, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
High Definition Audio 2.0
CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
Windows Vista Home Premium
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini-Card
Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
Built-in Bluetooth capability (2.0 EDR)
9-cell battery
Jet Black Colour

Packaging

The packaging the e1520 came in was well-prepared. Dell included a cardboard layer inside the actual box above the laptop layer, providing additonal protection for the AC adaptor, power cord, CDs, etc. The laptop itself was surrounded in styrofoam and inside a cover of some type of fiber cloth. For the laptop to be damaged in transit, something extremely heavy would have had to fall on top of it.

The shipping company, DHL, delivered the laptop in three days time with the 3-5 day shipping plan. The ship date itself was three days ahead of Dell's estimate, so I got the laptop when Dell estimated it would first go to the shipping company. DHL isn't Dell's only shipping company - FedEx for example also does Dell deliveries.

Build

The Inspiron e1520 has a very solid feel. Although I haven't put it to a real stress test (the last thing I want is to go too far and be without it for two weeks), all indications so far are good. I can pick it up in one corner and have no flex (something you probably won't be doing too much of anyways with the 7.4 pound weight), and the hinge keep the screen very sturdy. Nothing looks like it's going to fall off. The casing is firm all around. Looking at it today, it looks like this machine will still be working great in 10 years, but of course only time will tell if that will really be the case.

Heat

The laptop stays amazingly cool for all the performance for this size. Feeling the bottom of the laptop that has been against the table, it feels warm but certainly cool enough I could put it on my lap if I wanted to. The top of the laptop is at room temperature. The only area that has a tendency to heat up is the area around the cooling vent on the left, but even that stays reasonably cool if the vent is not blocked. Putting my hand by the vent, I can feel warm air coming out. When playing demanding games the air becomes warmer, but still not alarmingly hot. The fan is quiet, currently being dwarfed by both my desktop's fan and the crickets outside the window.

Update: The CPU temperature tends to stay in the 40s Celsius in low demand times and has risen no higher than 70 Celsius in high-demand times. I do not yet have figures for the GPU. Neither have I used it outside in very hot weather - though I've had the opportunity, I usually prefer to work indoors in those situations.

Update: Hard drive temperatures are in the 41-43 degree Celsius.

Appearance

The Inspiron 1520 looks great. Although not as stunning as a Sony VAIO FZ or as impressive as an Alienware, this notebook has a streamlined look and is enjoyable to look at. The silver on the palmrests and keyboard is just shiny enough to give it a good look, but not so much that it will reflect the sun into the eyes of whomever you're sitting next to. The web cam is well integrated and will be forgotten about when you aren't using it. The Jet Black lid gives the computer a composed look when closed and again gives just a bit of shine while not being reflective. It does, however, pick up fingerprints very easily. It would have been nice if Dell had included a cleaning cloth with this lid.

Update: Although perhaps it goes without saying, the Inspiron 1520 doesn't have the professional look that an business-line notebook such as a Latitude, iMac, or especially IBM does.

Keyboard

The keyboard is excellent. My fingers can glide across it with ease, yet have no trouble finding the right keys. None of the keys are sticky. Compared to my desktop keyboard, it is much quieter, and the keys are much thinner. Layout is good, as well. The left-hand control key is where you'd expect it to be (on the far lower-left edge of the keyboard), the arrow keys are full-sized, the F keys are easy to reach. Only the delete key seems slightly out of place, in the upper-right corner, but with such a distinctive location that adjustment shouldn't be hard. The only part would have changed is that the Pause key requires pressing Fn and then the Insert key. Being such a useful key in real-time games, it would have been nice for it to only require one keystroke. Otherwise the layout is excellent.

Touchpad

The touchpad is responsive and works well. There are scroll bars on the right and bottom of the touchpad, and right and left mouse buttons below. If you tap the touch pad, it acts as if you clicked a mouse; double-tapping works like double-clicking. I do have to be careful not to have multiple fingers on the touchpad - that causes the cursor to jump all over the place. The learning curve isn't too bad - after one day I can get the touchpad to do what I want almost all the time. I'd still recommend a mouse for gaming, though - the sensitivity and range of the touchpad just isn't enough for fast-paced games, and too often you'll end up accidently tapping the touchpad instead of scrolling and shooting your teammates in the back.

