Review Update: Dell Inspiron 11z Discussion

After our less-than-enthusiastic review of the Dell Inspiron 11z, we decided to take a second look at this budget-priced ultraportable notebook. The "new" Inspiron 11z promises to kick things into high gear thanks to a new low-voltage dual-core processor, Windows 7 and an extended life battery. Should this updated ultraportable be on your holiday wish list? Keep reading to find out.

Read the full content of this Article: Review Update: Dell Inspiron 11z

Related Articles:

• Dell Inspiron 14z Review
• Dell Inspiron 11z Review

 

Nice boost in speed over the last version! Still sad they havent fixed the touchpad.

 

The 6 cell battery sticks out quite far. That is another con for me.

 

Thanks for the update. Glad to see the improved performance of U4100. I too hate the 6-cell battery which sticks out, and am sad with the touchpad (I don't want to use a mouse in an aircraft).

Possibly we could disable all the potentially annoying features (like zooming) and control damages?

Do you think 4GB RAM (additional 2GB) makes a significant difference?

 

Agreed about the battery. We still have the celeron model but we bough six cell battery for it.

On the plus side the battery life with it with the celeron processor is more than acceptable now. We can get right at 6 3/4 hours with regular use.

On the bad side, it sticks out a lot and raised the back of the unit considerably. It also throws the balance of the machine off when used on a lap. When you combine the size and weight and then tilt the screen back beyond a certain point and gets back heavy. I managed to flip it off my lap on to the (fortunately heavily carpeted floor). No damage but i was lucky.

The battery bulge also makes it not fit in a lot of sleeves. You end up having to use one designed for a 13" unit which then is too wide.

We have basically told dell let us know when you come out with Rev 3

 

wow! the battery looks like a built-in mini-dock station.

 

Hm, nice notebook for the money. dell seems to be doing good in this lower end market.

THOUGH if i was in the market the UL30 would be my first choice.

 

Nice review!! Thanks for the update!!

Might wanna correct this sentence that makes no sense:
"rated at .is fairly small, with a rated capacity of 56Wh"
On the battery area.

Thanks!

 

I'm wondering how much Dell paid to get this netbook reviewed again. It sounded like a bad machine the first time, it sounds like a bad machine this time.

 

No one pays us to review their products on this website. All of the staff writers on this site are salaried employees of an independent publisher who in turn makes money by selling advertising on this site. At no time do advertisers have any say with regard to the content on this site, and our editors have jeopardized existing advertising relationships on multiple occasions because we don't pull punches with our reviews.

Now, with that said, the reason we decided to review the Inspiron 11z again is because Dell now offers it with a higher performance CPU (one of the complaints in our original review) and Windows 7 along with updated touchpad drivers.

Those new features, combined with the popularity of the Inspiron 11z based on our Google search traffic, gave us enough reason to take a second look at this notebook.

 

Thanks for catching what our editorial team missed. That's corrected now.

Rep points for you!

 

Sure, no problem.

And very nice work with the review.
Such a shame the clickpad/touchpad is still rather messy, otherwise this could be a great little laptop.

 

I know! There are at least three members of our editorial staff (myself included) who wanted to buy the 11z when it was first announced, but none of us can get over the touchpad.

It's not "completely unusable" but it is frustrating enough that I wouldn't be able to own this laptop without using an external mouse 100 percent of the time.

I can personally overlook the rest of the "cons" to the 11z, because it is indeed a great little laptop, but as long as it's using the current touchpad I won't be buying one of my own.

 

I know what you mean.
My touchpad is giving my problems on my laptop, with the tapping (which I use all the time) and it is very annoying, and the touchpad NOT doing what you want it to do is quite GRRRR (insert insult here) experience...almost a headache...lol

 

Thanks for the reply Jerry. I recognize no reviews are paid for, it was just my way of using sarcasm to make a point. Ultimately, this machine still needs some improvements to make it a stand-out contender in the netbook market and I think your two reviews have proven that.

 

Massive sticking out battery, same trackpad. This poor thing is doomed.

 

Yeah, afraid I must agree. I was interested until I saw that battery hump. I like to use a Logitech VX Revolution laptop mouse with my HP G60, but I wouldn't want to have to carry it with me everywhere. At least my HP touchpad is useable. I'm still holding out and hoping that HP's dm1 will be everything the Dell 11z isn't.

 

Hi jerry, i know this is off-topic but the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 was released, is this in your lists to be reviewed? it. Im shopping for new cheap light laptop for my mom. and i want to see how this will stack to the dell inspiron 11z and to acer 1410?

 

A bit off topic, but no harm done since it's reasonable to compare the U150 to the 11z. Yes, we do have the U150 in our queue for review and we hope to get a review of that notebook published in the not too distant future.