Screen

My concerns that the anti-glare screen wouldn't be bright enough disappeared when I turned on high-performance mode. The colors are vibrant and the contrast is excellent. I can turn up brightness higher in the nVIDIA control panel if I wanted, but there is no reason to.

Glare has not been a problem at all. I haven't had a chance to take the laptop into the direct sun due to rainy weather. But while indoors at least, there is no glare while looking at the display at normal viewing angles. If I turn the screen back 45 degrees from vertical so that it is directly reflecting the five 40-watt clear lightbulbs overhead, the lightbulbs do glare a bit, but the screen is still readable even where there is glare. Putting the screen back to a normal angle, there is no glare at all from the lights.

The screen does look best when viewed straight on. When viewed from below, the left, or the right, the colors become less vibrant, though the text is still legible from even an extreme angle. When viewed from the top, the colors wash out at higher degrees, and the text is legible to 40 or 45 degrees up. I should emphasize that the screen still looks good even at 45 degree angles to the side. If you were watching a DVD in a crowded room and were off to the side a ways, you'd be just as well off as you would watching a TV - probably more so due to the lack of glare. The screen also is clear for quite some distance. I can stand across my dining room and kitchen and still see the screen perfectly clear, limited only by my old eyeglass prescription.

I haven't had a problem with graininess on the 1280x800 anti-glare screen. I'm no expert on what exactly graininess is, but the screen looks very clear with the best settings. It looks slightly less clear on power saver mode, but that could be due to the lower brightness. The palm tree background that came with Windows looks extremely crisp, as if I was actually at the location.

The display has also been good when running at non-native resolutions. Many of my older games run only in 1024x768 mode, but other than a slight distortion due to the widescreen they still look excellent. Only at 640x480 resolution did the screen not deliver stellar results, but almost all programs still being used support at least 800x600. The 100 DPI of this resoultion delivers very crisp images, so if you're used to less than that or are concerned with the graininess issues on the 1440x900 display, the 1280x800 should prove a good choice.

The only downside is fairly significant light leakage on the bottom of the screen. In normal use I can't notice it, but it is noticeable when the computer is booting up of when you have black bars at the bottom of the screen from movies that don't take advantage of widescreen and switch the resolution to standard display before playing.

Processor

The T7500 is the highest-end option for this notebook. I was impressed by its performance. My desktop has a 2.66 GHz Pentium 4 processor for comparison.

I haven't done any synthetic benchmarks (have done one since original post), but I did do one real-life benchmark. I loaded up the most processor-demanding game I have, Civilization III, and loaded the saved game I have with the longest time between turns on both computers. I then calculated the time between turns, and the T7500 completed the AI turns in 46% less time than the Pentium 4. As this program was not written with dual-core CPUs in mind, the increase may well be even higher with programs optimized for dual-cores.

*Update: Part of this increase may be due to the Dynamic Acceleration technology of the Santa Rosa platform, which allows one CPU core to be turned off and the other to be overclocked when a single-threaded application is running.

The processor scores a 5.1 on the Vista Experience Index.

Update: Despite its speed, the processor has been one of the most disappointing aspects of the computer, due to the high-pitched noise ("whine") emitted by many Core processors. I could deal with this at home - music would drown it out if I wanted it to end - but it was more annoying yet at the library. It was not loud enough to draw attention, but loud enough that my laptop was noticeably louder than the other (mostly pre-Core or AMD) processors. The solution I found was the RM CPU Clock Utility (scroll down it CPU Clock section to download). From the Advanced CPU Settings --> Platform #1 section of this, you can check the "Disable C4 State" box to eliminate the noise. However, this tends to freeze the laptop on battery, making it a solution only on AC power.

Update - wPrime

I scored 37.72 seconds on wPrime, after switching to Classic mode, closing all applications, and terminating nearly every process and service I could without causing a shutdown or wPrime to not work. Scores were a few tenths of a second higher in regular mode.



Graphics

Real-life performance with the 8600M GT has been excellent. I've run my two most demanding graphics programs, Battlefield Vietnam and Age of Empires III, at max settings with great performance. I don't have any more recent titles to try as they wouldn't run at all on my old machine .

Update: I finally got around to doing some benchmarking. All results are with the default Dell drivers, released 6/14/2007. Here are the results:

3DMark06

This is above the amount reported by Notebookcheck for this card by a very slight amount.

3DMark05

This is few percent below Notebookcheck's value.

3DMark03

This is more than 10% below Notebookcheck's value.

Hard Drive

The 7200 RPM hard drive delivers blazing performance. The manufacturer is Hitachi. Load times in the older Battlefield games are under 30 seconds, compared with a few minutes on my 2002 desktop. Vista boots in about two minutes from hitting the button until everything is loaded and the computer is waiting for a response. If I optimized the startup I could probably get faster boot times as well. *see boot time section at end of this section

Heat is not an issue with this hard drive, either. It runs coolly and quietly. It's a nice luxury to have, but I should mention that whether I'd advise it depends on the Dell pricing of the day.

On the initial startup I had 126 GB of free space on C:\ of 136 GB total space. D:\, the recovery, used an additional 9.99 GB. Although Dell could have cut another 3.5 GB from the recovery drive, overall I was pleased with the available space, especially as I expected Vista to use more.

Update: System Restore also eats up a good chunk of the hard drive if you let it - 15 to 20%. It was using 20 GB of space on mine when I turned it off, and at times I could notice the hard drive activity it caused (it created very many restore points early on). The flip side is that disabling it, well, disables System Restore.

Update 2: Boot Time
I finally did a semi-formal boot time test after doing a fresh install of Vista. All non-Windows startup items except those related to the nVIDIA drivers were disabled, as was booting from the CD before the hard disk. Total boot time from hitting the power button to fully booted was 37.1 seconds. The only element not completely loaded was the wireless Internet connection, which takes some time to verify on the security-enabled network I connect to. Wired Internet was working in this time.

It is also worth mentioning in this update that the total binary hard drive capacity after combining all of Dell's partitions into one is 148 GB, or 159,933,001,728 bytes. The clean Vista install took approximately 9 GB of space.

Sound

The sound is excellent. Firing a fixed artillery piece in BFV produced a slight tinniness, like hitting a tuning fork softly, but other than that the sound quality has been magnificent. The volume can also go quite high - I've left the Windows setting at 40% because any more than that would be overkill in a house setting. Even in a noisy cafeteria you should easily be able to hear your music - and half the rest of the cafeteria will, too.

I haven't tried the earbuds yet.

Wireless Internet

Update: The wireless Internet delivers a fine and consistent connection (Dell Wireless G card), at up to 54 Mbps, provided you have that fast of an Internet connection. It picks up signals very well - from my dining room table I was able to pick up five of my neighbors' signals!

There is a switch on the left side to turn off wireless and bluetooth networking. Doing so extends the battery life by about 25%.

While on the subject of the Internet, it's worth mentioning that if you do have a 54 Mbps connection, you'll quickly realize that the bandwidth of the sites you visit becomes the new limiting factor - so wireless G truly is enough bandwidth for surfing the Web. Wireless N does still offer the advantage of greater roaming distance.

Bluetooth

The bluetooth connection works. I connected my cell phone to the computer via bluetooth, and was able to use the phone as a remote control in Windows Media Center. The responsiveness to the remote was not excellent, however, so I went back to using the touchpad.

I'll test the file transfer rate later.

DVD Drive

The DVD drive reads CDs, both CD-Rs and CD-RWs, as expected. I haven't tried DVDs or burning anything. When rotating a CD at full speed, the drive becomes rather noisy and vibrates the entire computer and table a bit, but otherwise it is quiet enough.

Battery Life

The battery life is quite good. I'd definitely recommend the 9-cell battery. I don't have any DVD-burning or maximum life results, but I have two real-world examples.