 

Your review put me right off the 11z and I bought the Timeline 1810tz instead, the battery does not stick out and I get 6.5 hours wifi use this with the SU4100 CPU. I have disabled all the gesture touchpad options though as I have always found them annoying on every laptop. Are you going to be reviewing the 1810tz soon?

 

A bit off topic (sorry), but i am still undecided among...

Dell 11z
HP DM1
Acer Timeline 1810tz
Lenovo U150

I don't want larger than 12 inch (I mostly use on the airplane (Economy class!) and even my m1330, U405, and X200 are too big).

If there weren't your article and the touchpad problem, i might have purchased 11z already... I am less confident about the quality of Lenovo and Acer. I am waiting how DM1 turns out. I like the design at least. But I am afraid HP again gives us that ugly big 6 cell battery which stick out.

 

Now I actually LIKE the batteries that lift a notebook (or netbook) up off the table like that, so that wouldn't be a problem for me personally

But the touchpad ... is it just me or is the touchpad one of the more common areas that mainstream producers seem to be slacking on in the realm of smaller notebooks? (Say 10 - 13" screen laptops)It is almost as if they are already assuming that folks will use an external mouse.

That being said I personally do use an external mouse, but sometimes I am not able to and a trackpad is necessary....

Best trackpad I have ever used on a smaller machine is the one of the Sony TX770p ... don't know what Sony did, or if I just got a really stupendous model, but that thing is excellent!

 

The Acer 1410 is very similar to the Dell 11z. I had one for a few days, but it had a hardware issue that caused me to return it. I had no complaints with it's touchpad, and it was easily as nice as the one in my Sager m400a (yes, I know that's an older laptop, but it has great build quality for all that it is ancient in PC years ). IThe buttons tended to be "clicked" if the edge was rested against one's abdomen, but as far as responsiveness on the touchpad itself, it was very good.

I don't think it's a problem with all manufacturers, this is just a horridly designed touchpad. It's unfortunate, as well. I'm a fan of Dell portables; I own an M1710 and a Dell Axim x51v that still works great, I bought my mother a Vostro 16, and my father an E1705. All of them are great laptops. Lately, however, Dell has not been innovating and producing the types of products I've come to expect from them.

 

Me too! I really want to be convinced with 11z. One of my best laptops ever in my life is Dell 700m. I still love that little baby.

 

nice review; well i was trying to upgrade my laptop & saw a notebook hard drive at micropartsusa, now, is there anything more that i should be care about?

 

I can recommend the Acer 1810tz, I have disabled all of the touchpad gesture features as they are more of an irritation to me then usefull (I have been using laptop trackpads since 2000) and I can wholeheartidly recommend this machine... the CPU scores 4.0 in Windows 7 and a normal 1.66ghz Core 2 Duo notebook chip scores 4.4 so the SU4100 is only 0.4 slower which is fantastic seeing as I get about 6.5 hours web surfing over wifi with the machine (and the battery does not stick out) quality is great only some extremely minor marks were noticed on the machine when brand new... really they are not worth even mentioning I am just nit-picking.

 

Which on is th 1810tz?? Because there are some Acers that are quite loved...

 

If I remember correctly, it was 1410 in the European market. Maybe some small details were changed.

 

I was considering the dell 11z but the trackpad prolems have put me off too much

I think I am going for the Acer 1810tz unless the new 11" HP gets some good reviews

 

The DM1? Seems to be a good contender and the IdeaPad U150 is already out too.

 

I need a TINY laptop to do work while commuting on a train two hours a day. My Inspiron 1520 is just too big, especially since I ride a bike to and from the train station into downtown.

I've had an 11z on order for THREE WEEKS, configured identically to the one in the second review, except for a black lid. I just got ANOTHER "order delayed" mail from Dell about it and I'm about to let it get canceled. This is ridiculous. Nobody there speaks enough English to even be able to tell me what the holdup is, and I bet if I called up saying I'll keep waiting if they can give me a discount, they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

If it wasn't for the fact that I'm using my Dell Account to buy it, I'd have given up long ago and gotten the Acer.

So... I'm not sure what to do. I have the rest of the day to decide if I'm going to keep the order, or let it auto-cancel.

Sigh.

Rob

 

Has anyone used the Inspiron 11z with the "new and improved touchpad with left and right buttons"? http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/note...dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~inspiron-11z_anav_1~~

Does this fix remove the hesitations mentioned in the original and updated reviews?

 

It's nice to see that they fixed the touchpad. However, I've had such awful experiences with Dell's customer service since late last year, and more problems with Windows 7 stability than I ever had on Vista, I gave up and switched to a Mac and haven't looked back.

Rob

 

We haven't tested the new touchpad in the office lab, but when we spent some limited hands-on time with a pre-production model in January I felt like the new touchpad was a welcome improvement over the old touchpad.

Again, I can't give it a complete endorsement, but the one I messed with was better than the original multi-touch touchpad with integrated buttons.

 

New improved model and touchpad with separate buttons



Probably the reason for the delay