When I first unpacked the computer, I set it up and plugged it in about 9:30 PM. I explored Vista for awhile and installed BFV, then watched TV for about half an hour. I came back noticed the battery meter was about half but didn't think much of it, set it to high-performance, and played for about an hour with maximum settings. About midnight, I noticed the battery meter was almost zero. Puzzled, I looked around the room and realized the power strip I'd plugged the computer into was off! I got about two and a half hours of performance half at mostly low-demanding stuff, half at maximum performance and full brightness. Wireless was on the whole time.

The next morning, I got between 3 and 3.5 hours of battery performance before plugging the computer back in at 15% charge. During most of this time, wireless was off, and for most of the time I was installiong software from CDs and thus spinning the optical drive. Power-saver mode was on for all but 10 minutes or so when I was testing to make sure programs worked. When I first turned off wireless, the battery meter was over 90% and estimating 5 hours of life left, something it may well have achieved had I not been using the CD drive almost constantly.

Update: I've since had a chance to test battery life more thoroughly, and found that with minimum brightness (this is less than the default under Power Saver mode), C4 state enabled, and no CD drive activity, performing office tasks, the battery life is (extropolated) 5 hours, 15 minutes with the 9-cell battery. Actual figures: 3 hours, 25 minutes used 65% of the battery. Given that the computer turns off with a few percent left to avoid data loss and that battery use always varies slightly, for practical purposes 4 hours, 45 minutes is the longest life one can safely assume to have.

Operating System

Note: I originally wrote this after having Vista a very short time. Parts of my experience with it have changed since then, so be sure to read the update for the more long-term experience review.

I was skeptical about whether I'd like Windows Vista, whether it would bog down performance, and whether Home Premium would give enough benefits to outweigh its larger footprint over Home Basic. Fortunately, I've found Vista to be a great operating system to work on. The footprint is smaller than I'd expected - pulling up Task Manager right now only 600 MB of RAM is being used. If there is any performance dip, it is more than offset by the better hardware.

Media Center also is a nice way to play music and videos. Navigation is logical, and playback of music and videos is great. I haven't added my own music yet, but soon I'll see how adding my music and my games' soundtracks to the library goes.

Chess Titans also is a nice program if you're into chess. I played one game at Difficulty 2 of 10, and won fairly easily. So even if you're not real great, there'll be a difficulty level for you.

The Aero interface really is just eye-candy. It looks kind of cool seeing the background and Task Manager behind the Notepad title bar, but when the display switched to Vista Basic in power-saver mode the interface still looked fine. Vista Basic in fact looks very similar to XP's Royale Noir interface. One feature of Aero that I haven't seen mentioned much is that you can change the Aero colors and transparency level, a nice option if the default clashes with your background.

Vista also comes with a nice array of backgrounds, pictures, and music. The music in particular is a nice change. Without counting, I'd estimate there is about an hour of music that comes with Vista, all complete songs/pieces and all in mp3 quality. That's quite an improvement over the 80 seconds of music XP came with or the MIDI quality music Windows 95 came with!

Compatibility has not been an issue, either (note: has since become a bit of an issue). I had one program, The Guild, that had an Autorun that Vista didn't like - I haven't bothered to try exploring directly from setup.exe. Oregon Trail II's attempted install of QuickTime 2 also failed, but that program still ran even without QuickTime. All other programs I had installed flawlessly. I even installed the 16-bit SimAnt from 1991 just to see if it would work, and it works great. For peripherals, thus far I have only used a generic flash drive and an old optical IBM mouse, but both worked fine with no driver issues.

Unless you have programs or hardware you know won't work with Vista, or are not getting very much RAM, I see no reason not to get it on a new computer. On the other hand, it's not something to upgrade XP for either.

Update: Vista hasn't been so great since I originally wrote this. Compatibility has become an issue. Another program stopped working, and the manufacturer wouldn't support it under Vista as it came out before Vista did. This raises the point that while you may be running a supported operating system with Vista, your software may not be supported under Vista as it would under XP.

Stability also is an issue. I had four Blue Screens of Death in the first four weeks of Vista (though I haven't had any in the three weeks since), compared to none in four years with XP. More recently, Vista has had a habit of locking up, sometimes unfreezing after a few minutes, but not always. Quite ironically, when I was editing this section and writing of Vista's flaws earlier today, Vista froze completely and I had to reboot. I haven't yet pinned down the cause - RMClock is not it as it has occured both with and without RMClock - but it's happened when I put in a flash drive (fairly often), when I put in a CD, and sometimes with no apparent cause whatsoever. The instability of the lockups is often enough to be very inconvenient. XP was no doubt much more stable than Vista, and even Windows 98 at least comes close.

Overall, I've been disappointed with Vista, and if I had it to do over again I would choose Windows XP as the operating system. As it is, I am seriously considering buying a copy of XP on my own and replacing Vista with XP as the operating system on my computer.

If you can still get XP on a new machine, I would advise you to do so. If it ain't broke and the alternative isn't obviously better, stick with what you've been using.

Update 2: I did a clean install of Vista because of these problems, and so far none has recurred. I'm guessing somewhere along the way something got switched to something it shouldn't have been switched to, but don't know where. In any case, the clean install seems to have helped, and as a bonus when the OS is installed from the disk Dell provides no bloatware is installed, either. Many drivers are included, but for the few that are not (such as the 8600M GT video card), the ones available at Dell's website work well. Interestingly, the drivers for this card from nVIDIA's own site would not install, while the ones from Dell installed without a problem.

The clean install of Vista also significantly reduced memory usage. Memory usage is now between 400 and 425 MB at idle, down from 600 MB before (which is still much less than you'll often see at the store). Thus it is possible to run Vista Home Premium on 512 MB of RAM - though not too much else at the same time.


Pre-installed Software

I was surprised there wasn't more pre-installed software than there was. The HP desktop I got in 2003 came with all kinds of programs. The only non-Microsoft or Dell programs installed were Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Yahoo Music Jukebox, McAfee Security Suite, and Roxio DVD creator. Google Desktop hasn't been starting correctly (I think I zapped it with McAfee early on), and the Yahoo Jukebox and Roxio are only visible in the Program menu. I was quite pleased with the near-absence of bloatware (and complete absence or trial versions of software). The Dell software is services - the Data Safe backup, a networking tool, the Dell wirless card setup, Dell support. McAfee hasn't been problematic either. Kudos to Dell for keeping the bloatware quite low.

Other

Webcam - The first time I tested this out, it seemed to be working when a Blue Screen of Death occured. Guess it wasn't working quite how it was supposed to. A driver update was later available, and it didn't crash in my second test, after updating the drivers. The picture quality seemed to be decent - not nearly as good as a camera, but not bad considering the constraints on it. I haven't actually used it in real-world application, however.

DVD playback works great. I've yet to burn a CD or DVD.

Update - PCMark05

Here is the PCMark05 of this configuration.



Conclusion

I have been very satisfied with this laptop's performance, and would recommend it to someone looking for a laptop in this size and weight range.

Pros
*Excellent Performance
*Reasonable Cost
*Stays cool and quiet
*Bright, clear screen
*Everything working well
*Vista transition very smooth
*Excellent battery life

Cons
*DVD drive gets loud when spinning at full speed
*Dell's pricing scheme is no fun to work through if you're trying to get the best deal

--------ORIGINAL POST---------------

I've updated this review to reflect longer-term experience. Most notable are the processor, operating system, wireless Internet, and battery life updates. The review should now be both more complete and a better reflection of long-term experience. See the sub-sections marked by Update for the additions.

 

Another update, this time with synthetic benchmarks. I'll stop bumping this when I add updates, but I thought these made it much closer to the style of the front-page reviews.

Still might add a few Fraps-aided real-world game benchmarks, and an HD Tune result - not sure when, though - updates are obviously sporadic. Also forgot to calculate Bluetooth transfer two days ago when I transferred a large file to my phone - d'oh! Oh well, eventually I'm sure to want a different mp3 on my phone.